Chapter 24 Stan
TWENTY-FOUR
STAN
Playlist recommendation:
Video Games - Lana Del Rey
Even as I made her the promise, as my lips and tongue formed ‘yet,’ I had no real idea of how to follow through, but in that moment, it didn’t matter.
She was fucking right.
I’d known when I’d crafted the abomination what it was, what it would do. I’d never imagined what addiction and constant, repeated use would lead to—despite my own history—but it hadn’t stopped me from manufacturing Red either.
From leveraging that to fund my other work.
But her bleak statement hit me hard.
I already knew Rory hated Red. Why wouldn’t she? She was a woman and an ex-DA, someone well aware of what this shit would, could, and had led to.
But if my stomach twisted as I vowed, “Yet,” it was worth it for her reaction.
“Really?” Kitty breathed, her hope so beautiful to behold that I was pretty sure a halo glowed around her head again.
“Really.” When she took a step toward me, every part of me fought against releasing the words, but for her sake, I bit off, “You know what I am, Kitty.”
Her approach faltered, and I bitterly resented that even as I understood why. “What do you mean?”
“Fixing my fuckup won’t change who I am and what I do.”
That had her hovering in place.
She knew exactly what I was talking about.
As much as she wanted to deny her ties to the Irish Mob, some things couldn’t be erased.
I could work on the antidote for Red all I wanted, but that didn’t stop me from being the Capo of the Famigghia. I’d always hold this spot. Unless our enemies slayed me. Or I died—by heart attack or otherwise.
I might not have been born for this role, but it’d remain mine until the end of my time on this planet. And by contrast, my fallen angel had a pure heart with a vocation to back it up.
When I felt the distance growing between us as she stayed put, that fucking monster inside me, the one that wanted to drag her to me, impale her on my dick so she couldn’t squirm free—
My knuckles popped with how hard I clenched my fingers as I fought the primal need to snatch a hold of her and never let her go.
The sound, too soft to hear with the racket in the city, had her jerking like I’d fired a gunshot.
But it was a catalyst.
When she took a step toward me, not away, I could feel my fucking heart start pounding like it had that night I’d OD’ed. It rattled my ribcage, shook my whole being.
The urge to grab her overwhelmed me, to dig my fingers into her waist so that she’d see my marks in the morning, until she saw them every fucking morning, but the last thing I wanted was to scare her.
So, I waited.
And I didn’t breathe.
And my heart continued rocketing with every step she took.
When her hands settled on my chest again, her palms pressing into my pecs and her head tilting back, I gritted my teeth. “Kitty?”
It was the only time I’d let this become an issue.
She knew what I was.
What I’d done.
Who I’d have to be—
“You promise to try?”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“I’m not an idiot, Stan,” she chided, sounding more like her regular self, which went a long way in calming the dangerous racing of my heart.
“You can try to find an antidote, but you might not. Red’s out of the bag.
Some creeps might like the result of their addiction, and not every man would take a drug to counteract its onset of action if you even managed to create one. But you promise to try?”
Her eyes pleaded with me, and I was only one weak, weak, weak man staring at his salvation and knowing I couldn’t let her down.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right, Kitty.”
A wispy breath drifted from her mouth, but then my dreams came true because she leaned up on tiptoe, hands sliding over my chest to cup behind my neck, fingers toying gently with my hair.
She was so much goddamn smaller than I was, and that had never been more evident now that I could hold her in my arms. Now that she held me.
Nothing could compare.
No one.
And there wasn’t any space in my mind for guilt—because my angel was here.
She was fucking here.
She was touching me.
Her presence alone was a benediction, never mind her kiss.
As my eyes closed, behind them, the nerves responded to the red-hot flames in the distance, but that was nothing to the fire licking at my nerve endings.
When she shivered as our lips connected, I released a pained moan. Hefting her high, I was beyond grateful that she parted her legs and hugged my hips, those torturous jeans she wore like they were a second skin a boon in how freely she could move.
My hands remained at her waist. Stuck fast there by the terror she’d realize she was kissing a monster like me. The urge to burrow my claws in deep remained, to bind her to me. Never let her fucking go. Tie her to me until I was all she goddamn saw—
No.
You can’t tie angels down.
I exhaled the poison.
They fly away.
I inhaled her grace.
Her fingers drifted over my beard, tracing the shape of my jaw as she allowed the kiss to flourish into more.
No longer a soft brush of that tantalizing mouth but harder. Faster. Lips parted. Teeth nipping. Tongue swiping. Soft moans and urgent sighs. Fingernails through my hair, knees digging eagerly into my hips.
Grounded by her touch, I shuddered beneath her, the quake of the earth under my feet something I experienced alone as she put me in the epicenter of her attention.
“Bedda mia.” I groaned, my face dipping closer to hers, my soul needing this connection more than my lungs burned for air.
“I don’t know what that means but please, for fuck’s sake, Stan, kiss me back!”
Hooded eyes took in her faint exasperation, hot-pink cheeks, the heaving chest that did things to her tits I salivated over.
My fingers shaped her curves, the tips delving into her softness as I sought patience and calm because she split me in two.
One half wanted to worship and praise.
The other demanded I pin her to the wall, fuck her raw, breed her, fill her full of my seed, make sure she was forever bound to me once I put a child in her—
“I can’t,” I ground out, fighting my baser urges.
Because she deserved more.
“What?” she mewled.
Gaze dropping to the soft divot between her collarbones, I rumbled, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her French tips riffled through my beard much as the desert wind would a sand dune. My eyes closed again as I delighted in her touch, even when they dug into my ears as she used them like a console, forcing me to act, urging me to do as she bid.
“Stan, you won’t hurt me.”
“That’s what I do, duci.” My smile was barely there. “My creations are poison because I am poison.”
She gusted out a breath that had her bangs flying.
“And I thought I needed therapy.” Her lips formed an aggravated frown.
Then, she grew still. A part of me expected her to jump down, to take off and leave me in the dirt where I belonged.
Instead… “But we’ve already established, Stan, that every poison has an antidote. ”
Her tone was clinical.
Professorial, almost.
I tilted my head to study her.
“I can be that for you.” She shimmied against me. “Let me. Please, touch me. I’ve never felt anything like this before.”
Her candor almost brought me to my knees. “You’re too pure—”
Kitty snorted. “You know one bad thing that I’ve done, Stan. It doesn’t stop there. Give me a baseball bat and—”
Enamored, I kissed her then thrust my tongue between her lips. When she sucked on it, I growled into her mouth as I sampled her taste, breathed her air, and brokered my pleasure for hers.
Her hands retreated to my nape again, fingers meeting at my hairline, bringing me closer to her, as close as I could possibly go.
But her words ruptured the seal on the box that contained the worst parts of my nature.
I tested every inch of her mouth, not satisfied until I’d scoped out the lay of the land and I knew it as well as I knew my own.
These were my lips.
My tongue.
They belonged to my Pandora, but she’d opened the box—they were mine now.
She was mine now.
They’d know no other.
She’d know no other.
I staked a claim in that kiss. One she was entirely in the dark about, but it was a fight for another day. One I looked forward to spiking, to being in the front row for her rage.
As I thought about her petulant declaration that she’d have bitten off the ear of the man who Miguel had killed earlier, I found my hunger stirring to new levels.
Could the monster in me have met its match?
Her tongue stroked mine, toying with it as much as her fingers did while combing through my hair. Her constant touch was a live wire. Wherever it fell, I experienced a shock, and it shone a light on precisely how starved I was for her.
But that didn’t stop me from kissing her into submission. Needing her to know who dominated this encounter, who’d own her.
Because she already owned me.
But the deeper I took the meeting of our mouths, the more she fed my rapacious need.
I was so hard that a permanent mark from my zipper likely branded itself into my cock. And the heat of her pussy through her jeans tortured me—so close yet so far.
As we stood there, amid the chaos of mob life, I felt myself stumble. But if I did, she was right there with me.
If I devoured her, she reveled in it.
If I savored her, she gloried in my attention.
But it wasn’t enough.
The soft ripple of her hips as she rolled against me confirmed her satisfaction. The scientist in me took note and acted—I dug my fingers into the lower curve of her ass. Inches away from her molten hot core.
She’d never know the battle I waged in my head that insisted I move higher, take this farther, but we were in allied territory with a bomb blast a couple miles away. The sound of sirens would not be the soundtrack to the first time I claimed my woman.
When I pulled back, she didn’t let me.
She chased me, in fact.
And the concern I’d experienced, the fear she’d fly off when faced with what I was, slipped away.
I released a laugh that had her mewling: “God, you don’t do that enough.”
I blinked. Then sucked in a breath. And my thoughts coalesced: “How about I laugh every time you kiss me?”
When I ran the tip of my nose against hers, she sniffed. “Only if you’re not laughing because of my kiss.”
“Fair.”
“You weren’t… were you?”
“Laughing because of your kiss? No.” I smiled at her, surprising myself with how easily it formed. My lips and cheeks ached with how rare it happened. “I’m happy.”
“Happy?” she repeated in wonder.
I made sure she was safely propped on the balustrade before I rubbed a hand along her spine to her shoulders. When she shivered, I sighed.
No wings…
Lie.
Kitty traced my lips. “I feel like I’m dreaming. Are you a dream, Stan?”
“The only dreams I star in are nightmares, duci.”
She pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “I’ll let you know when you make an appearance in my wet dreams.”
More laughter bubbled from me. “Feel free to show me proof.” When Kitty clucked her tongue, I studied her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“You.” Her brow furrowed. “You’re… I’m not sure if you’re taking me seriously.”
I frowned. “You’re as serious to me as bird flu, bedda mia.”
Eyelashes fluttering, her soft whimper taking me from a semi to a raging hard-on, she breathed, “Which strain?”