Chapter 19
Nineteen
“Nero, what were you doing here when Freddie showed up? Why were you here?”
At first, he doesn’t appear as if he’s going to answer me. He shifts the car into drive and leaves the parking lot. But I hope he’s not ignoring my questions, and he’s just framing his response.
“I don’t even know where to start.” He frowns at the dark road ahead, not glancing at me.
“The beginning is usually a good place.”
He nods, and a deep sigh slips from his lips. “My father was an asshole. That’s putting it mildly, I guess. He was a lot like Freddie was tonight, only his money and prestige protected him. Used to knock my mother around, beat my brothers and me. Did other deplorable things I’m not going to haunt you with. Pretty much made our lives hell until he died.”
My throat tightens. “Was… was he the one who murdered your mother?”
Nero shakes his head and something passes over his face but the emotion is so quick—there and then gone—that I have no time to make sense of it. “No. She had an affair with another man, and when she wouldn’t leave my father, he murdered her. Stabbed her in the heart with a pair of gardening shears right in the garden. She loved that garden…”
I wish we were already back at the manor so that I could wrap him in my arms and hold him for as long as he’d let me. If he’d let me.
Though I didn’t spend the last decade in the best of situations, what Nero endured sounds far worse than anything I can fathom.
I place my hand over his resting on the stick shift. “I’m so sorry. No child should have to deal with that.”
He doesn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on the road, but he nods. “That’s why I moved your friend and her girls. They shouldn’t have to worry about him showing up again. They’re probably already traumatized by whatever they’ve seen, never mind what went down tonight.”
Nero seems to always be protecting everyone. First me, and now Lisa and the girls. “Thank you for doing that.”
He nods again.
“But it doesn’t explain what you were doing there.”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “No, it doesn’t.” He gulps. “I told you that my mom died when I was six, and my father, thank God, died when I was twelve.”
My chest squeezes at all the loss he endured as a child. I know firsthand how it shapes you. “Was your dad sick?”
He takes a quick glance at me and shakes his head. “No.”
Nero offers no more information. It’s clear that even if I pry, he won’t fill me in.
“Anyway, after my dad died, though I wasn’t heartbroken in the least, it still fucked with me. I didn’t have anyone other than my brothers, and I realized that I’d never known a parent’s love. I started… fixating on people. I don’t really know why. If I went to a psychologist, I’m sure they could tell me, but by the time I was in the middle of high school, it ramped up. I met this girl… Farrah MacIntyre.”
My forehead wrinkles. “That name sounds familiar.”
He nods. “You probably know of her father, Senator MacIntyre.”
My eyes widen. He’s always in the news, and it was thought that in the next election, he’d be one of the front-runners for the party’s nomination for president.
“We met and became friends, and I was into her but never pursued it because I…” He glances at me before staring back at the road. “I got off on stalking her.”
The words rush out of him, and I piece them together in my head.
My eyes widen, and I pull my hand away, linking my hands in my lap. “What exactly does that mean?”
The corners of his mouth tighten. “I’d watch her. Incessantly. She had no idea.”
“Is that what you were doing with me? Is that why you were in the motel parking lot tonight?”
“Yes.” His voice is a pained whisper. “But I set boundaries. I never followed you home.”
My head rocks back as thoughts swirl through my head, chasing each other. Thankfully he never did find out where I lived because then he’d know that I was Maude’s stepsister. The coating of guilt on my skin thickens even more. I should tell him who Maude is to me. But somehow fear makes the words die on my tongue.
“I’ve been watching you from afar since the first night I saw you dance.” There’s shame in his tone, and though I want to comfort him, I don’t.
“Why me?”
He turns onto a desolate country road, the only light around us is his headlights shining ahead. “I honestly don’t know. There was just something about you and the way you danced that drew me in. I couldn’t get enough of you.”
I frown. “But you never stayed after my dance. You’d watch and leave.”
He nods. “I was trying to keep myself in check. I was becoming more and more obsessed with you, and that’s why I only allowed myself to watch you dance, and I’d force myself to leave. Until that night in the VIP…”
I shift in my seat, thinking about the way he knew what to do to my body to take me to heights I’ve never reached before.
“After that, my obsession with you grew, so I stayed away. Until I saw you leave the bar that night and invited you to stay at Midnight Manor.”
I glance away from him at the mention of that night and change the subject. “And my birthday… why did you stay away after?”
He sighs, and I turn to him. “Same reason.”
“What happens if your obsession becomes too much for you?” I ask in a soft voice.
“I don’t know, but I fear it will be similar to what happened in high school.”
My stomach pitches. “Which was?”
Nero swallows hard. “My stalking escalated. Soon I was breaking into her house when she wasn’t there to go through her bedroom. I started leaving her anonymous notes. I’d watch her while she slept. One night I was watching from outside, and she snuck a guy into her room. I lost it. As though she was cheating on me when we had no commitment to each other except the one in my head. I’d convinced myself she liked my attention. I crawled in through her window and attacked him. You can imagine the fallout.
“When I saw how terrified Farrah was when she heard about the extent of my stalking and that I had been the one leaving her the notes, watching her sleep—I’ve never been so ashamed. My brothers bailed me out. To this day, the Voss family is still one of Senator MacIntyre’s biggest campaign contributors. After everything went down, I promised my brothers it wouldn’t happen again, and after all they did to protect me from our father when I was younger, I owed them that. And I stuck to it.” He turns his head to meet my gaze. “Until you.”
So many emotions are whirling through my chest like a tornado. “Pull over.”
His head whips to look at me again. “What?”
“Pull. Over.”
He pulls to the side of the dark country road, leaving us surrounded by empty fields.
I put my hand on the door latch.
“Cinder, I’m not going to hurt you. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but I’m not leaving you in the middle of nowhere.”
“Get out.” I push open my door. When he doesn’t move, I glare at him. “Get out.”
I exit the vehicle, and he crawls out as if he’s worried what the fallout will be from his admission.
I walk to the front of the vehicle and pace, stepping through the beam of the headlights over and over again, trying to make sense of what I’m feeling and thinking.
A logical person would probably be frightened by everything he just told me, but… I’m not. In some weird, fucked up way, I feel almost… flattered. Flattered because he fixated and spied on me for months. Flattered that he chose me. Flattered that maybe he feels the same as I do.
Nero watches me pace and doesn’t say a word.
I hate that he’s probably assuming I’m afraid of him or questioning my feelings for him when nothing could be further from the truth. My feet come to a stop, and I meet his gaze through the dark.
The pull between us is still there, stronger than ever, like a rope strung between his heart and mine, growing tighter and tighter, pulling me in.
The cool night air brushes against my skin as I walk toward him. His eyes are full of fear over what I might say. When I reach him, I wrap my arms around him and squeeze tightly.
He circles his arms around my waist, lowers his head into my hair, and breathes me in.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that at such a young age.”
Nero’s body relaxes in my arms, and he tucks me into his big frame.
This man doesn’t scare me. In fact, I’ve never felt safer or more protected. It’s clear to me that no part of Nero wants to hurt me, obsession or not. He only wants what’s best for me and to protect me.
I pull away from him and look into his eyes. The blue is like a stormy sea in the darkness of the ocean rather than the bright blue of a sunny day.
“I’m not afraid of you, Nero.” I cradle his cheek in my palm. “I’m not afraid of your desire to watch me. I’m not concerned whether you are or aren’t obsessed with me. None of that matters.”
Relief lands on his face, and he pushes his hands into my hair, bringing his lips to mine. He lets me in. Letting me see all the parts that make him who he is.
Our tongues meet with fervor, our hands gripping and clawing at each other. One minute we’re standing in front of each other, and the next his hands are grabbing my ass and placing me on the hood of his luxury car. His hands slide up my inner thighs, inching them open until he stands between my legs. He tugs me closer, and his arousal presses against the seam of my jeans. I moan as his hand traces a path over my shirt, gripping my breast.
I’ve never felt this needy for a man in my life. As though I’ll die if I don’t have him.
I work the button and zipper of his pants, my hand sliding down the waistband of his boxer briefs and wrapping my hand around his length. He growls into my mouth, pumping his hips firmly. God, he’s big. Bigger than any man I’ve ever been with.
With his hand on the back of my head, he lowers me so my back is splayed over the front of the car. He furiously works on getting my shoes off, and I undo the button of my jeans, sliding down the zipper. Nero’s hands pull frantically at the fabric, tugging the denim down my legs.
He tosses my jeans to the ground and tears off my thong. With his hands on my hips, he pulls me toward him so my ass hangs on the edge of the hood. He fists his cock and runs the tip through the wetness of my folds, teasing me.
“I need you, Nero.” I heave out a breath, my orgasm at the brink, and he hasn’t even entered me yet.
He lines up his dick, and slides into me. After a few thrusts of his hips, he’s fully seated inside me. He stretches me, and I cry out.
The sex is hard and fast, desperate and feral. He pounds into me, and I take him, clawing at the car, needing anything to hold on to. Nero’s hands are on my hips, keeping me stable, and my hands come to my breasts, squeezing and pinching my nipples since I can’t reach him.
“Fuck, Cinder, you’re so tight. So fucking perfect. I knew you would be.” He tilts his head up, eyes closed as he fucks me hard and fast.
I can’t get enough of this or him.
He brings one thumb to my clit, massaging it in a circle. It only takes seconds before I’m hit with a freight train of an orgasm, obliterated, shattering into pieces and floating out into the night like fragments of stardust.
Seconds later, Nero pulls out and comes on my mound with a groan. Breathing heavily, I watch him, knowing this visual will be locked in my brain for life.
I quickly realize that we were so caught up in one another we didn’t use protection. I’m on birth control, so pregnancy isn’t a concern, and I’m not worried about an STD on my part since I haven’t had sex since the last time I was tested. But Nero, I don’t know.
Nero stares at his seed coating me with a gleam in his eye.
“I’m on birth control,” I blurt.
His eyes meet my gaze, and he smiles. “That’s why I pulled out, but that’s not why I’m looking. I like seeing my come on you.” His fingers run down, coating the come all over my stomach and pussy. “Let’s not wipe it off before you get dressed. We can shower when we get back to Midnight Manor.”
“Okay. And I don’t have any STDs either, just so you know.”
He places his hands on either side of my shoulder, bending down and kissing me. “Me either.”
I relax under him. “Good.”
“But now that I know you’re on birth control, the next time I fuck you, I’m going to come in your pussy.”
I press my thighs together to release the ache. Inching up from the hood, I kiss him thoroughly. The kiss draws to a close, and he bends down, grabbing my underwear from the ground.
“Can’t put these back on, but here are your pants.”
He shoves my panties in his pocket. Now he’s got two pairs of my panties. The other one came from the night of my birthday.
After grabbing my jeans, he helps me get them on then hands me my shoes, looking at the dark surrounding us. “We should get out of here before someone finds us.”
“Right.” I round the car and slide into the passenger side of the car, worried that maybe he’s going to revert to his usual ways and push me away now that we’ve slept together.
“This is my favorite car.” He rubs the top of the dash in front of him then looks at me. “Even more so now.” He winks and puts the car in drive, speeding off into the night.
God, I’m not sure I could handle it if he did another disappearing act now.