A Kiss of Color: The Complete 3 Book Collection (29 page)

Because nothing compared to this.

Nothing
.

“I’ve missed you.” She whispered hoarsely against his ear, as he peppered soft, adoring kisses all over her upturned face.

“Helena, baby…my world has been dark without you. So
fucking
dark…”

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. The world was more brilliant than it had ever been – because Xavier’s hand was sliding over the swell of her stomach, and she felt the child within her respond, moving restlessly inside her at his father’s touch.

Xavier’s eyes widened in wonder as he felt the movement.

“That’s…that’s him.” He murmured, his tone low and endearing. “He knows me.”

“He needs you.” Helena affirmed, her hand covering his as her gray eyes locked with her lovers. “Just like I need you, Xavier.”

The dark-haired man’s mouth met hers in a fusion that ignited every iota of passion within her, regardless of the dull ache of her injuries.

And Helena knew that she was his. She would always be his...and that was enough.

***

“Are you sure this is OK?”

Helena’s soft laughter floated over a shoulder as he drew his lips across the soft skin, careful of the still-healing cuts there. “God, Xavier…it’s fine. I’ve told you a million times. Just…
touch me
.”

He didn’t need any further convincing.

It seemed like the past two weeks had been the longest of his life. Helena had stayed in the hospital for most of it under careful observation. She’d lost a lot of blood, and so Dr. Forge and her colleagues had wanted to make sure that both she and the baby were perfectly healthy before they were discharged.

While she had been recovering, there had also been the nasty matter of Elliot Cauldwell to contend with. The details they’d unearthed about the man were startling – not only was he
not
a medical student, he was a known offender for stalking other medical school students. His military experience gave him the stealth that he needed to pray on them, and this time would be the third he’d been caught on an offense.

When Xavier had seen what he’d done to other women, he thanked God that he’d reached Helena when he had. Her wounds would heal…and Elliot would rot in jail for the rest of his goddamned life.

Xavier had to face the flood of guilt that came with knowing that Helena had been without his protection and support for some of the most difficult months of her life. While he’d been in the throes of emotional distress, she’d undergone all the changes of pregnancy alone – and all while still working towards her MD.

Every time he tried to apologize, she merely shushed him, saying that they were equally at fault…and that none of that mattered now, because they had each other.

Having her again, Xavier realized, would have to make up for the realization that he would never have the parents that he wanted…and that he had lost his little sister to their poisonous influence as well. When he’d confronted them about the lies they’d told him, his father had merely attested, as he always had, that he’d done it for his son’s own good.

As far as Xavier was concerned, the man was a monster. His son would need his mother…and they’d wanted to take that from him.

If he had his way, they would never meet his child….or Brandy’s. As soon as Helena had been safely at home, Xavier called his sister and demanded that she come to California, far away from their parents clutches. He knew that Brandy usually endured his parent’s wishes with a heavy heart, but this time was going to be different.

She wasn’t going to lose her baby to their ridiculous antics – even if he had to go back home himself and bring her and her husband to California.

He was through with his parents meddling…and heartsick as it made him, he knew he must be through with his youngest sister as well.

Emily had not apologized for deceiving him. She had merely parroted what their parents had said…attested that she loved him, and only wanted the best for him. She had so much of her mother in her that it pained Xavier, even, to speak with her, and he didn’t know if he would ever be able to again.

But that, he told himself, he would have to put aside.

Now, he would begin anew – with Helena, and with the baby that would soon arrive. Until that happened, however, he would have to be gentle with her.

Though the young woman assured him that she was perfectly fine to be intimate, Xavier wanted to be careful. He treated her like glass, his kisses light and caresses almost tentative. It wasn’t until Helena wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him sharply against her, whispering how much she’d missed the feel of him inside her, that his inhibition finally started to melt away.

His hands slid over the smoothness of her skin, lamenting at the abrasions there, as his lips followed hungrily. Helena gasped, arching into his touch as he found the core of her with a hand, feeling her slick and ready for him.

God…it had been
far
too long.

Raising his head, he gazed down at the woman beneath him. She was a goddess.
His
goddess, her breasts ripe and swollen in preparation for their child’s arrival, her body glowing with the new life it had formed.

Leaning down, he gently took the tip of her breast into his mouth, his tongue flicking over the hard nub as he parted her thighs, sliding home within her. Helena cried out, her fingers curling into his behind as she drew him even deeper, enveloping him in pure, heady ecstasy.

This was where he belonged. Away from the hellish past that had shaped him, with the woman who owned him body and soul.

He would have her, and she would have their child…and he would show Helena that she already had everything it took to be the perfect mother…to start the perfect family. To fill the holes that he’d once thought would plague him until his dying day.

To complete him.

***

A Kiss of Color

Book 3

What Was Lost

By: Cristina Grenier

A Kiss of Color

Book 3

What Was Lost

Laying in bed with the thin blanket pulled firmly over her head, a little girl curled into a ball, trying to block out the sounds of wild coupling seeping in through the thin wall behind her headboard. She was ten years old, and the sounds scared her just as much as they kept her from getting any decent amount of rest.

Grunting, slapping, overt yelling – it was something that she had to deal with more often than not; and Helena tried her best not to imagine what the revolving door of men that came into her mother’s house were doing with her behind closed doors.

She knew it was none of her business. She was only ten, and whenever she could, she buried herself in her homework, read, or tried to get out with friends. The latter was hard when her mother wanted her at home constantly to cook and clean – to take care of her and the plethora of men she dragged in behind her.

She made them dinner and cleared away beer bottles, used needles and whatever other mess was lying around – and she also had to be at her mother’s beck and call whenever they finished…what they were doing.

That was the worst.

Helena hated to see her mother naked with those men…she always finished tidying up as soon as she could and bolted back to her room before dissolving into tears.

She missed her Daddy.

Helena might hardly remember the man, but she remembered enough to know that things hadn’t been like this.

It would happen over, and over, and over again – until she got a slight reprieve on the weekends, and even then, Helena would just continue to pray for it to stop. None of the men that her mother brought home were good people.

She might only be ten years old – but that was plenty old enough to know that. Not one of her mother’s boyfriends ever helped them out at home. They didn’t bring food, they didn’t clean up, and they didn’t pay any bills. If anything, they leeched from her mother. They were always asking to borrow what little money she had – and if that wasn’t the case, they usually wanted drugs or simply a place to crash.

Which only meant more work for Helena.

She hated this.

As much as the little girl loved her mother….
tried
to love her mother… she couldn’t stand the constant stream of men. Bulky, greedy figures who looked at her with beady eyes that made her want to run as far away as she possibly could. And yet, she knew he had to stay.

Because if she didn’t take care of her mother, who else would?

God, she felt like a balloon.

Lying back on the couch, Helena heaved a sigh as she wiggled her toes. She’d been performing the little trick for the past fifteen minutes, hoping that, magically, it would lead to them wiggling into her line of sight. Obviously, no such thing had happened. Her still very pregnant belly continued to obstruct her view of her feet – and had been, she mused, for the past month.

Of course, it wasn’t until the past two weeks or so that she’d been able to concentrate on anything but her healing body. She’d been in the hospital for ten days, healing not only physically, but emotionally as well.

After taking a deep breath, Helena exhaled slowly, resting her palm on the swell of her belly as she remembered the last few months.

To say they’d been hard would be an understatement. She’d been so unsure of herself…trying to contemplate whether or not she would be a good mother, why she couldn’t provide the man that she loved with the family he wanted, and why her own personal hang-ups constantly impeded her own happiness. She had been alone, but it had been a very different kind of loneliness than what she’d experienced before.

Knowing just how powerful Xavier’s love was had only helped her feel its acute absence for the short period they’d been apart.

Five months…Christ, had it really only been five months? For Helena, it had felt like an eternity. Though she’d tried to convince herself that she could live without him, she’d never stopped thinking about him. She saw his face every night in her dreams and every time she imagined him, her body grew hot with desperate longing. Helena had told herself that they were through – that she’d have to move on with only her memories to sustain her.

And then, something had happened that had unexpectedly brought Xavier back into her life. When the young woman had been on the cusp of revealing to her former lover that he was going to be a father, a crazed coworker had forced his way into his apartment to have his way with her.

While his
way
hadn’t been overtly sexual, it had been painful. Elliot Cauldwell had cut her until she’d lost consciousness from blood loss. According to Susan Forge, Helena’s mentor and physician, she’d come to within a hairsbreadth of losing the baby – not to mention her own life.

The mere memory of the words made the young woman shudder. She didn’t like to recall the night Elliot had taken her. She’d been more frightened than she’d been in her entire life – not only for herself, but for her unborn son. Her crazed assailant had threatened to cut the baby from her belly – held the knife edge against the swell of her stomach – and Helena had prayed for deliverance, even as pain wracked her body.

And deliverance had come – in the form of her incensed ex-lover.

Though now, Helena realized, even if they had been separated, they had never truly been apart. This would be the second time that Xavier had saved her life in the past five years from simple intuition. It wasn’t necessarily that Helena believed in the supernatural, fate, or anything like that – but
something
drew him to her whenever she was in need.

Even as happy as Helena was that Xavier had found her when she was at Elliot’s mercy, when she found out what he’d done to save her life, she flew off the handle in a wild rage. Had the man complete and total disregard for his own life? Elliot had been armed with a switchblade as long as her forearm, and Xavier had just attempted to jump him! The former military man had at least two or three inches and seventy pounds on him. What if something had gone wrong? One stumble – one misstep…and she could have lost him forever.

The mere notion brought tears to Helena’s eyes. It had been hard enough spending five months without Xavier…but a lifetime? Raising a child that she was sure would have his father’s eyes? That would devastate her.

But, Xavier was alive and well, she reminded herself, while Elliot was in a jail cell awaiting trial for stalking and attempted manslaughter. Her lover hadn’t even given a second thought to giving his life up to protect her own – something she knew wouldn’t have happened if they’d been well and truly done.

To see his face before any other when she’d woken…to hear the pain in his voice when he told her how dark his life had been without her…Helena had never imagined he might want her back after the callous words she’d said to him. But, in their time apart, the young woman had come to realize the irrationality of her previous notions.

She would never be a mother. She would ruin any child that she raised…those had been the core ideas planted in her head by her own upbringing – by the way her
mother
had raised her. While the life inside her had grown, Helena had come to realize that it was impossible not to love her son – to want to hold and protect him above all else. She would never,
ever
do anything to hurt her child – and that realization helped to dispel her prior fears.

Certainly, she was still worried about becoming a mother. But now, she knew that nervousness to be normal. It didn’t make her want Xavier’s child any less.

Xavier…

Leaning forward as best she could, the young woman gazed over the partition and into the kitchen, where her lover was making their dinner – and by making dinner, he was heating up left-overs from the night before. The programmer had long attested to her that he couldn’t cook to save his life – and after sampling some of his fare, Helena definitely believed him. Besides, her man didn’t need to cook to show his prowess.