Famous Last Words (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 2)

by Kailee Reese Samuels

  My girl’s sapphires offer more of a bejeweling enchantment with a multi-faceted depth, less consistency. Their color ranges from almost turquoise to deep midnight to hints of blue-violet. Deacon’s eyes beam with a hazy flat blue like denim, and Emily’s burst with the color of the water.

  She huffs as I scold, “This isn’t a democracy.” The blood in my veins lightly warms like freshly ignited kindling. I cannot go to a place of control with her, no matter how much I contradict my character. Conflicting my soul, I add, “You can pay for tomorrow’s dinner.”

  The dark curtains fall on my Dominant performance.

  There is no turning back.

  In our frilly bedroom, I take a shower alone the next morning. We had a brief make-out session before succumbing to slumber last night. I didn’t offer her my arm or any form of comfort. I shut down only to listen to her crying while I feigned sleep.

  I’m flailing about like a lost child in the mall, unsure of who I am without my fetish. I don’t ever remember it not existing. From the time I was young, I relished in providing for others. My world steeped in caretaking, I will let myself give to the point of bloodletting. Therein, lies the root of the problem and the source of my addiction. I cannot stop the continuous draining.

  The D/s world is so much more than a physical fetish; it grows in the psyche. And mine just so happens to be busted like acorns smashed beneath the weight of a bowling ball.

  Emily and I spend the day strolling the snowy streets. Her pink coat, cream toboggan, and rosy nose do nothing to help my urges as we meander through antique shops and candy stores. We walk out to the lighthouse when she whispers, “I wish we could go back.”

  “Where do you want to go?” I say, glancing at her as we hold hands.

  “To that night in the shed.”

  “What would you have done differently?” I ask, compelling her to speak the truth. She’s so much younger than me. She’s nineteen to my twenty-five, but I’ve seen so much in such a short time, it’s hardened me and, in her presence, I see that.

  “I don’t know,” she says, blinking with tears in her eyes as we stare at the ocean. “Maybe I could stop you from ruining your life for me.”

  “Baby,” I soothe, inching closer and turning her towards me. “You did not ruin my life. Eric Henderson needed to die for what he did to you.”

  “You killed him with your own hands and lost yourself when you did. You sacrificed everything for me that night, Lucas.”

  Wrapping my arms around her tiny frame, I kiss the top of her head and say, “And my father did unforgivable things to you.”

  “I don’t think about the fact your father ripped me to shreds. I don’t think about the fact I’m spayed, and my son is someplace else. I don’t think about the fact Noah is six now, and I’ve missed birthdays, holidays, and every single moment. I hardly ever see him, but I don’t think,” she sobs, breaking down against my chest as I strengthen my position—I’m the wall built to take her blows. “Because if I do, I want to die. I don’t understand why all of a sudden, I’m on the I’m now okay to date list of your father. He told me to stay away from you.”

  “Because I was eighteen and you were twelve, he was biding his time.”

  “I’m legal, and now this friendship is okay…but I needed you then…I needed my quasi-big brother, my babysitter, my playmate. I needed you, Lucas.”

  Her assessments of our relationship aren’t wrong. On any given day, we traversed from quibbling siblings to flirtatious youngsters, but there was always love and friendship so deep it defined us. I pushed this girl in her stroller. I changed her fucking diapers because Molly wouldn’t. I held her hand to cross the street. I fed her and bathed her and cared for her—for years. It was always Maria, Molly, Emlee, and me. And when Maria and Molly were off doing their thing, we were the rejects—Emily and I.

  We were destined.

  And we were meant to be.

  Emlee claimed me first.

  And maybe I’ve always been her Master. I was her grounding mechanism and her leader through life. Abandoning my post, I must have brought on a grim state similar to losing a loved one. And I know what that is like.

  Long before Juliet, Deacon, and Iris, there was a little girl with blonde pigtails keeping my burgeoning control freak together. She knew my Dominant before I did, but that doesn’t mean I can be that for her now. I can only be a man, a boyfriend, and a lover.

  Skimming my eyes to the waves crashing against the rocks, I admit, “He wants me with you because you cannot have children.”

  “So, I’m perfectly imperfect for you. Or maybe just acceptable.”

  “It’s more than acceptable,” I argue, burdening my soul with every ounce of heartache and grief. “Much more than that. You’re beautiful and bright…”

  And not a submissive.

  “I think we should give this a try.”

  With a tender resolve, I inquire, “Do you know who did the tubal ligation?”

  “I would never forget his face because I woke up during the operating room before he left.”

  I snag my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and find the professional headshot from his website. I show her the screen and ask, “Was it this guy?”

  Her face opens with complete horror. “Oh, my God... Yes! That is him, Luke!”

  She’s given me everything I needed to know as all the years of my caring for her flash before my eyes. How dare someone hurt my Em like that…How dare he lie to me for years…How fucking dare he…

  Dr. Jack Kerris is a dead man.

  After we eat at a rundown shack with the best lobster rolls I’ve ever had, we walk through the streets lined with white twinkling Christmas lights. Music plays throughout the town square, and we hold hands.

  “Have you had fun this weekend?”

  “It’s been like a fantasy,” she delightfully squeals, clutching onto my arm. We’re smiling, and her happiness brings unexpected joy to my darkness.

  “Brrr…it’s getting cold.” Taking my dark gray scarf from my neck, I wrap it around her and pull off my jacket. “Lucas, no…”

  “I’m fucking Italian. It’s going to take a lot more than snow to cool my hothead down.” She laughs as I slowly ease to kiss her lips. We’re drifting to a dangerous place of lust as our tongues swirl against one another. She wraps her arms around my neck, and I hold her close. “Here,” I say, squatting down. “Jump on my back. The heat from me will get you warm while I get us back to the hotel.”

  Without even a hiccup, she trusts me. Leaping up onto me, she clings around my torso, kisses my cheek, and whispers in my ear, “I think I’m falling for you.”

  “You’re not the only one falling, baby girl.”

  Arriving at the bed and breakfast, I dart through the living quarters with all the people staring at us, but I don’t care. I pay them no attention because Emily is the only thing that matters.

  “Shit!” I grumble as she stays latched to me. “The room key is in my coat pocket.”

  “Here,” she says, handing it to me. I unlock the door and drop her onto the bed. She smiles. “You want to watch a movie?”

  Pushing her back to the bed, I pull up the mess of jackets, her sweater, and undershirt exposing her belly. My tongue skirts along the edge of her waistband as her hands rest on my shoulders. I undo her pants with my lips planting hundreds of kisses to grow this love.

  “I need you, Emily…”

  “Make love to me, Lucas.”

  Ripping my shirt off, I pause to glance at my jittery hands and calm my racing heart as the addiction flares in my veins. I stop myself from snapping my belt. Emily doesn’t know that sound, and I don’t understand this language without domination. I don’t succumb to it, resisting the lure, and starving my soul.

  I slowly unfasten my belt and unzip my jeans. Her hands scatter everywhere with no restraint as she places one on my cheek, dipping her thumb in between my lips and the other coddles my cock in her slender fingers. Her eyes flutter c
losed, and she mumbles, “You’re so hard.” Her tongue slips out from her lips, and I passionately devour her mouth as she moans against my lip. “You’re so big.”

  I slide my cock in deep, surrendering to the battle uprising in my heart. She’s gently kissing me, and all I want is her fight. I miss the bite of teeth and the claw of talons on my back. I miss the discipline and the tug-of-war between Dominant and submissive.

  Immediately, I decide a change is necessary as I tuck my arm beneath her lower back and elevate her in my arms. Teetering between the world I once thrived in and the one I’m trying to survive in, I muddle, “Please, take all this off.”

  Emily shucks off the layers, but when she lifts the undershirt, her blonde hair falls from her hat and grazes against my guns as I keep rocking into her wetness. Closing my eyes, I glance up the ceiling to search for an answer, but it’s concealed by the thin, gauze-like tissue of the canopy bed.

  Laying her back, I run the pad of my forefinger along the edge of her ballet slipper pink bra. I urge for more, kissing on the sheer fabric, and welcoming the suggestion from my watering mouth. Her nipple rises, punctuating with assertion against my tongue. In my mental paralysis, we are drowning in the monsoon at every speeding drive of my hips.

  With a tangle in my throat, I courteously regard, “Can I have this?”

  “You can have two.”

  69

  The Hard Bits

  On Thanksgiving Day, Emily and I pull up into the grass of my parents’ house. The driveway is packed, and cars line the streets.

  “Salvatore!” Mama yells, running out in her dress and full apron to see me. “Don’t you ruin my grass with your big beefcake tires!” This is my greeting as she veers and makes a beeline for Emily. “You are such a darling girl! I’m so happy you and my son are together!” She kisses her cheeks and hugs her while I sit like week-old leftovers in the hot sun.

  Oh. Jesus.

  In less than five-seconds, Mama will have me propose, marry, and seed the poor girl. Mama has no clue of The Arrangement or that her husband’s will has decimated Emily. I’ve considered enlightening her, but I know he will only deny it and proceed to beat the shit out of her. This is how things work in my family. The daego tees, white tank tops, are called “wife-beaters” for a reason.

  I light a smoke as Mama assists Emily into the lair. Peering back to me with a panicked expression of her impending doom, she plasters a grin across her face as Cat smiles with a greeting and hobbles towards me.

  “I’ll be right there, sweetheart.”

  When Emily and Mama are safely inside, Cat drops the fake smile and grabs my sleeve. “I cannot walk.”

  I furrow my brow. “What’s wrong?”

  “That guy…that man…that biker friend of yours is insatiable! I swear morning, noon, and night, all he wants is sex!”

  I hysterically laugh as I can only imagine Deacon giving Cat a run for her money or a roll on his rod. “Where is he?”

  “At Nonna’s!” she exclaims like I’m capable of reading her mind. “You’ve been checking your dipstick in the Em’s—under her hood and in her house.”

  She’s right. Since returning from Maine, I’ve spent my nights in the glow of a girl I’m starting to see as a woman I genuinely care about. Though she professes her love for me, I can’t say those three little words. I’m falling, but I’m not sure where I’ll land. And claiming love for Emily seems like a nail in the coffin of having my girl.

  I can’t do it; I won’t do it.

  “God, I love you,” I say to Cat, chuckling. “I didn’t want to bother you with my affairs.”

  “… Is that all it is?” she asks, stealing my cigarette and taking a drag. “Cause there is a gorgeous girl out there with those beguiling blues. God, if you’re not going after her, I might. I’d give anything to fuck a bitch like that.” With a twinkle in her eyes, her hands draw an imaginary hourglass figure as she humps the air. “Whoosh!”

  I didn’t need to hear or see that.

  God, I miss her slickness on my dick when I’ve got her reddened ass pinned beneath me.

  “She’s missing,” I announce, not caring who hears me. “Vanished.”

  “… What?”

  “She was abducted when I was at the cabin.” She puffs on my smoke and crosses her arms. I give up any hope of getting it back and light another. “You were too busy banging Cruz.”

  “He just stopped off to say goodbye and ended up staying a few extra days.”

  Waving at the neighbors who are outside playing football, I ask, “Where is he now?”

  “We said goodbye this morning because I didn’t want to stress Mama out with two new relationships and all the nipoti she believes are coming her way,” she replies, sullen. “I left him at the house to take a shower, and then he was heading out.”

  “Should’ve brought him,” I snicker, trying to crack my knuckles. One gives way—it feels so good, like a little hit of pain. I breathe with the relief. “Dad would’ve flipped out.”

  “Dad is already flipping out,” she casually informs, “We’re in the second football game, and Vinny, Tony, and Peter are missing. The girls and kids are here. Magno and Freddy are here with their families, too.”

  Something isn’t right.

  Vinny is always by my father’s side on Thanksgiving.

  “Can you watch Emily for a minute?”

  “Yeah, why?” she asks as I furiously head towards my truck.

  “Probably to kill someone.”

  Without a blink, she nonchalantly says, “Okay. Be careful.”

  I crank my badass bitch up and rip out in the grass.

  Holidays are so much fun.

  Stopping in front of the brownstone, I dart up the steps two at a time to find the door unlocked. Nonna’s house is destroyed. Broken glass cracks underneath my feet as I stare in disbelief at the war zone of my boyhood home and I trigger—the fuse to ignite the blast.

  I can’t stop it. I can’t deny it.

  Mafia is in my blood as much as Dominant.

  A thundering ruckus pounds on the floor above my head. “Cruz!” I shout, running as fast as I can up the staircase. “Cruz!”

  Swinging open Cat’s bedroom door, I spot the men leaving through the window as Deacon lays battered and bruised on the floor.

  I lunge for one of my dad’s cronies, Peter, and pull him back inside. I chunk his body with a thump to the ground. Pounding my fist into his face, I can’t feel the weapons my swollen hands become as blood splatters all over my face and shirt.

  “What the fuck did you do?” I yell, beating his flesh bloody. “Did my father send you to do this?”

  “You’re the queer mafia son!” he marvels, like Deacon deserves this. I’m stunned by the manifestation of hatred as he lands his knuckles on my cheek. “You’re a disgrace to the family name, fucking faggot!”

  “Fuck you!” I howl, catching sight of Deacon’s sad blue eyes staring as I take twenty-five years of rage out on Peter. “Fuck you and fuck my father!”

  “I’m not the one smearing shit on my dick, asshole!” He manages to wedge out from beneath me and grabs the antique glass lamp from the nightstand. “You and your biker girlfriend need to burn!”

  With a roar, I slingback with my forearm, striking the base of the glass and sending it crashing into a million tiny fragments on the wooden floor.

  “Fucker!” Running full steam, I solidly drive him into the wall, crumbling the sheetrock, as I bang his head repeatedly against the chalk.

  Savagely my compulsion for vengeance takes hold as nothing matters but the sins of their crime…the sins of his scathing words…the sins of his violence against the man I love.

  “You do not fuck with that which belongs to me!” I scream, beating his face to a pulp. “Do you hear me? You do not fuck with that which belongs to me!”

  He gets a leg up on me, and we wrestle with a roll, but I power with all I’ve got and nail him right in the nose. Getting up, I’m heaving as he’
s sufficiently stunned.

  Crouching by Cruz’s side, I stroke his cheek and ask, “What happened?”

  “I was just getting dressed.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Two,” he whispers, his breathing labored. “But it was like two of you in your best shape. There was no way I could take them down alone. Two daegos too much for one me.”

  On the floor, I notice the pictures from the snowy night at the cabin with Deacon and me in front of the fireplace. The night I claimed his submission was the beginning of my undoing the collar my father had around my neck since birth.

  “Fuck!”

  “Sal watch it!” Deacon warns as everything shifts to a moment of not thinking and pure reaction. I yank my gun from the harness on my side, turn around still squatting, and fire rapidly. Releasing the knife in his hand, Peter clutches his chest and falls to the ground dead.

  “Who’s gay now, motherfucker!?!?” I angrily spit, standing up and scouring over the damage. “Cause I’m pretty damn happy!” My shoulders slope in as I stagger about to catch my breath. “I’m having a beautiful fucking day!”

  “Holy hell…you’re a goddamned monster,” Deacon marvels, bewildered by the sight of me. I never let them see this part of me, fearful of what they might think. I keep myself hidden and locked away because for so long, I believed everyone was safer that way. I’m tired of my self-imposed repression. “Jesus fuck…you do that shit all the time?”

  “What?”

  “Ninja moves,” he says, coughing and grimacing as he sits up. “Like that…”

  Reaching for my phone, I reply, “Yeah, but I was a little slow.”

  “There is nothing slow about you.” Deacon blinks at me. “I didn’t know you had that kind of fire in you, Nero.”

  “No one does.”

  Calling my sister, I issue the command, “Don’t say a word. Get Emily. Get in the car. Come to Nonna’s—fucking nowala.”

  After Emily and Cat arrive, I leave Nonna’s and speed back to my parent’s house. With the two-dozen people there, I imagine my father is gossiping about where the girls ran off to.