“I own the building.”
“What?”
“They didn’t have any vacant apartments. So I bought it. The owner moved out, and I moved in.”
“How the hell could you afford this place?”
“The two guys you met at the bar, Ciaran and Finn? I work with them.” Stone rubs the back of his neck. He looks sheepish, and I can’t help seeing the boy he used to be staring back at me. “When I was locked up, I made some connections. When I got out, those connections led to jobs—well-paying ones. Jobs that required my level of skill.”
“So you kill people for a living?”
Stone shrugs like I asked him if he was a dentist. “Yes, pretty much. They are shitty people, mostly. I don’t touch kids or women. But yes, Butterfly, I kill for a living. Does that bother you?”
I take a moment to digest what he is saying. Does it bother me that he kills for a living? I answer truthfully. “No.” Because if it did bother me, I wouldn’t willingly be sitting on his bed, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be happy that he’s back in my life.
“Good.” Stone lifts me, carrying me to the bathroom.
“What are you doing?”
“I was so rough with you tonight, and now I want to be tender. You got a problem with that?”
I squeak as he throws me over his shoulder and playfully slaps my ass. “No problems here.”
Chapter Fifteen
STONE
Emily giggles, swatting my hand. “I’m sure my tit is clean now.”
I move my hand down her body and make slow circles around her clit. Her head falls back on my shoulder, and she moans.
“I’ll never get used to the sexy sounds you make when you’re turned on.”
“I hope not, because if you tire of them, it means you’re not fucking me, and that would be a shame because you fuck like a rock star.”
I pinch her clit, and she yelps. “How would you know how a rock star fucks? You fuck any?”
“You’re so possessive.”
“Only for you. I usually couldn’t care less about most things. You’re the only person I give a damn about.”
“That’s kind of romantic in a fucked-up way.”
“That’s me, Mr. Romance.”
Emily moves away from me, turns, and straddles me. She throws her arms around me before bringing her lips to mine and kissing me. This kiss is slow and passionate. All the anger from our earlier kisses has dissipated. I tighten my hold on her, crushing her tits to my chest, and a sense of peace, unlike anything I’ve never known, washes over me.
Emily pushes off me, her finger trailing the only tattoo on my body that isn’t for her. “I wish she’d done better by you,” she whispers so softly that I barely hear her.
I close my eyes at the memory. I was fifteen, Emily thirteen. She chased me around the neighborhood, always on my heels. I sold drugs for a couple of years, trying to make enough money to keep my mom straight with her heroin addiction so she wouldn’t sell herself. I made a deal with the devil to keep my mother safe. Too bad my deal almost killed her. I slammed the door in Em’s face as she kept lecturing me about how selling drugs was going to ruin my life and how I needed to stop. She didn’t know that my mom was a junkie, and at fifteen, I didn’t see any other choice cos I’d taken the parental role. I kept yelling at her to get lost, and she told me I’d have to make her. She followed me up the stairs screaming, all the way into the bathroom, and that’s when we saw her, my mother, on the bathroom floor, with a needle stuck in her arm. Dead. That was the night Emily became the keeper of my secrets and the lighthouse in my shit storm of a life.
The tattoo she traces is the date my mother died. “I wish she’d done better by me, too,” I say, dragging Emily back to me, caging her in my arms. I can’t change the past, but I can make damn sure our future is better. “You’re my heart, you know. It’s so weird. I was holding my breath, only surviving until I saw you again. I fuckin’ love you, Em. So damn much.”
“I love you, too. I’ll always love you.”
“I’ve got something for you.”
“You do?”
I slosh water all around the floor as I get up, head into the bedroom, and pull open the top dresser drawer. The black velvet box I’ve held onto for five years stares back at me. I grab it and head back.
I stop dead in my tracks as I watch Emily, head tilted back, eyes closed, the suds draping her skin. Fuck. She’s so damn beautiful.
She turns to look at me, a radiant smile on her face. “Why, hello there, handsome.”