A Stone in the Sea

by A. L. Jackson

  A snarl ripped from the other side of the room where Sebastian was still pacing. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth as if he were wiping off a bitter taste, the sound a clear rebuttal to my statement.

  Charlie looked toward him and lifted his chin in some kind of gratitude. “Thanks for being there for her…jumping in when she needed someone. Not a lot of people are willing to risk themselves for someone else.”

  Baz shrugged through all the tension ringing him tight, the words barely skating through his clenched teeth. “It was nothing.”

  It was everything.

  “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you home.” Charlie looked to Tamar. “Can you take care of closing up? Make sure we get shut down early. No one needs to be hanging out tonight. Won’t tolerate that kind of garbage going down here.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  The bold clash of Baz’s voice thundered in the air, striking out her consent. “I’ve got her. I’ll take her home.”

  A race of palpitations flapped through my chest, and dizziness swooshed again, though this time it had nothing to do with the blow I’d sustained, but completely due to him. Stormy, conflicted eyes fell on me as I peeked up at the man—this man I didn’t even know and wanted more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life, every risk damned.

  Worry furrowed Charlie’s brow, and he looked to me, gauging my reaction.

  I gave an emphatic nod. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. That way you can stay here and help Tamar close up. She doesn’t need to be here by herself.”

  Tamar was quick to protest. “You don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. Let Charlie take care of you. You’re going to have a knot the size of a softball come tomorrow. We should really take you to the ER to get you checked out. I mean, God, Shea, you could have a concussion…or…I don’t know. You need to take it easy tonight.”

  I got the feeling a whole lot of her doubt was projected toward Baz who eased up behind them, his big body towering over them as he looked down on me. Restless, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, something I knew he did when he became uneasy.

  “I’m fine. Really.” I forced a smile. “I just want to go home.” I met Sebastian’s steely gaze. “Baz can take me.”

  My answer seemed to penetrate him, before he took a step back. “I’m going to make sure my guys are all set and bring my car around back.”

  Charlie pushed to his feet. “All right. I’ll help her out. You take care of whatever business you need to.”

  Baz sent a searching gaze my direction as he hesitated at the door, before he pushed it open and disappeared.

  Tamar’s bright blue eyes fell closed, and she swallowed hard, but she opened them to study me. “You sure you trust him, Shea? You don’t know him.”

  I didn’t.

  But I wanted to.

  “It’ll be fine,” I promised.

  “Hope so.” Her tone was soft and sad, and filled with more concern than I thought warranted. But I got it, knew the hurt she’d had at the hands of her ex, the way she’d escaped out east to escape him. Maybe Baz gave her the same vibe—someone so fierce and powerful, an automatic threat.

  But it wasn’t my body I was concerned about.

  “Come on, Shea Bear,” Charlie said, stretching out his hand to help me onto unsteady feet. I swayed just a little, my legs still trying to catch up with what had gone down—that jerk of a barely legal kid who thought he had the right to touch me without my permission.

  I dealt with grabby hands all the time. Like I told Charlie, it came with the territory. But this had been entirely different, his hands pressing beneath my clothes before he’d pressed them viciously to my face.

  I’d been scared, it was true, but the second I’d felt Baz come near, a feeling of safety had captured me.

  Charlie wrapped an arm around my shoulders and led me out of the break room, through the kitchen, and down the dimly lit hall. With each step, my heart rate increased. Pushing open the metal back door, he ushered me out into the deep, deep night. Humidity hung thick, and I drew a cleansing breath into the well of my lungs. My nerves were on overdrive listening to the roar of an engine as a car rounded the corner. One I knew could only belong to one man.

  Headlights cut into the lot, and that same black car Baz had ducked into four days before rolled to a stop in front of the door. He put it into park and jumped from the driver’s seat. He rushed around the front to open the passenger door. It felt as if the heat of his hands seared me when he gripped me by the upper arms and helped me down onto the soft black leather.

  He stepped out of the way and Charlie took his place. My burly, softie of an uncle dropped a kiss to my forehead before he pulled back with a smile, touched my chin with his knuckle. “Rest up, Shea Bear. I’ll check in tomorrow.” Then he turned his attention to Baz and said, “Take care of my girl.”

  Baz just blinked a long, pained blink, then gave him a short nod.

  Charlie headed back inside, and Baz clicked the door shut. Tamar stood near the outside wall, appearing edgy and uptight. The movement of her red lips was vehement, firm, and in no uncertain terms, ripping with warning.

  Part of me wanted to roll down the window and hiss at her to mind her own business, assert I knew what I was doing and she didn’t need to stand out there and fret over me, and in turn, back Baz into a corner with this unwarranted ambush.

  But the rest of me knew she was right. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. All I knew was it was something that lured me, spoke to me, and petrified me all at the same time.

  I had already started the fall. Monday I’d thought I’d hit the bottom. But I realized while I was clinging to Baz’s neck, held in the safety of his arms, that I’d barely cleared the ledge. Now I felt desperate to find out where I would land.

  Saying something sharp and low, Baz backed away from her, shot her a look over his shoulder I couldn’t decipher, while he rounded the front and slipped back into his seat. Without sparing me a glance, he put it in drive and flipped us around in the gravel lot, the tires squealing when he took to the street.

  Suffocating silence swallowed us while I focused on the way his muscles flexed and bowed as he shifted hard, the ink covering his skin contorting like it ached to tell a story.

  A strangled moment passed before I turned to take in the rigid defiance set in his profile. “Thank you,” I finally whispered into the stillness. He swallowed hard, and my eyes trailed the bob of his thick, muscular throat. “You saved me tonight. I don’t know what would have happened had you not been there.”

  Dents of conflict slashed all over his gorgeous face when he glanced at me—his voice hard, the words grating up his throat. “I lost it, Shea. That guy touching you?” Disgust deepened those dents. “Couldn’t handle it. You don’t belong to me, and still, there wasn’t one place inside me that could accept the idea of another man touching you. Not one. And I don’t fucking know how to make sense of that. But when he hurt you?” A curse flew from his mouth. His brow pinched when he spit the word, and he slammed his palm down on the steering wheel, obviously unwilling or unable to finish what was burning to be said, words I knew made him just as vulnerable as the ones boiling inside of me.

  He jerked to a stop at the curb in front of my house.

  The engine still rumbling, the man stared unseeing into the blaze of lights stretching out into the slumbering night.

  Lost in the tension that wound us tight, something that only belonged to us, I stared out into the same nothingness.

  My voice was quiet. Unsure. “You think I understand this? You think I like feeling this way?” I chanced peeking at him, taking in the sharp curve of his jaw he held taut, and I was sure he wasn’t immune to whatever this was, either. This consuming feeling that came over me every time he was near.

  I knew that’s why he was here.

  “Do you think I like it that you’re the only thing I can think about? That when I close my eyes, what I see is your face? That I don’t eve
n know you, and somehow you feel like one of the most significant people to have ever walked into my life?”

  With both hands, he squeezed the steering wheel, still refusing to look my way.

  God, maybe this was the most foolish thing I could do, stripping myself bare, laying myself completely at his feet. But I couldn’t stop. That unexpected grief from his absence that had followed me through the week pulsed at my insides, those many hidden thoughts and desires seeking a way free.

  My voice softened and took on a tone of resignation. “I gave up a long time ago, Baz.” Sadly, I turned to consider my house, the windows darkened, the porch swing rocking in a barren sway. “Gave up on dating and men and the idea of love because that little girl has enough love for me. Since the day she was born, she’s been the only thing I needed.”

  I looked back at him, and he was barely breathing—his chest tight and his posture rigid. The air escaping his nose was nothing more than a whispered grunt.

  If it were possible, my voice softened more. “And then there was you.”

  And then there was you.

  I figured that’s all he needed to know.

  Because it was everything. Both an admission and a plea.

  I’ve got you, baby.

  It was the only thing I wanted—for Sebastian Stone to have me, even if it was just for a little while.

  Without further words, I released my seatbelt and slipped out, quietly latched the door shut behind me, and didn’t look back as I headed up the walkway.

  Leaving him with the decision.

  Because mine had already been made.

  A disconcerted thrill sped through me when he finally killed the engine, though I could feel it was done with reluctance and doubt. My nerves lit in a frenzy, with a desire that sang and a fear that stung as my ears tuned into the creak of a door being cranked open then discretely closed. The front running lights flashed and the horn blipped as the car was abandoned on the street. That thick, consuming presence spread over me from behind as I slowly made my way up the three steps onto the porch.

  Unsteady and irregular, my heart hammered.

  His boots thudded on the freshly stained boards.

  I paused at the door and he stopped a fraction away, a heady heat burning into my back. Shakily I dug through my bag to find my key, slid it into the lock, and slowly turned the latch, letting the door drift open to reveal the darkness from within.

  A heavy expulsion of air blew strands of my hair. Like a bull before it charged. Filled with lust. Maybe even anger.

  “You sure you want me to step through that door?” The words sounded like a threat when he breathed them across my ear.

  Because we both knew exactly what would happen if he followed me inside.

  “Yes,” I promised, knowing it was true, knowing it was wrong, knowing it would ultimately wreck me.

  Dropping my head, I stepped over the threshold, almost tiptoeing across the shiny dark hardwood floors.

  Find love and bring it here.

  My grandmother’s words echoed through my mind. Guilt squeezed my ribs. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe this man would bring any of it into this house.

  Or maybe I was just that much of a fool, wanting him so badly I was willing to take the chance, to take a memory and tuck it away, a reminder of what could be.

  Of what I could feel.

  Something I’ve never felt before.

  And I felt it now, as he followed me in, staying close behind, his footsteps keeping time with mine.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  My pulse beat frantically, and still I couldn’t look back as we began to ascend the stairs, my hand gliding up the smooth rail. I couldn’t turn to see the expression I knew would be carved on the beautiful, bold lines that amassed his stony expression. The same he’d watched me with all night. With desire and hunger and some kind of unfathomable hate, as if he were just as terrified of me as I was of him.

  I mounted the top of the stairs to the second-floor landing.

  Normally I would go left and steal into Kallie’s room. I’d press gentle kisses to the softness of her cheeks, to her forehead, and brush my fingers through her hair while I watched her sleep and wished for peaceful dreams to enter her mind. Normally I’d pause at April’s door and whisper, “I’m home,” before I collapsed into bed exhausted and alone.

  But tonight. Tonight was anything but normal.

  Normally I didn’t bring virtual strangers home.

  Baz followed me into my shadowy room. The door to the bathroom rested partially ajar and the bright overhead lights bled a faint hue of light in a wedge across the floor. It was messy—clothes strewn across the floor, tossed onto the large chair sitting under the window, the bed unmade.

  I stopped in the middle of it, trying to still the thunder pounding through my veins while I listened to the soft click of my bedroom door being closed.

  Slowly I turned around. The air just leaving my lungs hitched when I took him in, the captivating force of this man magnified, grey eyes turned to pitch—the most brilliant kind of black.

  Savage.

  Feral.

  I all-out shook beneath the severity, knowing after tonight, I was never going to be the same.

  He was going to mark me.

  Scar me.

  “You see me, Shea?” The gruff question threw me, and he lifted his chin in a challenge I wanted to meet. I knew what he was offering. One last chance to back out. A warning that came with his fierce beauty because we both knew he had the power to lay me to waste.

  But where there’s beauty, there’s also pain.

  And I wanted to share in his, because I felt it every time he looked at me. I wanted to immerse myself in it, in him. To be set adrift in all he kept hidden, to slip under, to see and feel and experience what he shored up tight inside.

  Slowly, I lifted my own chin. But not in challenge. In surrender. “Show me.”

  He watched me closely as he pulled a strip of six condoms out of his front pocket.

  Correction.

  Five.

  One was missing.

  Jealousy curled through me like a sickness, and I attempted to swallow around it, knowing this wasn’t going to end well. My heart was never going to make it.

  But in this moment, I didn’t care.

  Because I was falling.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  He tossed them onto the center of my rumpled bed. “Glove box,” he said as if he felt the need to explain.

  Awareness swelled, perception that belonged only to us, lifting in an arc, barbs of energy prickling at my fevered skin.

  Never releasing me from the grip of his gaze, he reached for the collar of his tee and tugged it over his head. Almost defiantly, he stood up straight and stared back at me.

  That insane, confusing attraction I’d somehow managed to keep under semi-control, hidden inside, burst—a rapid slide pushing heat through my veins. Gathering fast.

  My mouth went dry and I shifted on unsteady feet.

  He knelt down and unlaced his boots, rose and toed them off, ticked through the buttons on his fly. Shoving his jeans down his legs, he shrugged out of them, kicked the pile of clothing aside.

  Oh. God.

  He stood there in nothing but a pair of tight, tight boxer briefs, his thick erection straining against the fabric, pushing at the elastic band in a play to break free.

  Just like the first time he lifted his face to me, I was again confronted with more beauty than I could fathom. Again imperfect. And again, I was sure that was part of the problem, because my heart lurched in a bid to meet with his, and my stomach clenched with a flood of desire that sailed straight through me.

  My eyes soaked him in.

  Dragging across wide, wide shoulders. Tracing his collarbone, and exploring the coarse, rigid muscle that defined his chest. I sucked in a broken breath when I let my eyes wander down to take in how those wide shoulders and chest tapered into the f
lat planes of his abdomen. Hipbones jutted out from his narrow waist, a deep cut of muscles on his lower stomach that disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear.

  The strength of him was overbearing. Foreboding.

  And I was sure I’d never seen a more brutally beautiful man.

  But just like his face, scars were etched into his skin, lanced across his chest, one slashed in a long gash across his side. Some deep. Others shallow.

  All significant.

  Both of his arms were completely covered in ink—colors and swirls and more beauty that spoke of…pain. Bleeding crosses, indecipherable words, and hidden innuendo. One arm depicted a darkened sky, the night infinite. Eternal.

  My attention was drawn to the mermaid on his left upper arm. Her face was fierce and evil and somehow angelic. She sat on a rock next to a raging sea swishing her tail. A pocket watch was held gingerly in the scoop of her hands. The watch appeared to be disintegrating, slipping through her fingers, like sands of an hourglass falling through the cracks.

  But his torso was bare, except for one tattoo that ran down his side. It was a monkey. A green monkey clearly supposed to be some sort of stuffed animal. A child’s toy. The artwork was crafted to appear fluffy, the arms and legs long and lanky. The face was white with plain black dots for the eyes and nose, the smiling mouth a black seam.

  But it was turned upside down, bent backward, the arms and legs flailing, as if it were tumbling in a free fall.

  It left no illusion of a chance to be saved.

  The childlike simplicity of it was gut-wrenching.

  And I knew. And I knew. And I knew.

  “You see me, Shea?” he asked again, fisted hands at his sides, his voice tight. There was no missing the sharp edge of vulnerability.

  “Yes,” I whispered, stepping closer, letting my fingertips trail across his collarbone, down the strength of his chest that jumped beneath my touch, to the monkey falling at his side.

  Where there’s beauty, there’s also pain.