by Mandi Beck
“Have a good one, Kim. Thanks for breakfast.” I toss her a wink and stroll out. Next stop, Willow and Lyric.
When I pull into her drive I see another car there, a Mercedes with a French flag dangling from the rearview mirror, and instantly I’m on edge. Snatching up the bag with our food, I climb out of the truck. Just as I clear the drive, I see Joaquin walking down the pathway from Willow’s house. I stop him with a stiff hand to his chest and glance up at the house and then back at him. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He pushes my hand off him. “I came to see Willow and Lyric. You just missed the baby by the way; Cora came and got her.” Smiling smugly, like he has inside information. “And you can drop the whole jealous boyfriend act, she told me you guys aren’t together,” the prick says, pleased with himself.
“Yet.”
“What?” he asks confused.
“Yet. We aren’t together yet,” I explain, staring him down. A thought occurs to me. “You knew who she was when you sought her out, didn’t you?”
“Not at first, no. But I figured it out really quick,” he admits.
“So you knew she was mine and still you went after her?”
“I knew you two had broken up. Just like I knew you were in rehab on the other side of the world, and I knew that she didn’t want you to know where she was.” Cocking his head thoughtfully, “You really think you’re what she needs, Stone? What Lyric needs? Some druggie rock star who can’t keep it in his pants?” he scoffs.
Tightening my hold on the paper bag in my hand, I take a step forward and get right in his face. “I’ll let that shit slide because you’re all pissed off because I was right about Willow never being yours to begin with, but know this, next time you talk about shit you don’t know anything about, you’ll be singing through a wired jaw.” He blanches. “Try me,” I dare between gritted teeth. Rocking back to glare down at him.
“Stone?” Willow calls out cautiously from the door.
“Coming, Birdie,” I answer. Smirking at his face pinched in irritation. “See ya around, Joaquin.” Whistling, I amble up the walk to where Willow waits, looking apprehensive. I kiss her softly on the cheek. “It’s okay, I didn’t hurt him,” I assure, slipping past her into the house. I’ll wait to drill her about why he was here after she closes the door and we don’t have an audience with a hard on for me to fuck this up so he can swoop back in and save the fucking day.
Walking into the kitchen I calmly start removing the stuff from Spun, placing it all on the counter. “That looked pretty intense out there,” Willow says from behind me.
“What’s he doing here at nine in the morning, Birdie?” My voice is laced with more accusation than I intend.
“Are you insinuating something, Stone? What is it that you’re really asking?” she huffs out, stalking into the living room, angrily picking up pillows from the floor, leaving me no other choice but to follow. “Are you asking me if he spent the night? If I fucked him knowing that I asked you to come here?” Now she’s pissed.
“Don’t put words into my mouth,” I tell her lamely although that was exactly what had been racing around my fucked up mind. Probably born of guilt.
“You are unbelievable, you know that?” She crosses her arms tightly across her chest, making a little shelf for her tits to set on, drawing my attention. “He came here, if you must know and since you asked so nicely, to assure me that he wouldn’t tell anyone about Lyric and to ask if we were going to have to make other arrangements about his song rights, you dick. I c—”
“Say it again,” I cut her off.
“What? Say what?”
“Dick. I always loved when you said dirty shit.” My intentions aren’t to throw her off, but fuck me if I can help it. With that one little word, her pissed off little rant, and those perfect tits of hers, I was done.
“Oh my God. Did you hear anything I even said?” she demands but she’s not bullshitting me. I hear the fight in her voice, but it’s not her fighting with me anymore. It’s her fighting me. Her reaction to me.
“I heard every word. I’m just done talking about it.” I shrug. “I’d much rather talk about how I’m dying to get in between your thighs and have been for the last two years.” I watch as she swallows, shifts from one foot to the other. Just slightly. But I notice. I notice everything about her. I notice how her breathing has changed since our conversation took a turn, how her leggings leave no room for her to be wearing anything underneath, how every movement causes her tits to jiggle around under that too big Wrecked tee, letting me know she doesn’t have anything on underneath that either.
“Did he see you like this?” I ask, suddenly.
“No, I had a robe on. Why would it matter? I’m covered from head to toe,” she says.
“You’re naked underneath my shirt and those tights,” I tell her, mostly to get her worked up again.
“They’re not tights. And how do you know?”
“Because I look. I watch you move.” Walking around the couch I put myself right in front of her, grinning when she takes a deep breath. “Every time you bend down to pick up a pillow and chuck it, these sway,” I say softly, running a single digit from the slope of her breast down, letting my nail catch just slightly on the rapidly hardening nipple.
“Stone . . .” She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t move away from my touch. She stands there. Still. Waiting.
I let my finger finish its descent ending at her waist, causing her to inhale sharply.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Birdie.” The words are more of a plea than any I’ve ever said. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if she were afraid of me after what happened to her. “You weren’t afraid with Joaquin . . .” It’s more a question than a statement and it kills me to say.
“We never . . . he never . . .” She trails off shaking her head. My back straightens.
“You didn’t fuck him?” I’m alert, watchful. I’ve been driving myself insane since the moment I first saw them together and all this time they hadn’t been sleeping together?
“No. I couldn’t do it,” she murmurs, glancing away. Hooking her chin, I bring her gaze back to mine.
“Why?” My eyes locked on hers I wait, my breathing rapid.
“He wasn’t you,” Willow whispers. Letting her eyelids flutter closed in resignation she repeats, “He wasn’t you.”
Without pause, I yank her into me, her hands flying to my chest for balance, and cover her lips with my own. The sense of relief flooding me is so overwhelming. All the longing and jealousy, taunting and teasing all bubbles over into this kiss. My hands are everywhere, sliding up her sides and under her shirt, skimming the sides of her tits before meeting at the smooth skin of her back. Tongues lashing and teeth nipping, I rock into her. When she meets my thrust it’s all I can do not to come in my pants. Little more than a kiss and she has me hard and so fucking ready. I need to slow down for her, for me. Catching her bottom lip in between my teeth I pull back, taking it with me for a beat before letting it go. With glazed over eyes she watches me, trying to bring me into focus. I feel a confession coming on. Pressing my forehead to hers, I take a deep breath, wishing like hell I had a cigarette. “Wills, I want to tell you something.” It’s very near a pant, I’m so breathless from kissing her. She stiffens in my arms and I immediately feel the walls going up.
“I don’t want to discuss the women you’ve been sleeping with, Stone. I just don’t want to hear it,” Willow says, trying to push away from me. How she knew this is what I was going to bring up is beyond me.
Wrapping my arms around her, holding her tighter, I demand, “No. No, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about how I haven’t fucked a single chick since the night you left. Haven’t even looked at one in passing.” I bend at the knees, trying to catch her eyes. It’s a battle but she finally looks at me. “Let’s talk about that.”
I see the doubt flash in her eyes and I can’t blame her. “Stone, don’t lie to me. Not now.”
“Serious as fuck right now, Wills. No more lies between us ever again. I haven’t touched another woman since that day. Not one.” When she looks away again, unaccepting, I know this is going to be a difficult discussion.
I take her hand and lead her over to the pillows strewn all over the place. Pulling the ones from the couch that she already picked up. Letting go of her just long enough to unzip my boots and slip them off, I toss my hat to the side and pull her down to the nest she built. With her lying there in a mound of multi colored pillows I stretch out at her side, propping my head with my hand and just look down at her. She’s tense, on edge, and I’m going to make it worse before I make it better. Not wanting to drag this out any further than I have to, I place my hand over her stomach, not so much to pin her there but to feel her.
“Fucking around on you is one of my biggest regrets. I regret it more than the drugs, more than losing you even. I have excuses, but is there really ever an excuse to make it okay?” I shake my head, “Not to me there isn’t.” She turns her head to face me. “It doesn’t make it okay that I don’t remember a single one of them or that at the time it was happening, had you asked I would have bet my career that it was you I was with.” I let out a disgusted laugh. “Drugs will make you believe anything. Make you believe you’re invincible, that your actions don’t hurt people, that you can stop any time. They convince you of anything you want to think is true. Wanna be king? Do enough coke and you’ll believe that you are. Believe you can fly? Take just one more pill and you can. It’s all a great big mind fuck. And then you wake up, and that dream you were living in for the time you were high is nothing but a nightmare, until you get high again.”
Blowing out a breath, I push her shirt up just slightly and trace my fingers against the soft skin now exposed to me. Watching my hand while I talk. “When you left, the part of me that cared about what people thought went with you. I holed up in my hotel room, getting as high as I possibly could, not letting anyone in other than whatever dealer I found on the road.” My eyes close briefly. “I don’t even remember when I first started using or why. Maybe I had no choice, destiny or whatever, since my ma was a junkie? But I loved the way it made me feel, so I convinced myself that I could control it. Not be like her because I’m better than she was. A rock star with the world by the balls. And then shit got away from me. I got high because I liked it and it felt good, and when I wasn’t, I was down and pissy, until I got high again. When you left me, I couldn’t even bring myself to pretend that the other women were you anymore. I didn’t even use for the same fucking reasons. Something changed inside my jumbled, fucked up mind, and I was using to numb the pain of missing you. My whole damn world imploded and I didn’t even realize it.
My lips rise in a sad smile. “I threw you away to chase a high that would never be enough. A high that even at its peak, could never make me feel as good as you did. I knew it. I knew it instantly. So stoned and alone was the only way I wanted to be. Then once I got sober,” I shake my head and snort out a breath, “there’s no way I was letting myself fall into that trap again. All I wanted, all I want is you.”
Willow
THE SINCERITY BEHIND HIS WORDS, in his voice, are all the affirmation I need. The permission my heart and head needed to get on the same page when it came to Stone. Never taking my eyes from his cool grays, I roll, pushing him to his back and straddle him. My hair hanging down, cocooning us. I can feel his fingers flexing into the flesh of my hips and I have an instant pang of self-consciousness. “I’ve changed,” I murmur softly. My eyes darting away from his to look down at my body, hidden by my clothes . . . for now.
“You say you’ve changed, but Birdie, you’re not that different. You’re still the Willow I fell in love with all those years ago. You’re just a better version of you now because of Lyric.” His words are spoken with conviction and they make me want to cry at their beauty, at their truth. But he misunderstands.
“I mean, my body. I’ve changed. I’m not—”
He sits up abruptly, putting us chest to chest, my legs wrapping around his back. Stone reaches for the hem of my shirt and pulls it up and over my head, letting his hands drag along the length of my outstretched arms. No words are spoken as he kisses the curve of my shoulder, the crook of my neck, and ever so briefly my mouth. Moving us so that I’m once again flat on my back with my legs locked around his hips and him on his knees in between my legs. Gently he reaches behind him to my feet, pulling them forward, placing a kiss to first one arch and then the other. My breathing is labored at best. I feel dizzy with want, crazed with lust, as I watch this big, tattooed god silently worship my body.
Still with a roaming gaze, he says nothing as he reaches for my waistband and peels my leggings from me, throwing them over his shoulder when I’m finally free of their confines. Before him, naked, bared, body and soul, I can only watch in awe as emotions flit across his face. A man who shows his feelings with words, not actions, a broody bad boy intent on using touch to tell me how beautiful I am to him. With hands that tremble slightly, he runs his callused fingers along my thighs, spreading me as he gets ever closer to my center. I watch as his thumb sweeps through my pussy, through the lips to dip into the wetness his touch has caused. He shudders slightly and our gazes clash. His eyes search my face, making sure that this is okay, that I’m okay. I’ve never been more okay. Not a single feeling of fear or doubt is present. It’s just us. Not wanting to break the moment with words, I nod to let him know I’m okay. I’m rewarded with another pass of his thumb, this time he pushes it into me, making my back arch. Slowly, once, twice, three times before he brings it to his mouth and I watch as the pad of his thumb disappears, his lips wrapping around it. A low moan rents the air, only I’m not sure if it’s his or mine.
Reaching for him, I grasp the waistband of his jeans, slipping the first disc free and then grabbing both ends of the denim, pulling, savoring the popping of the button fly coming undone. Stone reaches behind him and pulls his shirt over his head tossing it in the direction my leggings went. Bare-chested he stands, his ink a beautiful mural on his tanned skin, the metal through his nipples winking at me in the sunlight filtering through the curtains. I watch in familiarity and a sense of newness as I take him in. I let my eyes trail over him, lingering on the tattoos that mean something to me as well as to him. He has an angel at the stairs of heaven on his arm, leading to his shoulder that he got when my Aunt Rose died. A cascade of roses at the top going over to weave that tattoo with another on his back. Then my favorite. A guitar, the body of it trees, a forest, with the neck a sound wave of me saying “I love you” taking up his whole flank. But the newest addition, the coordinates. Looking at them, I’m reminded of his gift to me and Lyric and my heart feels impossibly full. I’m brought back to the moment when the pillows shift from him removing his jeans. Once he rids himself of them he stands straight, looking his fill of my body spread before him just as I do him. His cock is full, the ring of his piercing joined by the newly added barbell through the head of his cock, making me pulse. He was right, his piercing is my favorite thing ever.
My eyes feasting on him, he strokes over himself leisurely, without shame, in no hurry. Happy to let me watch. Until he snaps and breaks the spell of silence we are basking in. “Your body has changed. In all the ways that matter, it’s even more beautiful than before,” he rasps out, kneeling and running a finger over the still pink line of my Caesarean incision. Folding at the waist to place a kiss on it, my hips lift instinctively at his nearness to my pussy. “So greedy,” he teases. Laying down he crooks his finger at me. “Bring it up here, Birdie. I need to kiss that pretty little thing before I make you fuck me for singing so pretty the other night.” The gravel in his voice skates over every one of my nerve endings. The goose bumps covering my skin a testament to what his voice does to me.
Still watching his hand work over his cock, the piercings playing peek-a-boo between his fingers, I move to where he lies and throw my leg over him, straddli
ng him at his shoulders. With slightly shaky hands I smooth the silky dark strands of his hair back so I can watch as he devours me with his gaze, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. Both of his hands land on my ass, lifting me and bringing me closer to his waiting mouth. He strains forward and runs his nose up and down the lips of my pussy, inhaling my scent, the cold metal of his nose ring a shock to my overheated skin. “Nothing in the world smells better than your pussy when you’re wet for me. All that want has its own scent. I would wear it if I could,” he teases, smiling up at me.
“You’d smell like pussy,” I tell him.
“Mmmm, I would. But I’d smell like your pussy,” Stone murmurs just before pulling me fully onto his mouth. Tongue swirling against my clit, pulling it into his mouth and abandoning it with a pop to delve into the wetness caused by him. Groaning as it hits his tongue, the vibrations make me rock against him, chasing after more of the sensation. His fingers flex into my flesh as he draws me more firmly onto his face, going straight for my clit with that magic tongue of his, he works me over, knowing the right amount of pressure to apply and when to let up.
My head falls back, my long hair tickling the globes of my ass, “I’m so close, so fucking close, Stone,” I pant as I ride his face shamelessly, his hands urging me forward and allowing me to fall only so far back. His tongue flat, allowing me to take my pleasure from it at my own pace and I do. I take and I take until I come, legs trembling uncontrollably in wave after wave of pleasure, all over his beautiful face, that’s buried even deeper between my legs now, taking control of my orgasm. And he doesn’t relent until I beg him to stop, unable to take one more swipe of his tongue on me. Stone grins and places one last kiss to the very top of my pussy and ever so slowly slides me down his body, my heated flesh leaving a wet and fiery trail until I’m over his thighs lifting just enough for his cock to slide between us.