STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer: 50 Loving States, North Carolina

by Theodora Taylor

  Garnet falls asleep disturbingly fast. Her little baby snores fill the air before I can even begin to parse through all the understandable dislike and completely baffling lust stirring around my nether regions.

  I return to the room just as confused as I left it. What does Stone moving in mean? More playacting like we’re a real couple? Or maybe he wants something else. Maybe he wants me, despite what he said at the graveyard.

  Dread and Curiosity tug-of-war inside my chest as I open the door to the master suite.

  Stone’s still on the settee when I enter, showing more interest in his car magazine than he’s ever shown in me. And he doesn’t look up when I come in.

  I decide to use his silence as an opportunity to slip a checkered sleep shirt out of what’s now one of two dresser drawers. Matching dresser drawers.

  Ayayay…why do I get the eerie feeling that he had all this new furniture bought and put in storage behind my back? All those “no way”s I’d given him, they didn’t matter. He’d simply been biding his time during my entire three months of recovery.

  With that creepy thought lodged in my head, I take my time in the shower, delaying the inevitable…what? I have no idea. My past discussions with Stone weren’t exactly conversations. More like a high-stakes game of chess, disguised as talking. A high-stake game I’d definitely lost.

  He’s texting on the phone when I come out of the bathroom. But he looks up to eye my flannel sleepshirt with a cold smile. “Nice outfit. Real bride like.”

  I ignore his sarcastic comment and ask, “Who are you texting?”

  “Not Luca, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told you I wouldn’t tell him.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I answer. Stone’s callous. And maybe a sociopath. But for whatever reason, it never occurred to me for even a moment that he wouldn’t keep his promise. I trust him, I realize with a surprised inner jolt.

  Pushing that thought aside, I tell him, “I was just wondering who you were texting this late.”

  “It’s not late where he is.”

  I wait, but when Stone doesn’t continue, I’m forced to ask, “Where does he live? And why couldn’t he make the wedding?”

  A smidge of sympathy tugs at my chest, thinking about how Stone had only one guest compared to every Almonte living in North Carolina.

  “Hawaii,” Stone answers. He goes back to his texting. “And I didn’t expect him to come. He lost his wife and kid in a real fucked up accident a couple of years ago. Hasn’t answered a call or text since.”

  “But you keep on texting anyway…” My heart jerks, not knowing how to reconcile the dead-eye killer I married to the man reaching out to his friend again and again, despite getting no response. “How do you know him? Is he… in your line of work.”

  “Nah, he’s an old college buddy. Same guy who introduced me to Keane.” Stone answers.

  “You went to college?” I have to ask, because no offense, I never would have guessed. It’s even more surprising than the revelation that Stone apparently has a whole two friends outside his New York crime family.

  “Yeah, for a couple of years,” he answers. “Luca’s dad, tried to make us all go when he was the head of the Ferraro family. But I hated that shit. And Rock partied out. So when the dean at Manhattan U. told him he didn’t have the grades to come back, I ditched college, too.”

  “Oh wow, I didn’t know that.”

  Of course, I’d known about Rock failing out of Manhattan University. It was one of his biggest regrets. And he’d been making plans to go back to school when we were together. But he never mentioned that Stone had gone, too.

  “You and Rock really used to do everything together,” I realize out loud. “I can’t imagine how much you miss him.”

  My sympathetic words hang in the air, Rock’s memory hanging over us like a ghost. And Stone’s gaze drops to the floor, like he’s overcome.

  No, he’s not nice, I realize in that moment. But he is human. A twin who lost his brother less than a year ago. Today was hard on me. But it was hard on him, too.

  Without warning, Too Nice Naima takes over my mouth. “Stone, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that…”

  “So, you want me to eat you out or what?”

  I nearly choke on my own spit at the unexpected question. “Um, what?”

  “I can’t fuck you, but if you want me to get you off, I’m down for that.”

  More spit choking, as my brain scrambles to come up with a response. I mean, Stone’s a Ferraro. I’ve watched enough mafia movies to know…

  “You can’t…” I swallow. “You can’t have sex with me?”

  “Yeah, my penis ain’t up for that, but if you want to come, I got you.”

  I blink several times, my mind trying and failing to fully process all of his words. “But why?” I end up asking him. “Why would you want to ah…service me without getting anything in return?”

  Stone shrugs. “Husbandly duties and all that. You were there for the vows, too.”

  “Yes, but that still doesn’t explain why you wouldn’t want me to keep up my side of the bargain.” Am I really that repulsive to you?

  I don’t get any reassurances from Stone about my unspoken fear. He just shrugs again. “You squeezed out a kid already. Give it a couple of years or three and we’ll talk about a little brother.”

  I widen my eyes. “Wait, you want another kid?”

  “Yeah, at least two more. Wasn’t planning on any before, but you’re a good mom, so why not go to one of them docs that shake our shit up in a petri dish and plug the baby right into ya?”

  “That’s not how it works. Plus, I’m getting awfully close to forty to be making any big family plans. And did you just say I’m a good mom?” I ask, not sure I really heard that compliment in his confusing plans for our future.

  “What? You don’t’ think you’re a good mom?”

  “That’s not the point,” I say.

  “Then what is the point?” he asks, unbuttoning his shirt, to reveal an old-fashioned wife beater underneath. “I got an early flight tomorrow and all this conversation feels unnecessary. Do you want me to eat you out or what? Just answer the question already.”

  “Okay…” I say, raising a hand. I vowed not to case file this guy like I did Rock, but I have to ask, “Should I be worried about your mental health?”

  Stone snorts and snatches the wife beater off over his head. “You just like to make shit complicated and I don’t.”

  I thrust my chin defensively. “Stone, look, I’m just trying to understand why you’re willing to service me, apparently grow a family with me, but don’t want to have penetrative sex with me.”

  “Yeah well…”

  Stone rises to his feet and one step consumes the distance between us. He leans down to speak directly in my ear. “I don’t do that poetry and flowers shit, but my tongue is a motherfucker. I can make you feel good if you want. Real good. Or…”

  He takes a deliberate step back. “We can turn off the lights, and I’ll get up for my flight, first thing tomorrow. Either way, I’m done with questions. So what are we doing here?”

  What are we doing here…

  I stare up at him, and he stares back down at me at a total conversational impasse.

  Until I find myself confessing, “I don’t…I don’t want a sexless marriage. But I’m not sure how I should feel about a man who apparently has no desire for me.”

  It’s not a question. But I look to Stone for an answer.

  He rolls his neck, that irritated look, flashing across his face, like it’s the only other expression in his entire toolbox. Then he growls, “Lay back. Spread your legs. Let me eat you out. If you don’t like it, you can tell me to fuck off.”

  Let me…

  Why do I have the feeling that this was as close to a please or even a simple request as I was ever going to get from Stone?

  I should pick option number two. Tell him to turn off the light and let him catch his flight. Good temporary rid
dance.

  But I don’t.

  He looks, so much like Rock, but somehow not the same at all. After three chaste months in separate rooms, I hadn’t expected this relationship to involve sex. Even after we said I do.

  But now he’s doing all the offering and giving me another ultimatum. One I find myself powerless to resist. Am I curious or sex-starved. I have no idea.

  Either way I take a hold of the hem of my flannel nightshirt with my heart, beating in my throat. I squeeze my fingers around it a couple of times, then pull it off in a quick rush before pushing down my panties in the same manner.

  Then…oh God…My heart thunders in my chest as I carefully, lay myself across the bed.

  Like a platter offering itself up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I lie there, waiting. Waiting to get serviced by the man, now standing above the bed. The one who told me just a few months ago that he didn’t give an s-word about what I want.

  Maybe he still doesn’t.

  His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes scan my body as he climbs onto bed. One knee, two, and then his arms.

  He’s so hulky up top. He installed a workout room in the basement, and I have to wonder just how much time he spends in there. Surely, it’s even more than the hour he does right after dinner. Everything on his bare upper body bulges as he crawls over to what I guess is now my side of the bed and places himself between my spread legs.

  My thighs tremble when he touches them, even though he hasn’t really done anything yet.

  “You afraid?” he asks. There’s a gleam in his eyes. But I don’t know how to describe it—wicked, sinister, amused. All three words apply.

  “It’s been…awhile,” I answer.

  And by awhile, I mean never. No one’s ever gone down on me. Not the boys I sort of fumbled around with in college while feeling vaguely guilty about the two blind parents I’d left behind at home. Not Rock…no one has ever kissed me down there.

  “You’re already wet,” Stone observes, his voice flat as a scientist.

  “My body’s response to knowing something sexual is about to happen,” I answer, trying to keep my voice just as clinical and unquavering as his. “It doesn’t mean anything, purely biological.”

  That’s true, I know, yet it’s also not true. Yes, getting wet when you know sex is coming is a biological response, without any proven link to increased desire. But this feels like more than that. My entire body is pulsing. Dying to find out what will happen next.

  He dips his head down between my legs.

  He has a large tattoo on his back, I notice. Dark angel wings.

  Devils also have wings, I’m suddenly reminded. Right before his tongue enters me with a single plunge.

  I gasp out in surprise, a very, very nice surprise. His tongue is warm and sure, working inside of me with more confidence than any dick ever has.

  “Stone…” I breathe out, his name little more than a moan as he efficiently stokes the long dormant embers inside of me, licking up and down my slit, before adding two fingers.

  Oh wow… oh wow. My hips squirm beneath his mouth and on instinct I reach down to cup the sides of his head. He must shave every morning, his skin is bristled with new growth, and the five o’clock shadow on his head scratches beneath my palms as his tongue and fingers work between my legs.

  It usually takes so long for me to come with someone else. First I have to calm down and convince myself not to be self-conscious. Assure myself that I don’t have to look like Amber or a supermodel to have a guy be into sex with me.

  Stone doesn’t want to have sex with me. He’s made that plain and clear. But for some reason, despite his disdain, and his general zero f-words attitude, I find myself rising embarrassingly fast.

  My core greedily clenches, and my hips lift to receive more of his mouth and fingers as my hands tug, trying to bury his bury his tongue even deeper inside of me. I know it’s wrong. I know it’s dirty. But, I can’t help myself. Just a few minutes of Stone, and I’ve lost all control.

  “Oh God… Oh God…Stone.” His name comes out a broken plea, right before I crest. Screaming mutely into the fully lit room, as I cream all over his face.

  Stars bursts in front of my eyes, as a universe takes over my vision and an ocean fills my ears. Pleasure, unlike anything I’ve ever known from a toy, my hand, or a real life dick, washes over me. The heat of it completely suffuses my body as I squirm, both enjoying the orgasm and trying to get away from it, because it is just so, very intense.

  Somewhere during that, Stone rises up on both knees. Then, with the same cold, almost bored expression, he observes how my body trembles and shakes, long after he’s done.

  It’s so embarrassing. I wait for the orgasm to let go and hate him at the same time. For inserting himself into my life, for blackmailing me into marriage, for eating me out just as good—no, girl, if we’re talking for real—even better than he promised.

  At least I want to hate him.

  But as I come down from my almost painful first oral orgasm, I find myself more curious than annoyed.

  I think there’s something honestly wrong with you. Something I’m not seeing. What are you hiding from me?

  Despite my many promises to myself, I start to open a mental case file on him…

  But then, as if shoving me back toward my vow not to case work him, Stone asks, “You good? I want to brush my teeth.”

  I sit up on bent arms, feeling the opposite of desired. “Yes, of course. Go brush your teeth. And, um, thank you, I guess.”

  Stone just shrugs as if of all the no big deals in his life, making me come like a frickin’ tornado is the least big deal of them all. Then he disappears into the bathroom.

  What…the…heck?

  Do not case file him….do not case file him… I practically chant to myself as I put back on my sleep shirt, then hop under the covers, before he comes back out in a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else.

  No awkward post-coital small talk for my husband. Stone deposits his watch and a couple of rings onto a little jewelry tray on top of his dresser. Only their clinks break up the total silence, before he crawls into bed.

  Man, he moves quietly for such a big guy. I can only imagine how lethal he must be when he’s working.

  His work as the Ferraro family’s most ruthless enforcer… that’s what I should concentrate on instead of going all Nancy Drew on his mental state.

  As the orgasm fades away, I try to remember him at my kitchen table, threatening me with his gun. Treating me like a speck of dust he’d gladly wipe out.

  I think about that.

  Then I reach across the bed and squeeze his junk.

  He catches my hand almost immediately and pushes it away. But not so fast that I can’t feel he’s totally soft.

  “Is it me or is it ED?” I ask in the dark.

  No answer.

  “I’m talking about erectile dysfunction,” I say just in case he doesn’t understand.

  More silence. Not even an irritated grunt of acknowledgement.

  “Because if it’s ED, there are things we can try.”

  I keep my tone light and helpful, judgement free. But still no answer.

  “If it’s me…” I start to say.

  “Let me know the next time you need wifeing. Until then, shut up.” Stone’s voice slices through the dark. Slices through me.

  Then he turns over and gives me his back. Leaving me and my mind spinning.

  Well, Keane was right about one thing. Stone definitely surprised me tonight.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Let me know the next time you need wifeing.

  Like his offer to collect my things from the hospital, this, too, turns out to be a rhetorical invitation.

  I never ask, but Stone wifes me several more times over the next few months. Pretty much every night he’s in Charlotte instead of New York. He seems to have added eating me out to his evening routine. You know, after his expensive whiskey nightcap and righ
t before he brushes his teeth and washes his face.

  I wish I could say I hated it as much as I hate him. But I can’t.

  I still don’t like Stone. Like, at all. But I really, really like his mouth. To the point that instead of feeling relieved when he leaves town, I miss him—I mean his mouth. I miss his mouth. Yep, just his mouth.

  “Hello…hello…Naima…you there?”

  I snap out of my daze to find Shirley, one of my co-workers at my cubicle entrance. She’s an old-timer, close to retirement, and hanging on by a thread if her jowly semi-permanent scowl is any indication. “There’s somebody here to see you. A man interested in fostering an older kid.”

  “All my kids are over 18,” I remind her.

  Shirley sucks her teeth. “Well, he’s asking for you specifically.”

  “Really me? But none of my kids are eligible for adoption.”

  “You can tell him that just as easy as me. He’s waiting in the conference room.”

  Shirley doesn’t give me a chance to answer before walking away.

  Did I say everyone in North Carolina was so nice earlier? Okay, edit that. But luckily my skin is a lot thicker than it used to be, thanks to Stone. Before he invaded my life, I used to take Shirley’s snappish tone personally.

  Now, her bad attitude seems understated in comparison to my husband. It still sends a shiver down my back to think of him with that term attached…down my back and up another place.

  God, what is wrong with me? I wonder as I enter the conference room to direct the potential foster father to another social worker.

  However, I slow when I see the man waiting for me.

  He stands up when I enter, but that’s the only polite thing about him.

  Men who walk into our agency wanting to foster usually hail from the khaki and button up crowd. But this potential father is wearing jeans, paired with a leather jacket, and he’s got a military crew cut with a hole in the middle.

  I try not to judge on sight alone, but this guy does not in any way look like a man, hoping to enrich his life by fostering a child.