Stand: A Bleeding Stars Stand-Alone Novel

by A. L. Jackson

The boy was so severely beautiful it struck me like an arrow. Piercing and exquisite.

  My body hummed as I was assaulted with the memory of the way he’d felt pressed against me. The weight of him. The feel of him. The magnitude of his kiss.

  Sitting there, I felt as if I’d been on a rollercoaster with him tonight. Climbing the highest highs and diving to the lowest lows, twisting and turning and jerking and spinning.

  Now I was experiencing that odd vertigo that set the entire world askew when the ride jolted to an abrupt stop.

  I had no idea where it left us.

  “It’s late,” he rumbled in that dark voice.

  “Yeah. It is.”

  I snapped open my door, and he did the same. Quickly, he rounded to my side. I could feel him towering over me as he kept a step behind, his footsteps heavy as he followed me to my front door.

  The night danced around us, sultry and mild. The exterior lamp hanging beside the door warmed the stoop in a golden glow, and my breaths became shallow when Zee reached around me and slid my key into the lock.

  He turned the knob, and the door slowly swung open to the stilled darkness that waited on the other side.

  I gazed back at him, wanting to see, to experience a little more of who this man might be.

  His expressions were like a map that led directly to his conflicted heart. Turmoil rippled and rushed across his face, played across his lips and trembled in his fingers. Fingers he ran down the edge of my cheek.

  “You terrify me, Alexis.”

  Drawn, I slowly shifted around to face him. Heat burned across my flesh. I could feel it radiating, seeping into the space between us. “I hate that I dragged you into my mess,” I told him.

  I hated more that I’d needed him there. With me. Beside me. I had no idea what would have happened tonight had he not been there. When Avril had called earlier, she had promised it would just be her. That I’d be safe.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that, rather than her drawing me into the gulf of her sordid world, she’d brought it closer to me instead.

  “And I hate you keep getting yourself deeper into it,” he rumbled, erasing another inch between us.

  My gaze was drawn to the heavy bob of his muscular throat when he swallowed. “You would’ve gone down there tonight by yourself had I not asked you to make me that promise.”

  In reluctance, I nodded. Not because I didn’t want him to know, but because I wanted the truth to be different. “She calls…and I…I think about her out there alone. Scared. And I know I should refuse, tell her it’s her own fault, but it seems tough love is tougher on me.”

  His stare touched deeper than anyone before him.

  And I wanted it—him to see me.

  “Does that make me weak?”

  Fingertips traced across my lips. “What it makes you is the bravest, most selfless person I know.”

  He trailed them down, grazing my jaw and caressing down into the hollow of my throat.

  My stomach fluttered, and the edge of his mouth kicked up. It would have almost been a teasing grin if it weren’t for the rough protectiveness that slid out with it.

  “It also makes you the most reckless person I know.”

  His jaw ticked. “You can’t be putting yourself in danger. Not even for her. There are other ways to help her than to drop everything and run down there every time she calls you.”

  Everything swelled. Affection and worry. “I feel like I’ve done everything. I don’t know what to do. I feel so…stuck. Helpless.”

  A strike of anger burst in his gaze. “The guy, the one who attacked you…”

  Fear knotted in my chest, and I felt the tears gathering in my eyes. “I can’t believe she had him with her. That she’d put me in that situation after what happened. She knew, Zee. She was there that night…before you got there. She saw what he was going to do to me.”

  “We need to go to the police with this. With a name. There has to be something they can do. That asshole was right fucking there, Alexis. Right there.”

  My chest clenched tighter. “You know we don’t have a name. I have a face, and I described him to them. They said they’d do everything to find him, but I get this feeling it’s more. That they’re waiting on something. Trying to pin something bigger on him than what happened to me.”

  I could only imagine what kind of drug ring he was involved in. How deep his connections might go.

  I could see it. His rage at my confession, and his hand tightened on my neck.

  Possessively.

  A quiver rocked through me.

  “I just want it to end, Zee,” I admitted through the exhaustion of it all. “I just want her to be okay. I don’t want her to waste the life she’s been given. Too many people do. It kills me she’s making that choice.”

  Grief passed through his expression. “And it kills me you keep putting yourself in danger because of it. That you’re taking chances with your days, Alexis.”

  Understanding coursed between us. “I don’t want to waste them, either.”

  I meant it in more than one way.

  I meant it for me, for him, for us.

  I didn’t want to waste whatever this was.

  I thought maybe he felt it, because his palm flattened and slid lower so it was splayed wide across my chest, as if he were pulling energy from the beat of my heart and allowing it to sustain a part of him.

  “Lex,” he whispered. “What’re you doing to me? Whatever it is, I can’t stop it.”

  Flecks of bronze and gold shimmered in his dark, dark eyes. They appeared almost black in the shadows of the night.

  Need spread beneath the weight of his hand, billowing out and sliding free.

  I whimpered, and Zee shifted me, my back to his chest. His arm wound around my waist and he buried his face in my neck. “You make me fucking crazy, Alexis. Do you know that? I want to make you feel good. Just for one night…let me make you feel good.”

  He edged me forward. My door stood wide open. A beacon.

  A shiver rolled down my spine as Zee bunched my hair up in his free hand and pressed kisses to the junction of my shoulder and neck, moving across the star I’d inscribed there as a reminder to never stop believing.

  His voice was a rasp across my skin. “First time I came here, I knew it. Knew you were different. Knew I wasn’t ever gonna be the same.”

  He kicked the door shut behind him.

  His hand splayed wide across my belly that shivered and shook, the darkness swallowing us in its warmth. It was only broken by the swath of moonlight pouring in from the window.

  He kissed behind my ear, teeth raking the lobe.

  That desire that’d been subdued to a smolder flamed back to life.

  I gasped when he suddenly turned me again and pushed me down onto the loveseat.

  I clung to the fabric, squirming as the man stared down at me in the shadows.

  “You were sitting right there,” he said, so low, like a threat. “There I was, showing up to check on you, and the only damned thing I could think about was crawling over that tight body, pushing you back against the couch, and sinking in.”

  I shivered and my mind spun. “Take your shirt off.”

  Oh God. Where did that even come from? But I wanted it. To see him.

  Because my own fantasies had been there, too.

  Zee slowly reached down and pealed the tight tee up his body. He yanked it over his head and dropped it to the floor.

  I swallowed around the lump that throbbed in my throat as my gaze stroked and caressed over every beautiful inch of him.

  I’d said it before. This man was brilliant. Magnificent.

  Inside and out.

  His shoulders were wide and his skin was smooth where it was stretched taught above the rigid, defined muscle that bristled underneath. His abdomen was flat and cut, lines carved and distinct as it tapered down to his narrow waist.

  My mouth watered as I imagined tracing my tongue along those lines, tasting and
touching and exploring.

  But it was the ink etched on his skin that made my spirit lurch in a bid to bring him closer.

  It was the first time I’d been able to take in the designs in their entirety, to understand what he had etched on his body like tribute and praise.

  One arm was a tapestry of life, stars and a perfect, endless night.

  The other was death. A dragon at the bottom of the deepest sea, the skulls of its victims piled like trophies at its feet.

  Curved around one side of his collarbone was a simple tattoo that somehow felt incredibly profound, written in an almost medieval script

  Relentless.

  It was easy to see which of these two worlds he was chained to.

  “You are beautiful.” I could barely form the words.

  The lowest chuckle slid out from his mouth. “If you saw everything hiding underneath, you’d know better.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I whispered where he towered over me in the shadows of the night.

  He set both hands on the back of the couch on either side of my head, leaning in close and murmuring, “That’s because you are belief.”

  He slowly sank down to his knees.

  Everything shivered. My body and the air and the foundation of my heart.

  He set his hands on my knees. “That’s because you’re everything that’s good. You think I don’t see it, Alexis? Feel it? And I’m the bastard who can’t stay away. Desperate for a taste.”

  He slid his palms higher, riding up the top of my thighs.

  My belly trembled, and I sucked in a breath when his hot hands landed beneath the fabric of my shirt. He drew it up. A trail of goose bumps were left in his wake as he dragged the blouse over my head.

  He tossed it aside and then slipped his hands behind my back, freeing the clasp of my bra, inching the straps free.

  “Zachary.”

  “I’m going to make you feel good, Alexis. After tonight…I need to make you feel good.” His fingers were on the button of my jeans, and I was gasping as he pulled them down, taking my underwear with them.

  The man exposing me, inch by inch.

  Chills lifted, that energy suffocating, almost too much to bear as his gaze washed over me.

  Wonder.

  Awe.

  He tugged off my shoes and leaned back to pull my jeans free from my ankles. And there I was, spread out for him across my couch like an offering.

  That was exactly what I wanted to be.

  “You are the best thing I’ve ever seen. Can’t believe I get to see you this way. That I get this chance.”

  I heard what was behind his words. That it was going to be the only one, the only chance.

  He edged up, his waist barely breaking the boundaries of my knees, one hand pressed to the couch beside me to hold him up. His eyes latched on to mine as his fingertips traced the skin of my thigh, up and over my hip, tapping out a soft beat across my trembling belly.

  My back arched from the tease. “Oh God…Zee.”

  “Shh, I know, baby, I know.”

  His fingers trailed down, barely making contact as he brushed them over the short crop of hair that covered me, before he parted my lips and dipped his fingertips into the wet flesh.

  He teased and tortured, just barely touching my clit.

  My hips jerked, desperate for more. “Zachary…”

  He met my eye, his gorgeous face carved in stone and etched in restraint. “Do you need me? Tell me, Alexis. Do you need me?”

  I touched his face. “I need you.”

  He growled before his hands were back on my knees, forcing my legs apart.

  He drove his tongue into my folds.

  My hands flew into his hair. “Zee.”

  He licked deep and long. His hands glided down the outside of my thighs, gripping and caressing and stroking, before they slipped under to grab hold of my ass to yank me closer to the edge of the couch.

  He inched back, piercing me with his hungry gaze. “You are the miracle, Alexis.”

  His fingers kneaded my flesh, and I squirmed, hips jerking in a plea. He let his thumbs brush at the skin just at the juncture at the inside of my thighs and my center.

  Teasing.

  Taunting.

  “You make me remember.”

  My hand was shaking like crazy when I cupped the side of his head, fingers still threaded in his hair. “What did you forget?”

  He dipped down and pressed a simple kiss at the juncture, whispering at the sensitive flesh. “You make me remember what it’s like to feel. What it’s like to want someone in a way that makes me feel like I’m going out of my mind. Coming out of my skin.”

  “And you’ve made me feel that way for the very first time.”

  He clutched me tighter to him, his fingers searching, dipping into my sex and running along the crease of my ass, his breath a flame as he exhaled slowly across my clit.

  My heart stuttered and heaved. “Zachary…please.”

  “Please what?”

  “I need you.”

  As soon as I uttered the words, the man let go. His tongue drove deep, fucking deep, his groan vibrating through my body like the crackle of a forest fire before he turned his focus to my clit.

  He laved and lapped.

  Everything burned.

  He clutched one ass cheek tight in one hand as he shifted up higher on his knees, and with the other hand, he sank two fingers inside my body.

  I moaned through a gasp, my walls clutching at his fingers as he plunged them deep. He picked up this devastating pace with his tongue and his fingers.

  And that energy.

  It spun and spun as he lifted me higher, pleasure gathering fast. Ecstasy tightened in my belly and threatened at my clit. I panted and gasped while Zee propelled me to this place where air was gone. Where my only breath was him.

  This man.

  This man.

  Everything split.

  Shattered.

  A blinding bliss that scattered like stars.

  Burning as they fell and poured and shone.

  My legs gripped his head just as tight as my fingers gripped his hair, and I swore my entire body floated six inches from the couch.

  I cried his name.

  Wanting to reach him and never feeling as close to someone as I did right then.

  And he was whispering things I couldn’t hear, kissing the inside of my thighs as I gasped toward that hidden, starry sky.

  Where I slowly fell.

  Zee was right there to catch me, his big hands holding me, massaging and coaxing and saying all the things he thought he shouldn’t say.

  I struggled for a breath, trying to still my heart that battered and raced and drummed.

  I felt dazed. Stunned. Like I would never be the same.

  He inched back. “You are fucking stunning when you come.”

  Heat crept to my cheeks as I edged forward and set my hands on his chest. I didn’t understand how he could make me feel both brave and so incredibly shy. As if he looked at me differently than any man ever had. As if he saw things only he could see.

  I nudged him back, and he slanted me some kind of grin that curved with lust and swam with adoration. My palm smoothed over the ink that lined his collarbone.

  Relentless.

  I kissed across the skin. “And just who are you fighting for?” I whispered against it.

  He groaned and fisted a handful of my hair, twisting it tight as I kissed down the overwhelming strength of him, my tongue darting out to taste—to trace the defined lines of his abdomen like I’d been imagining.

  He jerked beneath it, tightening his hold in my hair. “Fuck…Lex. I can’t.”

  I climbed to my knees, peeking up at him as I worked free the button of his jeans. “Yes you can. I want to feel you. Touch you.”

  “Shit…baby.”

  And I could feel his restraint, the resistance fighting for some kind of control. Just as sure as I could feel it slipping away when I licked down
the trail beneath his belly button.

  Leaning his weight against it, he pushed back the coffee table to make more room, using it as support as he lifted his hips and let me drag down his jeans and his underwear.

  His cock sprang free, bobbing against his belly. The sight of it twisted my stomach with some kind of delirious greed.

  My voice was a whisper. A prayer. “You’re…beautiful, Zee. Every inch of you.”

  My hand trembled as I caressed the velvety soft flesh covering his massive dick that was so utterly hard, the head throbbing, dripping with his need.

  “I can’t believe I get to touch you this way.”

  He tugged at my hair, winding it close to my head. “It’s me who can’t believe you’re touching me this way. That I get to have this with you. This moment, Alexis. I won’t ever forget it.”

  An ache threatened to bind itself to that secret place within me that he’d touched, that place I knew would recognize him when he came.

  This courageous, bold boy who was somehow broken.

  I wanted to find the pieces, hold them until he found a way to put them back together.

  Instead, I shifted to straddle him at the knees, and Zee kicked his clothing the rest of the way free as I took him in both hands, stroking him long and hard.

  Zee jerked in my hands. “Fuck…it’s been…too long, Lex. Too long.”

  Then I wasn’t wasting any time.

  I kissed him just at the tip, my tongue snaking out to lick, to taste. I edged up higher while my head sank lower, my body curled over him as I took him deep into my mouth, my tongue flattening at the back of his shaft.

  Both his hands were in my hair, fingers in my neck, my name on his breath.

  He hissed a slew of curses as his hips jerked from the floor.

  Maybe I should have been concerned that it was me who saw stars when he came.

  Maybe I should have been concerned that I felt elevated in that moment.

  Removed.

  That was one second before I was falling.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Zee ~ Eighteen Years Old

  Zachary was coming to realize it was the simple moments that often meant the most. The moments when next to nothing happened that made the greatest impact.

  Who would have thought it could be a comfortable silence that spoke louder than words?