The NSC Boxset: Heart of Stone

by D H Sidebottom

  And tonight I needed to fuck Ava.

  I spotted her, leaning against one of the poles talking to Misty. She gasped when I grabbed her hand and silently pulled her towards the stairs.

  Kade was out of his seat instantaneously, his long strides hurrying towards me. His fingers wrapped around my wrist when he reached me, “Don’t do this, Mason.”

  “Fuck off, Kade. Leave me be.”

  “No,” he snarled at me. He prised my fingers from the girl and tilted his chin to her, dismissing her.

  “You fucking arse,” I growled as I pushed against him and slammed him against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. “You have no right to do this.”

  “I have every right, Mase. I’m sick of watching you both self-destruct. It’s about time you both faced this.”

  “Oh, my wife is facing it alright,” I hissed as I leant into his face. “With Steed’s cock up her ass whilst he beats the shit out of her.”

  His eyes closed slowly before he sighed heavily.

  “You knew!” I shook my head at him. “Tell me, am I the only stupid bastard who didn’t?”

  “Mason . . .” he spat at me when he opened his eyes and glared at me. “She wasn’t fucking him until she found you with Rebecca. You hurt her, so much. How the fuck did you think she would react, clap and send you both champagne?”

  “I . . .” His words hurt, dug inside me and cut deep when their truth hit me. I knew going back to Rebecca would hurt her but originally I’d just done it to make her jealous, hoping it would slap some sanity into her and bring her back to me. But when I realised that that plan wasn’t going to work, the easiness to Bec, along with the coke highs was too effortless to turn around from. “I thought it would bring her back.” I answered even though my logic now seemed stupid and foolish.

  He shook his head at me, “Do you not wonder why she chose Steed? We all know how he likes to play, how he likes to inflict pain and humiliation.”

  “What?”

  “She chose to fuck Steed because he isn’t you, Mason. He hurts her, he makes her feel how she thinks she should be feeling. He turns her into the monster she thinks she is.”

  “Oh Christ,” I choked out. “But she isn’t that, she isn’t how she sees herself. She’s beautiful, she is the most amazing thing that ever touched me. Her strength is astounding, her resilience overwhelms me and . . .”

  “Mason,” Kade cut in. “I know this, you know this but it’s Ava that has trouble knowing it.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered as I fought to control my emotions.

  He tugged on my hand and flicked his head to Grace. She smiled and nodded before Kade pulled me up the stairs and into one of the privates.

  He took us straight over to the couch before pulling me beside him. His hands were on my face immediately, his thumbs wiping at my tears as his lips caressed my cheeks, his love swallowing each painful tear that left me.

  I moaned and slid my fingers through his hair, pulling him further into me as he continued to work me through my heartache.

  His kiss touched my lips, his tongue forcing them to part so he could take my tongue with his and fight out my despair as his anger emerged and he yanked my head back with a fierce grip to my hair.

  I slipped my hand under his t-shirt, my fingers tracing each contour of his delicious abs, the grooves defined and enticing as I teased both of us.

  He grunted and gripped my own shirt, lifting it over my head before his mouth was copying my route and tracing the edges of my stomach muscles with his tongue as his fingers dug through my jeans and massaged my growing erection causing me to push my hips into his touch, demanding more as my lust intensified into a raw need, a craving I would never be able to pacify.

  My whole body shivered when I felt him lower my zip and slip his hand inside, his fingers hunting and seeking before they curled around my shaft and his palm massaged my cock, instigating my hips to pursue more of his touch and lift upwards.

  “Kade . . .”

  He replied with a moan before he was suddenly sucking on me, his lips soft as they slid down my dick, his tongue tracing the underside as his fingers cupped my balls.

  He slid to the floor on his knees to give himself better access as I lifted my hips and slid my jeans off, giving him more of me to pleasure.

  His hands braced the tops of my thighs, his fingernails leaving indentations in my flesh as his draws on me became fiercer and hungrier.

  “Not yet,” I told him as I pulled him to stand before me.

  He unbuckled his belt and slid out of his clothes as his eyes locked onto my face, his desire and longing darkening his gaze and shadowing the bright blueness to his eyes.

  I leaned towards him, taking his cock in my hand and stroked his length, dipping my thumb over his slit and making him hiss. “Fuck me with your mouth,” he demanded, his tone tight and squeaky causing me to grin wickedly.

  I obeyed immediately. This is how Kade and I played, how we fucked, his dominance controlling but pleasuring at the same time, taking away all my other thoughts until there was only him I was allowed to concentrate on.

  “That’s it,” he rasped as I sank down on him, shivering as his unique taste brought me home. “More, Mason. I wanna feel your throat on my cock, and your lips on my balls.”

  He pushed into me harder and harder as I worked him until he was panting and groaning, his grip on my shoulders holding me still so he could drive into my throat without restriction.

  I dropped him from my mouth and lifted myself off the floor then sat on the sofa, my cock hard and high as I devoured his glorious naked body with my eyes. “Let me fuck you.”

  His teeth clenched together, his chest heaving as his cock swelled even more. He took a step into me and slid his knees either side of my thighs so he was straddled over me. He positioned the head of my dick at his arse then slid down slowly, each inch I slipped inside him driving us both crazier and needier.

  He didn’t stop until my balls were squashed against his buttocks and my cock was completely sheathed inside him. His face was tight and damp, perspiration heavy on his skin as his teeth sank into his bottom lip with the pleasure riding both of us.

  “Ah damn,” he groaned when I shifted my hips and buried myself deeper inside him.

  He grabbed my hands, holding them against the sofa beside my head as his forehead rested against mine and he started to move on me. His moves were slow and steady, each rise and fall driving ecstasy into my veins and coursing pleasure into each section of my brain.

  He kissed me as he sped up, his tongue fucking my mouth as my cock fucked him, his fingers holding onto mine almost painfully as he took his pleasure from me.

  He dropped one of my hands and placed it on his cock. “Stroke me hard,” he whispered as his pace increased, his thighs thickening with each lift and fall on me.

  I squeezed his cock tight as he fucked me harder, forcing my head to fall back against the sofa as bliss took over and pushed away everything else until there was just me and Kade, fucking, groaning and pleasuring, until my cum swirled angrily and shot inside him, filling him as his shot across our bellies and he fell into my shoulder. “I love you,” he choked out as he lifted to look at me.

  “I love you.” I replied as I kissed him tenderly, pressing my lips against his to show him as well as tell him.

  He nodded and cupped my face as we both struggled to catch our breaths. “And now it’s time to fight for your other love. It’s time to battle this out with her. Show her that although she hates her disfigurements, you fucking adore them. Show her how much her inner beauty means to you, how much her soul turns you on, not just her looks.”

  I nodded, my chest heaving as a resilience empowered me, electrified each nerve inside me until I was panting with need to get to her, to tell her exactly that, to show her exactly that.

  It was time to show my little warrior just how much I could fight too.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Stolen
>
  Ava

  “AND HOW’S THE male students?” I asked Katie with a smirk as I balanced the phone between my shoulder and mouth to uncork the bottle of wine.

  “Well, what can I say,” she laughed. “Apart from Holy hell, I’ve already seen enough naked male flesh to last me through the whole of my four years study here.”

  I laughed with her, picturing the look on my quite prim daughter’s face with all the university and campus activity. “But you’re okay?”

  “I am, I’m fine mom, stop fretting.”

  I rolled my eyes at her tone, “Okay.”

  “And you and dad,” she probed finally. I knew she had been heading this way and had been eager to delve. “Are you okay?”

  “We’re fine.”

  She paused and sighed, “I take it by that you mean you’re both still being stubborn.”

  “Katie,” I warned fiercely when she started her usual reprimand.

  “Mum, listen to me,” she cut over me. “You are beautiful. Dad loves you with hair or no hair, why can’t you accept that?”

  “Katie . . .” I sighed as I rubbed at my temples in exhaustion to her persistent push. “Your dad is . . . well, he’s your dad but he’s also a man, a man that . . .” I cringed, talking about something like this with your daughter wasn’t exactly nice. “A man that has desires and expectations.”

  “What?” She scoffed. “Are you telling me you don’t meet his expectations because you lost your tits?” I blinked and shook my head at her bluntness. “Are you saying that your husband, and although he’s my dad and this stuff freaks me out, that your husband doesn’t desire you after twenty years of barely keeping his hands off you just because you lost your hair and feminine curves?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Well,” she spat at me through the phone. “That tells me more about you than it does dad. Christ, mother, he adores you. He would die for you. And believe it or not, sex is not the be all and end all of a relationship.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” she huffed. “Because from where I’m looking in on all this, you pushed away a man that would ride hell for you just because of the physical side to your marriage. I can tell you without a doubt that my dad would love you if you never made love ever again. He would cherish you if he never felt that connection ever again because you two have the most amazing relationship I have ever seen. You’re bloody soul mates, mom. Don’t drive each other away because of something neither of you can control.”

  I fell into a chair and stared at the wall. It was all such a mess. A stupid, twisted mass of horrors and foolishness. My daughter was right . . . as always. Mason loved me despite our turbulent sex life, even when he wasn’t inside me, he showed me love and adoration that went beyond any physicality or sexual gratification.

  We pleasured each other in more ways than sex, from the moment we woke and started the daily routine of life, from the sweet kisses as we both went on our usual paths that day, to when we would laugh and talk over dinner, to being laid out together on the sofa watching something on TV that made us laugh, and to just holding hands as we strolled along the beach, talking, laughing and loving.

  “Mom?” Katie whispered.

  “I’m here,” I whispered back. “I’m here, baby.”

  “Then go get him.”

  “I can’t, it’s too late.”

  “No,” she whispered back, her voice gentle but full of authority. “It’s never too late. It was never too late. It’s time to begin again.”

  “He . . . he found me with someone else.” I told her and winced, readying myself for her anger.

  “And you found him with Rebecca . . .”

  “How do you know about that?” I gasped.

  “It doesn’t matter how I know, what I’m saying is, you found him with Rebecca, yet you still want him. You’re sat there, readying yourself for getting him back. I can guarantee, even if you slept with the devil himself, my dad will want you back just as hard.”

  “I’m not so sure, Katie.”

  “Well I am.” She said urgently, “Don’t let the doubts ruin this. Don’t let the what ifs destroy your chance at happiness, mom. You deserve this, you deserve to be happy, and you deserve my dad a lot more than you think you do.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes, okay.”

  Her sob clenched my heart making me realise just how much I had put everyone through because of my denial. “Go, go.”

  “I’m going,” I laughed as I stood up and pulled on my pumps. “I’m going.”

  “I love you!” she shouted before she disconnected our call.

  I was still laughing as I pulled open the front door, but that ceased pretty quick when I found who was stood on my doorstep.

  “Rebecca?”

  She stood rigid and tense, her whole body giving off waves of animosity. Her pupils were wide and animated, her nose constantly twitched as she sniffed frequently but it was the glare in her expression that made me strengthen my stance, my fists squeezing tight in readiness as the rage bubbled in preparation.

  “Just tell me one thing?” She asked as she cocked her head sinisterly, her eyes refusing me any break away from her. “What do you have that I don’t?”

  I stared at her in confusion but confusion soon turned to horror when I watched the two men slide from their car on the edge of the road and race up my path, one knocking Rebecca unconscious instantly as another grinned at me manically before he winked and struck the side of my temple.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Terror

  Mason

  I CRINGED AS my car wheels squealed when I pulled up outside the cottage. It was late and I knew Ava’s neighbours were far from happy at late night noise, yet right at that very moment I didn’t care. Noise or no noise, I was there to get my wife, to haul her over my shoulder and lock her down in my apartment until she saw sense, until she realised how much I loved her . . . and how much she loved me.

  She was mine. She had always been mine, it was about time she knew it too.

  I pulled my keys from my pocket as I walked up her path, singling out the little tool that would get me through her front door but as I lifted it to the lock, the door swung open.

  You know when you’re on a train when you are little, and you enter a tunnel, how the dark walls seem to race past you and all you can focus on is to keep breathing until you emerge out of the other side? Well that’s exactly the sensation that overtook me when I stared down Ava’s hallway.

  I looked down and stared at her bag, the contents spewed out over the floor as it tipped to one side. Her phone, keys and medication telling me that she didn’t leave on her own accord.

  Racing back to my car, I pulled my laptop from the boot and fired it up as I plonked my arse in the passenger seat, then logged onto Ava’s exterior camera.

  * * *

  “Benjamin Olson and John Danby, both known associates of Frank Halliday.” Kade said when the computer software found a match to the images from Ava’s cameras.

  “Fuck!” I closed my eyes and shivered. “Etta.”

  “Maybe,” Sam intersected. “Or maybe Frank. Just cos’ he’s in the nick doesn’t make him obsolete to external dealings. He’s quite capable of still running his family from the inside Mason.”

  “Shit, but why now? It’s been two years.”

  “Because it’s the first time Etta has been within touching distance of you and Ava since you shipped her off to Italy?” Greg offered with a quirked brow. His face was pale, his worry over Ava nearly as crippling to him as it was me.

  “She’s just a kid, it’s too . . . too detailed for her.” I shook my head. None of it made sense.

  “Oh come on, Mase.” Greg scoffed. “And how old were you when you first let the darkness consume you?”

  I huffed at him but shook my head, “My past and Etta’s are far from similar, Greg. I chose this path at such a young age to fight my father. She’s a
girl with issues, hardly the same.”

  “But if her issues are potent enough, then who knows what the girl could be capable of.” Sam interrupted.

  I turned to Kade who was furiously rattling the keys on two portable keyboards, his eyes scanning the screen in front of him with a deep concentration. “You’ve spent the last two years with her, any input for me?”

  He blinked at me then shrugged. “No but to be honest, it just doesn’t seem like her.” He pursed his lips in thought as his gaze fixed to the wall. “I mean, yeah the girl had a bit of trouble adapting at first, but when she gave birth to Jamie, she was suddenly different. He was . . . is all that matters to her.”

  “Ahh fuck!” I rubbed at my forehead. “George.”

  It hit me with the force of a sledgehammer as I snatched my keys from the desk and shot out of the front door. “Traipse through every single surveillance cam the city has. Find her!” I shouted before the door slammed shut.

  * * *

  “That’s twice now!” George yelled at me as he pushed me out of his bedroom and pulled on his shorts, leaving Debora to stare at me wide eyed from beneath the duvet. “Why the fuck can’t you knock?”

  “Etta?” I barked at him leaving him to blink at me in bewilderment. “You’re taking Jamie aren’t you?”

  “What?” he spluttered as he took my arm and led me into his bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. “For god’s sake dad, keep your voice down.”

  “I knew it.” I shook my head at him sadly, “Why?”

  “Why?” He stared at me in shock, his eyes wide at my bafflement over his actions. “Because he’s my son, that’s why.”

  “But what about Etta? She loves him and you’re trying to snatch him from under her.”

  “For fuck’s sake, dad. You can honestly tell me with a family like hers that she can be a good parent, a good role model?”

  My jaw dropped and I fought with myself over whether to string the fucker up and smack some sense into him, or praise him for caring enough to want to look after his blood.