Fade

by Haley Ladawn

  No matter how bad I felt about it, those were three things that men like me couldn’t give to women like her.

  As if hearing my train of thought, she said, “Lily had to wilt and die, so that Rose could bloom.”

  With those words, she pressed her body against mine. The softness of her body molded to the hardness of mine, causing a low, guttural growl to rumble through my chest. She pushed herself further against me, until we were heart-to-heart. The only thing between our bodies was the suave fabric of my suit that she was making quick work to get rid of.

  I couldn’t breathe and it had everything to do with her tender lips crashing against mine, sucking the protests right out of my mouth. Her body moved against mine with purpose, making me swell uncomfortably in the same pants she was already unzipping.

  It was going to be a long fucking night.

  Chapter 34: Love Me Like You Hate Me

  They say that God created the world in six days, so it only made sense that my world would come to an end in that same amount of time.

  Six days. One hundred and forty-four hours. Eight thousand six hundred and forty minutes.

  It wasn’t the bullet that tore through my abdomen that ended my life as Lily James. It was the realization that my heinous father was still alive, just like all the other ghosts from my past. It was the light-bulb moment when I realized that he was going to come after me, just like he’d come after my mother.

  And yes, he’d been the one that had taken my mother’s life away, or so that’s what Elliot and my brother told me. Maybe I was being naive, but I believed the two of them with my heart and soul.

  After I woke up in makeshift hospital, Elliot told me the truth about everything. He said he knew all along that Luciano was really my brother Lucas, that he knew that my father was still alive roaming the Earth, freely. His lips quivered when he told me that my dad was responsible for killing his own father. The grim look the evaded his eyes right then made it seem like he was talking about an old wound that hadn’t quite healed properly. Even after nine years, the pain was still fresh.

  He told me everything that he’d kept bottled up since we met in his office that one fateful morning. After hearing his sullen words, it made only thing very clear.

  If I was alive, I wasn’t safe from my father, or anyone else for that matter. Just because of what my father did to countless people, I had a huge target on my back. My brother had the right idea when he changed his name to Luciano and faked his own death when he was just a teenager.

  That’s why I decided to follow in his footsteps, killing the only person who’d ever truly been on my side through thick and thin. Killing myself.

  I killed Lilith James, so that no one else would have the pleasure of doing it themselves.

  Now, I stood as Rose Vitale. A woman so different from the person that I was, but someone who was exactly like the person I needed to become. Rose was outspoken and strong, whereas Lily was feeble and weak. Rose was serious when Lily was completely silly. Rose wasn’t scared of anything. And Lily, well, she feared everything.

  I pulled my hair out of my face, kneeling before Elliot as the new person that I was. A woman who wasn’t afraid to take matters into her own hands. A woman who wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty.

  I was completely naked, completely exposed to his hungry, but haunting, gaze. Before it frightened me to see that portentous side of him, but now, I welcomed it with open arms. I wanted him to treat like a rag doll, throw me against the wall, stake his claim on me, bite into my flesh with his bare teeth, make me scream. I wanted him to show me that I was human, show me that I was still alive, even if the only way he could do that was by hurting me.

  With everyone dying around me and people rising from their supposed graves, I needed to know that I was alive. I needed to know that I was okay, even if I didn’t feel like it.

  The frigid wind coming in from the opened window brushed against my naked chest, causing my hard nipples to grow even more taut underneath Elliot’s smoldering gaze. I could tell by the hostile look that was overtaking his eyes, that he was having a turbulent battle within himself.

  I didn’t understand his restraint. I didn’t understand why he was having such a tough time giving into the dark desires that drove our attraction from the beginning.

  So, if he wasn’t going to take the initiative to calm the fire that was raging between us, I was going to.

  I palmed him through his pants, feeling the weight of his hard cock against my soft skin. It made the intimate space between my thighs dampen with an unfamiliar moisture I’d only ever felt a handful of times. All those times were caused by the very man that stood before me.

  As I unbuttoned his slacks, he let out a dangerous growl that sent a chill down my spine. Tugging his pants down, I put my fingers in between the elastic of his boxers, pulling him closer to me.

  “If you don’t stop…” He sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth, taking a deep breath. He was still struggling with me being here like this— being completely unclothed and open for him to do whatever he wanted to with my body. Most men would jump at the opportunity to be with a woman with no ties and no rules, but he was trying him damnedest to stay composed and in control. “I won’t be able to stop either.”

  “I don’t want you to stop… ever.” I ripped his suit jacket off, throwing it onto the floor around us quickly. My unskilled hands went to unbutton his dress shirt, but he pushed my palms away, tearing the shirt off himself. “I want you always, every day, anyway that I can get you.”

  Even with the fresh bullet wound to his side, he still looked as impeccable as always. Maybe even more so now. I realized that even when the wound would finally heal that Elliot would still be the most handsome man in the world to me. I wouldn’t see his scar as a flaw, I’d see it as a sign of survival, and that was beautiful to me.

  I went to touch his chest, but he caught my hand in his, leading me toward his empty bed. His grip wasn’t tight, but it couldn’t be described as soft either. He had ahold of me in every sense of the word, both emotionally and physically. I couldn’t escape him and I didn’t want to. Right here was exactly where I wanted to be.

  He pushed me onto the bed with a force that almost knocked the wind out of me, but it didn’t scare me off. He was trying to intimidate me, but what he hadn’t realized is that I’d already faced all the monsters and skeletons in my closet. If he wanted to frighten me, it was going to take a lot more than being brute with his touch.

  He climbed on top of me, his hard as stone manhood still hidden behind his thin boxers. I thought it was unfair that I was bare and exposed, while he had a scrap of fabric to hide behind, but I quickly remembered that I was the one who asked for this.

  I wanted you to love me as Lily, but I want you to fuck me as Rose.

  Just remembering what I’d said, sent a shiver down my spine and goose bumps along my arms. I thought about the way Elliot would feel inside of me, feeling me completely with his warm, swollen shaft. I thought about the way it would feel to be so close with someone, how it’d feel to become one with someone.

  He wrapped his hand around my hair, pulling me up to meet his waiting mouth. He was still pinning me down on the bed, so I could only come up so far and it wasn’t far enough. I didn’t want there to be any space between us. I wanted skin-to-skin contact, not this lingering touch. It was driving me insane, causing my legs to quiver with an insatiable want.

  When Elliot wouldn’t do it himself, I pulled my hand out from underneath his strong grip, and went on to stroke my shuddering clit myself. I’d only just graced my femininity when he yanked my hand back, completely abandoning the orgasm I was attempting to work myself too. Much to my surprise, he sucked my damp fingers into his mouth, licking up whatever taste of me was still on there.

  “You taste like a sweet cherry, fiorella.” He pushed my hand back into the mattress, smirking at me sideways. That devilish smile sent an antagonizing pool of moisture between my thighs, leadi
ng me right back to square one. If he didn’t do something soon, I was going to spontaneously combust from the pressure that was building between my legs. “But if you ever pet your kitty without permission again, I’ll break your fucking hands.”

  “Can’t give you a hand job if you break my hands.” I whimpered as he tightened his hold on me, surely leaving a mark. I concentrated on the heat that was radiating from his body, instead of the slight burning that had my wrists on fire. Just before I let out a whiny moan, he let go of my hands, moving them to the bulge in his boxers. I was moaning for a completely different reason now.

  “You sound so sexy when you moan like that, but I’d rather have your lips wrapped around my cock.” His hands found my breasts, giving them his full attention, making me squirm beneath his rigid body. He kneaded them with his calloused hands, stopping only to lick and bite my nipples with his skilled tongue. “I love your—”

  I cut him off, letting a moan escape my parted lips.

  He arched his body back, then dipped down real low, until he was practically dry humping me. He was doing this just to drive me crazy, and it was working. I felt a physical ache spread through my body, causing me to hold onto the sheets, until my knuckles turned white. Every time his hard length met my wetness, I let out a strangled breath. I just wanted him to get it over worth, for him to sink into me. “Tell me you want it, tell me you want me.”

  “I want you,” I said instantly, throwing my care and caution to the wind.

  Seeming satisfied with my answer, he parted my thighs with his strong hands, making quick work of getting rid of his boxers. I was mesmerized by the appearance of his taut erection, wondering how in the hell it was going to fit inside of me. I reached up for it, but Elliot pushed my hand away.

  “Not so fast, gattina.” He palmed himself, running his hand down his slick shaft slowly. He brought the tip of his hot length to my greedy wetness, causing me to inhale sharply. He was barely touching me, but I could feel my nerve endings jolt alive with a sudden awareness.

  “What about a condom?” I asked warily, but I was too lost in the pervasive sensations to care.

  “I’m all the protection you need, baby.”

  He aligned his bare, but swollen, groin with my soaked slit, getting ready to connect us in the most intimate way possible. But before he entered me, I stopped him just long enough to say, “Wait! I have a confession to make!”

  His motions came to a swift halt, as he cocked his head to the side, wiggling a dark eyebrow.

  “And you decide that right before I’m about to stick my cock into your dripping pussy is the best time to confess all your dirty little secrets?” He ran his fingers along his rough jaw, sighing deeply. “Perfect timing, fiorella.”

  “I just wanted to let you know that I’m a virgin.” I felt my cheeks rise with embarrassment, causing me to look away from his sweltering gaze. “I just don’t want you to be surprised.”

  “I think you’ll be able to handle me just fine.” He smiled at me wickedly. “I admit that this isn’t going to be sweet for you, fiorella, but I’ll try my hardest to make it less bitter. I don’t know how to be gentle, but for you, I’ll try my best not to break you.”

  And with those last words, he thrust into me so hard that my skull almost hit the headboard. My breath instantly stilled, as the sheer force of him being inside me made a cry of ecstasy tear through my dry throat. His hand found my mouth quickly, masking the loud sound of my uncontrollable moans. I was biting down on my tongue just to keep quiet, but even that wasn’t helping.

  “Oh, God,” I growled, loving the way he spread me thin, and ravaged me like I was the object of his deadliest desire.

  He pulled out for the faintest moment, then plunged right back in, causing my eyes to roll back into my head. For that satisfying moment in time, I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I could feel the shift in his hips, the way he rolled into me repeatedly, the piercing pleasure that ricocheted through his body into mine. We were exchanging earth-shattering sensations back and forth. Just thinking about it was enough to make me come undone beneath his fixed silhouette.

  The sound of skin slapping against skin penetrated my ears, mixed in with grunts and cries that made my stomach soar with butterflies I’d never quite felt before. Even with the tiny pain in my abdomen from where Emmet shot me, I couldn’t have felt any better. Elliot was taking my body places it’d never been before and I was grateful for the distraction.

  He hit walls that I didn’t even know I had, making my body clasp around him. I never wanted to let him go. Without warning, he flipped me over onto my stomach, and sunk into me from behind. His hand slapped against my bare ass cheek and it sent me over the edge.

  Elliot let out a strangled growl as he pulled his still very hard cock from me. He breached our connection by collapsing on the bed next to me, working his stiff shaft with his right hand. Confused, I looked at him feebly, wondering if there was something wrong with me.

  “Why didn’t you finish?” I asked quietly, still reeling from the aftershocks of a mind-blowing orgasm.

  “That was for you, baby, not for me.” He continued stroking his dick with a tight fist and it was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen in my life. He was looking directly at me, too.

  I watched him with hooded eyes, watching him palm his length, touching him myself here and there. It wasn’t long until a hot layer of pre-cum glistened the base of manhood, causing my interest to pique and my thighs to clench together. I wanted to lick it off him.

  When all was said and done, we’d both reached our own separate, but still greatly intertwined, climaxes. At the end of a very long night, we laid beside each other, whispering sweet nothings that probably wouldn’t mean a thing when daylight came to overtake our naughty shadows.

  “Now what?” I asked long after our promiscuous rendezvous had come to a bittersweet ending. A part of me never wanted it to end, but as they say, all good things must come to an end, unfortunately.

  “Now we go to sleep, fiorella.” Elliot pulled my body into his, brushing his tender lips against my forehead. “Unless you’re already ready for round two.”

  I laughed. “Maybe in the morning.”

  “Ti aspetterò.” He brought me closer, until I was using his warm chest as a pillow. I could hear his heart beating soundly.

  For the first time in forever, I didn’t fall asleep with visions of the past haunting me. The only thing that evaded my dreams that night was a certain Italian man with glimpses of a foreseeable future that didn’t seem that far off.

  Maybe parts of Lily had faded away, but that didn’t mean her entire life was over. I was still here and I still had a life. It was time to stop just being alive and start living. Tonight was my very first step in the right direction.

  Lily may have died, but I was going to start living.

  Little did I know, that right outside a certain window stood a certain man that threatened to take everything away from me.

  I guess that’s why they say, you can run, but you can’t hide.

  Chapter 35: Baby Mama Drama

  Elisa’s Point of View

  “I slept with him and didn’t use a condom!” Lily’s frenzied voice tore through my eardrums, causing me to stir awake. Who needed an alarm clock when you had a neurotic best friend to wake you up?

  I rubbed my eyes, willing myself to get up. It was well past one in the afternoon, but since becoming pregnant, sleeping had become one of my favorite pastimes.

  I pulled the sheets away from my body, exposing my pajamas that had little baby kittens on them.

  “What if I am pregnant? What if I become a single parent? And what if my baby daddy doesn’t pay child support?” Her doll-like face was absolutely mortified, causing me to smile at her ridiculous questions. I’d gone through the same round of insane what ifs when I first suspected that I was pregnant.

  “You’re going to take a chill pill because you’re not pregnant.” I grabbed her hand, squeezing it
tightly, as if to reassure her. “Trust me, you will never have to worry about that ever.”

  “Why?” She moved her hand away from mine, raising her light eyebrows. The terror that was smeared onto her face had subsided to confusion and suspicion. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “He didn’t tell you?” My breath hitched in my throat, making it impossible to breathe. I swallowed hard, growing less animated by the second. I wished that I’d never brought this subject up, but I knew Lily wasn’t going to let me off the hook now.

  This wasn’t my business to talk about, but I figured he would’ve told her about it at some point to ease her uncertainty. Maybe it was still difficult for him to talk about it. Hell, I only knew about it because I was in the room next to him when it happened.

  If I hadn’t been there to witness it, something tells me that he never would’ve spoken up about it. This was the kind of shit that you talked to a therapist about, and Elliot wasn’t the type to show his feelings; let alone confess them to a total stranger.

  “Tell me what?” A frown appeared on her full lips, her brows pulling inward. She was growing impatient, while I was growing scared. I hadn’t talked about this night in so long— with the hope that if I didn’t think about it— maybe I could forget about it.

  Unfortunately, my dreams were marred with the devastating memory, never letting me live it down. Even the scars on my face now couldn’t live up to the horrors of my past, or to the horrors of his past.

  “It happened two years ago.” I started to tell a story I never thought I’d have to tell again. Lily deserved to know if she planned on having any kind of relationship with Elliot. What I was about to tell her would be a deal breaker or a heart breaker. Probably both.

  “It was when I first met Everet and Elliot… and even Emmet…” I looked out the window, half expecting Emmet’s soulless blue eyes to be staring back at me. We’d left him to bleed out with Margo at the abandoned warehouse, but a part of me doubted that he was truly gone. “I’d been staying at their estate for a few months, and that’s how Everet and I happened; through a backbreaking game of cat and mouse. We had our ups and downs and even some sideways. The relationship between the two of us was always arduous, but nothing compared to what happened that night.”