Heart of Stone - Book 2: Hearts Collide
Chapter 20 - Stone (Part 2)

Images of Adelaide’s face flashed in Stone’s mind. Her laughing. Her smiling. The way her warm, brown eyes gazed into his with all the love she had.

“No.” He pushed the memories from his mind. “That’s not true.”

“Like hell, it isn’t!” she yelled. Her barriers collapsed as tears streamed down her face and she began to sob heavily. “You never wanted me! You said so yourself! You never wanted to accept me! So why wouldn’t you replace me with her given the chance?”

Her heartache ripped through him and he reacted the only way he knew how.

He closed the distance between them, clasped her face in his palms, and crushed his lips against hers.

Stop. Please, Goddess, make her stop.

Desperation coursed through him. He needed her to stop. The pain, the heartache, the tears, the betrayal, the destructive thoughts—they had to stop. She had to feel how deeply he cared for her. How hard her words and emotions shredded him.

But also to convince himself that she was wrong.

While her words had been true at one point, they were no longer true now.

He needed her. She had gotten under his skin, sunk her claws into his heart, and he couldn’t begin to think of living his life without her.

Whatever thoughts were running through her mind, they weren’t true. He wasn’t looking to replace her with Adelaide. Surely, that wasn’t why Adelaide was trying to reach him?

She gave a little noise of protest as she pushed against his chest with her hands. He eased up, but wouldn’t release her. Her pain and fear gripped him tightly, but he pushed through it. Pushed through the rubble of her barrier scattered across her soul until his desire for her flowed through, filling her, assuaging the pain that constrained her.

Slipping one hand down her back, he pulled her roughly against him. With the other, he tangled his fingers into her hair at the back of her head and tugged gently to deepen the kiss.

She gasped at first, then melted into him as his need consumed her. Her hands fisted into his shirt, kneading them against his chest as her anguish ebbed away. The electricity between them ignited the coldness that submerged her soul, warming it, until heat filled her.

Her tongue joined his, urgently, hungrily, greedily assaulting him with her need for him.

He groaned into her as she pressed up against his swelling member. Ready to take her. Wanting to take her.

“Tell me you don’t feel this,” he rasped as fire coiled in his core.

She whimpered as his lips hovered a hair’s width over hers, teasingly.

“Tell me all of this isn’t real. That I don’t care. That you are nothing to me.”

She trembled under his grasp. Her skin was on fire. Her body aching for more. His senses hummed with the electricity charging between them. His skin rippled with excitement for her heated touch.

“I want you, Aubree,” his voice rumbled out before capturing her lips again.

She moaned long and deep as she pressed herself against him, clinging to him as if she was afraid she’d lose him if she let him go.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

Pulling her into his office, he closed the door without releasing his hold on her lips. He didn’t want to let go. He finally had her in his life, human or not, and he would do anything for her—even venture into the Spirit World if it meant getting some answers.

He wanted to give her the sweet release they’d both been craving. He wanted to fill her to the brink of breaking with ecstasy. He wanted to hear her moan his name as he spilled into her and give her the child she longed to have.

A groan escaped his lips as he pressed her against the wall. His erection rubbed against her and she ground her hips against him in response. Heat radiated off her skin, her arousal washing over him like waves as her hands rolled over his chest, up and around his neck. Her heart hammered as her need pooled between her thighs. His hands roamed over her breasts and he wanted to rip the bra that caged her soft flesh from his heated touch.

He pulled away from her lips to refill his lungs as she gasped his name.

Shuddering at the utterance, he wanted to tear her clothes off but fought against the desire that coursed through him. He couldn’t do what they both craved. Not yet. Not until she knew the truth. All of it.

And not until he found a way to complete her without hurting her.

“How can you even think like that?” he demanded as he panted like the animal he was. “Do you think I would do this to you—to both of us—if I didn’t want you?”

He licked his throbbing lips, missing the feel of hers, the taste of hers, and wanting more. Her breath was hot on his face as he caressed her lips with his own, savoring her as he wiped the moisture from her cheeks with his thumbs.

“I want you more and more each day. It’s killing me,” he whispered, his voice heavy and husky between each languished, soft stroke. “I can’t touch you the way I want to. I can’t get into your head and know what you are thinking. I can’t speak my mind clearly when all I feel are your emotions crashing over me. Frankly, I don’t know how to speak to you.”

He pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. He held her hands up to her shoulders in both of his, the way he’d shown her at the garden, and held her like that as they caught their breaths and slowed their pulses.

At first, she fought against him, trying to break away from the hold that calmed them when it was obvious that she didn’t want to stop kissing and touching him. He knew she wanted to take this further, to finish what he had started, but he didn’t want to bond with her under these circumstances. It wasn’t right. He wanted it to be special.

Giving in, she relented and relaxed as the hum of the electricity faded away and the hammering of her heart slowed.

“Just tell me... whatever,” she uttered, still panting. “Whatever crosses your mind. I can’t read it, and right now... I’m lost. I don’t know who I am here.” She swallowed, her heart skipping a beat all of a sudden as pain slipped through her touch. “I gave up everything to be with you, and I got scared. I thought...”

Despite her eyes being squeezed shut, he could smell fresh tears beginning to gather.

“I am never going to abandon you, Aubree,” he vowed. “Never.”

As her tears spilled over her cheeks, he kissed them away before pulling her against his chest and wrapping her in his arms. She kneaded her hands against his chest as she buried her moist face into his shirt.

“I want you. I need you,” he said as he pressed his lips to her hair. “And I’m scared shitless because of it.”