My Way to Hell (24 page)

In a sudden gesture, Kellen pulled her to him, not in the heat of the moment the way he’d done earlier, but in a tender embrace. It felt so amazingly good to rest her head on his muscled shoulder, to feel the warmth of his skin beneath his old college sweatshirt. “No,” he whispered huskily. “It’s not good, Marcella. None of this was good, or fair, or right.”

She’d speak, but words wouldn’t come. To have this man she’d yearned for, with an ache, offer her absolution, in his arms no less, stole anything she might be capable of articulating. But more than just the ten years she’d known Kellen welled up inside her. Decades of frustration, of fear, of loneliness swept over her, and she was unable to escape the sob that fell from her, lips unbidden and deep. Burying her face in his shoulder to savor the moment for when she’d have no moments left, Marcella fought the rain of tears and sucked in more air.

Hookay. No more weepin’ and wailin’. Pushing off his chest, Marcella found the resolve of steel she’d once worn as her overcoat. “No more. What’s done is done, and there’s no taking it back. Though, maybe now that you understand who I am, we can at least try not to yank each other’s short hairs, which you suck at lately, BTW, and we can try to figure out what’s happening to Carlos and why.”

But Kellen wasn’t letting go. It was crystal clear in the determined set of his mouth. “You still haven’t told me the details about why you sold your soul.”

Her resolve shook.
No. No. No
. “And I’m not going to. It’s something I just don’t want to relive out loud.”

“Are you afraid to tell me? Does it have to do with a pact you made with the devil to protect them? I’ll kill that fuck.” His protective tone, the one she’d heard used before only concerning Delaney, made her heart thump faster.

“No!” she yelped then took a breath to calm herself. “No,” Marcella repeated with purposeful steadiness. “It has to do with me not wanting to relive the kind of pain you feel when you hand over your child to someone else to raise. It’s the kind of pain you can’t express when you think about all the things you’ll miss. I just . . .” Her head fell to her chest and she squeezed her eyes to fend off the anguish so tight in her belly it wanted to explode. “Please, could we not do this? I can’t—
can’t . . .”
And suddenly, she really couldn’t. She couldn’t hide the heart-wrenching agony of losing David.

Oh, Jesus, just thinking his name ripped another hole in her heart, constricting it until the flood of tears she’d been fighting won, falling down her face in batches of salty drops.

She didn’t want to, but she remembered everything about him as though what had passed had happened only yesterday. His sweet smell after a bath, the joy he’d given her with his gummy smile. The fist he jammed into his mouth when he was fighting sleep. The dark thatch of hair on his head, silken and springy, pressed to her breast while he fed. The way he’d wrapped his hand around a length of her hair while she rocked him to sleep in the rocking chair her parents had given her upon David’s birth. His deep green eyes, so like her own, wide and alert, smiling up at her when she’d held him for the last time. Trusting. How he’d gone so willingly, innocent and beautiful.

And knowing.

Knowing she’d never see him again. Never touch him. Never press butterfly kisses to his rounded belly while he giggled. Never knowing who he’d grow up to be.

Marcella’s hand went to her chest when she doubled over. Sobs so deep they hurt to expel wracked her, ripping her apart. The years fell away and a once dull ache tore open, fresh and oozing unspeakable pain.

Kellen grabbed for her, finding a chair and pulling her to his lap, cradling her. Rocking her while she sobbed at the injustice of losing David. The long nights when she’d done just this—cry herself to sleep. The nights when she’d longed for her baby with an actual physical ache. The endless years of fighting the yearning to find him—tell him who she was and end their parting. The battle she’d fought with herself to keep from just taking one peek at him to reassure herself he was all right. The kind of trust she’d had to hold on to, praying she’d placed him in the right hands.

The fear.

Oh, Christ, the fear that he’d be found. That Armando would get out of that damned box she’d put him in and find David.

Kellen murmured words that meant nothing and everything. A jumbled mix of soothing endearments laced with his deep consoling tone. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” He cleared his throat against the top of her head. “So sorry,” he rasped.

Hours passed or maybe it was only minutes, but they left her bereft. Bone dry, yet the ache, the infernal ache, burned brighter. Marcella kept her cheek pressed to his chest, hearing the steady rhythm of his heart, letting it ease her grief.

Kellen’s sweatshirt stuck to his chest, and she wiped at it with a weak hand, but he caught it, bringing it to his lips to press a kiss to it. “Just rest,” he whispered, low, soothing.

Scooping her up, he carried her to the bedroom, where he drew back a blanket she still couldn’t totally get a grip on and laid her down. Tugging the covers up over her, he turned to leave, but she called to him in a hoarse whisper. “Stay. Please. Stay with me” was all she could manage. She was raw, vulnerable, needy, and for the first time in a long time, she let the hard shell of her misery crack just enough to let someone in.

Kellen didn’t hesitate. His face flashed one emotion after the other as he walked to the edge of the bed, folding his long, strong body to climb in beside her.

Marcella pulled him close, so grateful that if she could touch nothing else, she could touch him. She needed to cling to something solid, life-affirming, even if she had no earthly identity of her own.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of the skin she’d craved for so long. His hands found her waist, fitting her to the lower half of his body, letting his fingers skim her hips, her back, moving in slow circles until she could no longer bear not to have him touching her.

Everywhere.

Marcella sensed his hesitance—the touch of his hands sought answers to his questions. Yet, she was fragile, chafed with the rash of memories dredged up from a place she’d hoped to keep buried. Her pride fell from around her like a cloak falling to the ground when she took matters into her own hands.

Damn the pain this might bring her when she was gone and left with nothing but memories. Damn the pride that had kept her from revealing her past. Damn the fact that they’d never have a future.

There was only now.

Her heart quickened in her chest, thumping hard against her ribs when she pulled his hands from her back and placed them on her breasts, arching into his lean fingers when they kneaded her.

Kellen’s eyes met hers, dark, sexy, full of more uncertainties.

She answered the question by giving him an easy smile.

His groan, hot, sultry, uneven, made her nipples harden to sharp tips. Marcella lifted her hips, grinding them into his, reveling in the thick outline of his cock straining against his jeans.

Hands fumbled with the zipper of his jeans, but couldn’t grasp it. Feeling her inability to remove his clothing, he did it for her. Rising from the bed, he kicked off his sneakers and tugged off his shirt.

His chest, broad, hard, sculpted to within an inch of its life, gleamed in the moonlight streaming in from the bedroom window, making her mouth dry. When he jerked his jeans over his hips, lean and angled, she wheezed a sharp intake of breath. The thick muscles of his thighs flexed and bulged as though they’d been molded in granite.

The glimpse of his cock, straight, wide, long, had Marcella fighting a squirm of unashamed anticipation.

She attempted to remove her own clothing, but failed. Why could she touch it, but not take it off? Her eyes sought Kellen’s for help. He sank back onto the bed, and his own eyes, dark, delicious, took her in with brazen curiosity when he lifted her dress over her head.

If this was a bust, at least she didn’t have that horrible dress on anymore.

Marcella lay back on the bed, openly displaying herself to him. She was far from ashamed of her body, and she wanted him to know that not a single inch of her was going to regret this.

Parting her legs with forceful, hurried hands, he sank between them, letting his cock lie against her belly. She heard the moan escape her lips and didn’t attempt to fight it. Laying herself bare was right. All the emotions, yearning, need that went with the desire she’d felt for him for so long wouldn’t be quelled.

Reaching up, she curled her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, running her nails along his scalp, writhing beneath him when he groaned in her ear as they rolled their lower bodies together.

Kellen’s lips moved to hers with painstakingly slow, measured nips to her ear, her jaw. Marcella beckoned him, dragging his mouth to finally meet hers.

The contact was exquisite, delicious, as they lay with their lips pressed together, semiopen, unmoving until Kellen took his first swipe along her mouth with his tongue. He circled it, teasing the outline, nipping it, creating a moist heat low in the pit of her belly. When he finally took possession of her lips, she jolted under him, raising her hips in response to the decadently sweet taste of their joined mouths.

His kiss was fierce, possessive, wrought with something she couldn’t claim to understand, but identified with just the same. Kellen’s hand swept along her naked hip, draping the tips of his fingers along the curve, running them down along her thighs.

Marcella followed suit, kneading his thickly muscled back, drawing her hands along the firm globes of his ass, raising her hips, whimpering her need to have him take her.

Kellen pulled back, but Marcella refused to let him go. The rest could come later. At this very moment, all she wanted was him inside her, driving into her, erasing everything but their bodies panting for each other.

Intuitively, he understood, parting her thighs, wrapping them around his waist, poising at her entrance, positioning himself. Yet before he took his first stroke, he cupped her cheek and demanded, “Look at me. When I make love to you, I want you to see me.”

His gruff tone, the strain of his muscles, the demand in his tone made her shiver with the force of her pent-up desire.

Lifting her chin, Marcella met his eyes—sinfully hot.

He stroked his hands over her belly, smoothing the skin before dipping into the heat of her sex with fiery fingers, dragging them over her clit, eliciting moans of need from her lips.

Parting her, he took the head of his cock in his hand—their eyes locked.

And then he drove into her, fiercely, deeply, plunging into her and stretching her so deliciously, it left her breathless.

Her nipples tightened, aching to feel his mouth on them when he dipped his dark head to take one between his lips. She hissed her approval, bucking upward, accepting his thick cock with a near scream of ecstasy.

Kellen’s tongue laved each sensitive nipple with rasps of his lips, inhaling and tugging at them until the pleasure/pain left tears in her eyes. Another plunge and he was deep within, driving a slow, hot path to her core.

Rising up on her elbows, she marveled at his dark head against her skin before she pulled him from her breast and bracketed his jaw with her hands. He needed to be closer, deeper. She wanted to absorb him, melt into his heavy weight until they were one. He took her mouth again, ravaging it, slicing his tongue in and out of her mouth, pushing her back to the bed.

Using his feet, Kellen upped the ante by plunging harder, rocking them against one another, their hips crashing as they rode this hot wave of need. Sweat formed a slick glide on their skin, sensuously easing their back-and-forth motion.

Her hands clawed at his back, slipping beneath his hard arms and clutching at his shoulders as she met him stroke for stroke. Wet heat spiraled low in her sex, throbbing, pulsing until she thrashed her head from side to side.

Kellen hiked her legs up higher, driving, seeking, pushing her until she could no longer stave off the flood of white-hot orgasm.

She came with a howl, rearing up against him, their flesh slapping in a decadent rhythm, shuddering against the wide shelter of his chest. Her neck arched and Kellen buried his face in the sensitive spot just above her collarbone, every muscle in his body straining, tensing until he threw his head back and roared his release, husky and victorious.

His orgasm spilled into her, filling her, washing her with a satisfaction she hadn’t ever achieved in any other encounter.

Their breath was jagged, splintered by the wheeze of the fight to bring air to their lungs. Boneless, Kellen collapsed against her, sweat glistening on his forehead, leaving a glow on his ruddy skin.

Her emotions ran high as she fought for breath. This—what they’d just shared had been fiery hot, passionate, but there had been a need she couldn’t define. A hole inside of her that had just been filled with something she was afraid to examine. She wanted to run away from it—hide—skulk off somewhere to dissect it. This had been so much more than just a fantasy realized.

So much more.

Marcella stiffened beneath him, but Kellen slipped his hands under her waist and pulled her closer. “Don’t. You can’t run away from what just happened, from what you feel for me.”

“I don’t run. I float,” she replied, knowing it was sarcastic, yet stupidly wanting it to hurt him.

“Then you’re not floating away, either. So tell me, Marcella Acosta, are you always this cranky after you make love?”

Her eyebrows rose in a familiar expression of boredom. The one she’d used time and again when it was time for a lover to hit the bricks. “I’ve never stuck around this long to find out. In fact, your two minutes are up. Get off me.”