Hold Your Breath 01 - Stone Devil Duke

by K. J. Jackson

  A sudden, deep insecurity gripped Aggie, and she almost backed out of the room. But with a quick breath to steady herself, she planted her feet, concentrating on the instinct that told her to stay.

  “Do you leave our bed often?”

  There was no response, no movement from Devin’s inert frame. Was he drunk? Disgusted with her?

  Aggie took a few steps closer and cleared her throat. Maybe her voice was drowned out by the pounding rain.

  “Do you leave our bed often?”

  Still no response. Worry hit Aggie. Her challenging questions usually elicited some sort of response, even if it was of mockery.

  She strode across the long room and stopped next to his chair. No movement or recognition of her presence. She didn’t see a glass near him, but the smell of brandy wafted up at her.

  Aggie ignored her mounting fear and went in front of him, kneeling as she set her hand on his robe-covered knee. Her voice came out soft. “Devin, do you leave our bed often?”

  Her knees pressed hard onto the parquet floor. She watched his hand-covered face, letting seconds slide into minutes as she was determined to wait this out. No amount of ignoring would get him out of answering what, to Aggie, had suddenly become the most important question in the world.

  The wind whipped harder, slashing the rain onto the window behind her. Lightning flashed, illuminating Devin’s shadowed face and hidden eyes. Aggie waited.

  An eternity passed, and Devin moved his hand from his forehead, setting it along the arm of the chair. His eyes opened, only to stare past Aggie at the window.

  “It is the rain.” His coarse voice set the hairs on the back of her neck on end.

  Aggie waited.

  “The rain.” A touch of anger crept into his voice.

  Her hand moved ever so slightly on his leg, urging him on.

  “The rain wakes me…memories, guilt, they haunt me, have plagued me for far too long.”

  “Guilt?” Aggie brought her other hand to his leg.

  “Look at the rain, Aggs. Turn around and look.” Devin leaned forward and grabbed Aggie’s shoulders, gently twisting her around. She sat on the floor, tucking her legs under herself, and wrapped an arm along his calf. As she stared at the pelting rain, lightning would strike the sky, and in those moments, Aggie could see Devin’s face reflected in the glass—hard and tortured, as memories consumed him.

  Devin leaned back in the chair. It took all of Aggie’s willpower to wait through the silence and not turn back to him.

  The pit in her stomach grew, and when he finally spoke, it dropped, taking her breath.

  “My father killed my mother during rain like this. I watched. I stood paralyzed. My mother cried for me to help her, but I could not move. Not one muscle. Not one step.”

  Aggie froze at the words.

  “I watched as he beat her with a metal stoker, hitting her, over and over. The entire time her arms were out to me, as were her words, for help. She died on the floor, arms still begging. I did nothing. It is why people think I am a monster. It is why I leave you when it storms.” His blunt voice held no emotion.

  She forced herself to take a breath, but she couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t tear her eyes off the spot on the window that held his reflection. “How old were you?”

  “Twelve.”

  Bile filled her throat. The gruesome image flashed in her mind, a twelve-year-old boy, witness to cruelty beyond sanity. He had just laid it out for her.

  The pain she caught in his eyes at unguarded moments. Why he wanted her to know nothing of his childhood. The slight surprised glance he gave whenever she spontaneously touched him. She had never imagined the horror he held.

  Without warning, her own father’s face, dying, came into her mind. She tightened her arm around his leg as tears began to slide down her face, her heart breaking at what that one destructive moment in time must have done to him.

  She couldn’t—didn’t want to hear any more of it. But she knew she had to. She also knew she couldn’t dare to turn around and face him. Facing the window, facing the storm—this was the only way she was going to hear the truth he had tried to hide.

  “How? Why?” Her choked whisper was loud against the rain hitting the window in front of them. “Tell me all of it.”

  He stayed silent, and just when Aggie thought she would need to prod him, his voice cut through a crash of thunder.

  “You once asked about the small dining table. This is the story of why.” Aggie watched his reflection as he took a deep breath. “My parents did not love each other. Rather, my mother never loved my father, loathed him at best. I understand he loved her, or at least was infatuated with her at the beginning. That was his ruin. That was his mess. And he eventually echoed her sentiments. He married her for her beauty. She married him for his money and title. After I was born, the necessary heir, she collected a number of lovers. She flaunted them. She was deep on laudanum most of the time.” Devin’s voice remained detached.

  “Despite the animosity, if the three of us, mother, father, and myself, were present in the same household—usually it was here at Stonewell—my father demanded we all take dinner together. I was four when I first remembered this hell. Our dining table ran near the length of the hall. Mother would sit on one end, father would sit at the other, and I was exactly in the middle. Conversation was never had at these dinners. Rather, my mother would berate my father, his lacking in bed, through all the courses, her voice echoing down the table. Father ignored her. He reveled in the fact that he could still make this one demand on his wife. I heard everything. I felt everything. Those were the coldest moments of my life.”

  Devin’s legs moved, stretching out aside Aggie. She moved her right hand up, wrapping it under his robe around the warmth of his thigh.

  “For the longest time, I wondered why she didn’t love us. Why she looked at me with disgust. I gave up on her long before father did.”

  Fresh tears filled Aggie’s eyes. She could only picture Devin as a little boy, face falling time and again as his mother discarded him.

  “My father moved into town almost exclusively, and mother stayed here, a line of lovers tromping through the halls. I stayed in town with father. She was mean. He was bitter. I was lucky to stay in the household of bitterness. I finally escaped both of them when I left for school. The night it happened, it was on a rare occasion we were all at Stonewell, and father and I had left for London. A storm came up, just like this one, forcing us to return.”

  Lightning flashed as Devin paused, giving Aggie an agonizing glimpse of his taut face.

  “When we arrived back at the estate, we were soaked, tired, hungry. Father was walking down the hallway before me and passed by the dining hall.”

  Devin’s entire body tensed around her. Aggie’s fingers tightened into his leg.

  “My mother and one of her lovers were on the dining table, naked. On the table. To my father, the table was a symbol of the last bit of control he had over his wife. He snapped. He picked up a fire stoker. The man ran. But my mother just laughed. Ridiculed him. Cruelty in every word. He attacked her. He killed her. Then he climbed out of an upper window, screaming at God. I don’t know if he slipped or jumped to his death. The entire time I heard him ranting above, I stood in the dining room, paralyzed, the dark rain pounding on the glass behind my mother’s body. Taunting me with every echoing drop. The first thing I did after their funerals was to destroy the table.”

  Devin went silent, his body still.

  Aggie prayed for lightning, she needed to see his face. Excruciating minutes passed, but when the light flashed, she took in every line of Devin’s face reflected in the glass. He stared straight ahead into the rain, a set mask of hardness. He was waiting for judgment.

  Judgment she had no right to entertain.

  As still as possible, she took a deep breath, struggling to gain control of her emotions, to quell the shards that ran through her stomach, to stop the flow of tears staining her face. Her t
ears would not be seen as lamenting all a young boy had lost. No, Devin would see the tears as pity. And she would not give him a reason to believe she pitied him.

  After long moments of silence, Aggie regained control. She turned around, balancing on her knees between his legs. She placed a hand on each of his thighs.

  Aggie watched Devin’s averted eyes, waiting patiently. After a few blinks, he dropped his gaze to her, meeting her eyes.

  “You cannot forgive yourself, can you?”

  Surprise crossed his face and, after a few seconds, he shook his head.

  “And you cannot forget either, can you?”

  Devin closed his eyes for a long moment. His chest rose and fell in deep breaths. Breaths that harbored the weight of unyielding demons. He shook his head again, giving a tortured exhale.

  Aggie near doubled over from the anguish she saw etched on his face.

  She lifted her right hand and laid it gently along his jaw. “Then I will watch the rain with you.”

  Without waiting for him to open his eyes, without asking for answer, Aggie turned back around, tucked her feet under her, and wrapped her arms around Devin’s leg.

  She set her head on his thigh, and watched the rain hit and roll down the glass before her.

  ~~~

  She was asleep now. Her head, lighter before, was now heavy on his thigh, but her arms still gripped tightly about his leg. Her breathing was light, even.

  Devin mindlessly caressed her hair as he stared down at her. He had looked at nothing else but her since she had turned back around several hours ago.

  She hadn’t pitied him. She made no demands for him to forget all he had been through. And she hadn’t branded him a coward or a monster. Not as so many others had done.

  She had simply accepted what he had said, and stayed.

  The only other person who had ever accepted him and what he had been through, without judgment, was Killian. And he would not think twice about doing anything for Killian, including death. But Devin also knew Killian would never abuse that loyalty.

  Devin’s chest tightened. Here was this slip of a girl, who took the truth and then simply accepted him. She was either in love with him, or was the best actress in the world.

  It was the latter that had been holding him hard against letting her into that hollow spot in his chest. Even as she scratched, day after day, to get in there.

  Damn. What she could do to him. What his mother had done to his father.

  Mind firing, he couldn’t stop the unknowns. What if she grew tired of him? What if he turned into a decaying, raging shell like his father? Unbearable. What if she took on a lover? The last question hit him hard, and a large lump formed in his throat as anger he could barely suppress gripped him.

  Devin looked hard at the top of Aggie’s head, willing her to wake up and promise over and over that, no, she would never have another man, and no, she would never leave him. He stilled his hand in her hair, shaking as he fought against grabbing her shoulder to wake her and demand the oaths from her.

  Her breath caught with a tiny twitch through her body, and Devin froze. She shifted, arms tightening around his leg as she nuzzled her head in his lap. Back to sleep. Back to peace.

  She had given everything to him. Her body. Her heart. Her trust.

  All he had to do was give her a chance.

  The defining moment in Devin’s life, and all the horror of it, slipped from his mind.

  He was staring down his new defining moment.

  This one he wasn’t going to screw up.

  Devin leaned down and gently picked Aggie up. He stood, walking out of the study with Aggie still sleeping in his arms. A sudden crash of lightning made him pause and look back at the windows.

  It was raining harder than ever. And he didn’t care.

  He had a wife to wake up and make love to.

  { Chapter 18 }

  He was on top of her, his body hot, his flesh pressing into hers. Mouth on her neck, attacking. Aggie’s eyes flew open. This was nothing like what Devin had done to her a few hours ago. Or what she thought he did, she couldn’t be sure if that had been dream or reality.

  She remembered falling asleep in the study, watching the rain, but then waking up in bed, naked, his lips on the small of her back.

  In and out of lucidity she slid, arching against his mouth, his fingers on every part of her body. Gentle, exploring, worshipping each morsel of her skin. Tongue on her belly. Stubbled chin on her inner thigh. Fingertips massaging the muscles in her back. No skin left untouched. Devin deep in her. Slow. Savoring. Even at orgasm, she couldn’t tell if she was awake or not, and she didn’t dare find out, just in case it was a dream.

  It could have been a dream. It could have been reality.

  No. This was nothing like that. This was Devin demanding she wake up. Demanding she meet him, touch for touch, scream for scream, no reservations. Demanding she be fully aware to everything he was going to send coursing through her body.

  This was carnal, and she was ready for it. After all the emotion she had to squelch last night, she ached for it. She needed it.

  Her hands slid down his bare back, cupping his already tense muscles.

  She could feel him smile on her neck. “Awake?”

  Aggie arched her chest to him, letting the sensations roll. “Can you wake me up like this every morning?”

  “Request noted. But you are lucky I let you sleep this long. I have been watching you, hard and waiting, for hours. It has not been easy.”

  He pulled up from her, hovering for a moment above her face, taking in her eyes. The look sent shivers into her core, traveling down her belly and collecting, building a pounding throb between her legs. She saw it in him. He wanted to possess her, and she needed him to.

  Hands leaving his backside, she clasped them around his neck, pulling herself upright as she pushed him flat back onto the bed, straddling. She met his mouth, on fire, tongues instantly in duel, thrusting for control.

  Writhing her hips down against him, she tried to connect their bodies. He was more than ready, hard against her folds, but he wasn’t going to pass control that easily. His hands held her hips hard, thumbs pressing into her belly, holding her just beyond her need to have him in her. Agonizing.

  Aggie pulled from his mouth. “Cruel. You wait for hours, then do that to me?”

  He smirked. “My pain is yours, Aggs.”

  Her instant groan turned into a wicked smile as her eyebrow rose in challenge. “Then your pain, your grace, is about to get extreme.”

  His smirk widened. “You will accomplish that how?”

  She didn’t answer, instead, bent down to his chest, her lips ravaging his skin, trailing downward. The hard ridges along his stomach got harder as she teased the area with her tongue. She moved slow, taunting with every touch of her mouth as she moved down, until her chin hit his protruding member.

  Devin’s rumbling grunt when her lips met the tip of him was worth the trip downward. And the blasphemous yell that exploded from him as her tongue traveled wantonly up and down him, secured her power, but also sent her own throbbing into a frenzy.

  But she wasn’t done with him. His hips already in motion against her lips, she wrapped her mouth fully around him. His hands tangled in her hair as she took him deep, her tongue flickering on the muscle as she dove repeatedly, reveling in every gasp she elicited.

  “Damn, Aggs.” The harsh growl matched Devin’s hands as he untangled them from her hair and grabbed her by the shoulders, ripping her mouth off of him and smashing her back onto the headboard.

  Teeth on her neck, Devin shifted her sideways until she hit the bed post.

  Aggie heaved a breath, her back on the hard wood giving no room for her lungs. Taking him in her mouth had done just as much damage to her own need for him, as his for her. Her hands went down to his waist, pulling at him. “I need you in me now, Devin. Now.”

  He grabbed her wrists, bringing them both above her head, latching her finger
s around the post.

  “Grab it, because I am going deep into you.” His hands went down to her hips, lifting her and impaling her in one fluid motion.

  With a screaming shudder, she wrapped her legs around him, and her fingernails dug into the wood as she arched, taking him full and long. Nine searing thrusts, and she twisted uncontrollable, agonizing in her peak. She lost grip on the wood, crumbling against Devin in spasms, but then he slid one hand under her bottom and used his other to push her back up against the headboard.

  His hand on her collarbone pinned her to the wood, and his mouth went to her ear. “You’re not done, Aggs. You have more. No walls. You are giving me everything.”

  Spasms ebbing, she nodded, her voice breaking. “God, yes. Everything. Do it. Everything.”

  His hand went under her thigh, and he pulled out of her, crashing into her again and again. This time, her hands gripped Devin, fingernails deep into his skin, begging, urging every thrust onward. Her legs held him deep in her every time, until he fought his way free, only to dive deeper back into her.

  He wasn’t wrong, and the build in her core hit fiercely. She could only cry half words at the onslaught, demanding he not stop. Demanding he take her even deeper. Harder. Contort her flesh and make it his.

  He came, surging into her, expanding and filling her so completely her body had no choice but to join his in a screeching, blinding light.

  She was splayed on him, cheek in the crook of his chest, muscles jelly, when conscious thought came back. And the first thought she had, she said breathless, without thought, without defenses.

  “I love you, Devin.”

  “Aggs…”

  She tilted her head to look at his face. He didn’t waste a moment before he slid her body upward and kissed her hard and long.

  The kiss held everything he didn’t say, and it didn’t bother Aggie there were no mirrored declarations from him. She said it for herself. Said it to honor what she recognized deep in her heart. This man was her breath. She wasn’t going to deny that. Nor would she ever have him doubt it.

  As for him uttering the word “love” to her—she wasn’t sure she would ever hear that word from his lips. Not with what he had gone through as a child.