“Yes, baby, goddamn,” he growled, bringing the phone to his ear just as she took as much of his member as she could—about half of his long, thick shaft—to the back of her mouth, letting the sensitive tip hit her throat. “Fuck—what?”
The moment he heard the voice on the other end of the line, he almost hung up. The redhead became more animated the moment he answered; suddenly wide-awake and appearing intoxicated by the flavor of his rod.
“Fuck, Stella, is there anyone else?” He cringed into the phone, sinking his fingers into the redhead’s hair. He waited for her to pause, her full lips still wrapped around his heat, before he propelled his hips forward, fucking her mouth. She gagged around each strike, but that didn’t stop him. He picked up speed, loving the sound.
“You really think I’d be calling you right now if there was anyone else?” Stella cried.
“When?”
“What do you mean when? Right now! What part of ‘my boss is gonna fire me’ didn’t you understand?”
The entitled tone of her voice nearly drove him to slam the phone back down. He almost did. Instead, however, hips still driving mindlessly into the wide-open mouth before him, he leaned back again, tore open the bedside drawer, and grabbed the small piece of paper inside. The piece of paper he’d kept in that very drawer for nearly six months. The one he always had to re-visit whenever he found himself on the receiving end of the shrill voice stabbing his eardrums bloody on the other end of the line right then.
The tattered paper trembled in his fingers as his eyes ran over the hastily scribbled words that seemed to reach up and seize his heart in a death grip.
‘Please take care of Stella and Blue’
The suffocating vise around his heart loosened, but only to allow the aching muscle to skip a beat as he reread the words. He rolled his eyes up to the top of his head as the words replayed themselves over and over in his head. He stared at the ceiling fan spinning overhead for nearly a minute, silently begging the higher powers for patience. Begging for mercy. Begging for the strength to tell the spoiled monster on the other end of the line exactly where she could shove it, once and for all.
His jawbone rolled under his milky skin, back and forth, eyes narrowing deeper by the moment until he was full-on squinting. He didn’t even feel the pleasure he was sure was emanating from his dick anymore, unable to focus on anything but the sheer frustration encasing every bone in his body. How was it possible for a man to be frustrated in the middle of a blowjob? If any woman could pull off such an amazing feat, it was Stella Armstrong.
He read the note once more, phone still on his ear, her whiny voice paralyzing his eardrum like a potent vat of poison.
Cursing under his breath, he looked back down at the redhead still bobbing on his flesh and grumbled, “Get off me.”
3
“Mrs. Armstrong, this is Premier Credit of North America! A debt collector! The United States Department of Education has retained our services to collect a federal debt which we understand you owe!”
Stella couldn’t decide who was screaming louder, the lunatic on her answering machine, or the child in her arms. When Blue’s howls grew shrill enough to crack the glass windows in the living room, she had her answer. The impatient debt collector’s judgmental voice was soon drowned out by her daughter’s cries, ensuring Stella’s attention became completely focused on the baby wiggling dejectedly in her arms.
It never ceased to amaze her how strong babies were. No matter how many times she found herself in that position, curled up on the living room sofa with a howling child on her lap, it always managed to surprise her all over again. Her entire body stilled as Blue screamed and writhed in her arms—chubby cheeks beet red and glistening with tears—one false move from realizing her dream of getting out of Stella’s hold and crashing down to the marble floors below. Stella attempted to both brace her body and relax it like a passenger standing on a moving subway, bobbing and weaving in a desperate quest for control during a bumpy ride. Just like a train moving too fast on an uneven track, Blue made a sudden shift turn that caused Stella to gasp and tighten her hold, which did about as much good as wrapping her arms around an out-of-control slinky slithering down a flight of stairs.
Her own eyes filled with hot tears as her daughter’s wails split her ears and those tears multiplied as her helpless gaze landed on the TV glaring into the darkened room.
“Come on, Blue. Can you please stop crying for mommy?” she begged, even as moisture rolled down her own cheeks, using her free hand to reach for the DVD remote on the side table. “I know your real mommy, DJ, left you and you’re devastated and all, but this is just—”
“Please return this call at our toll-free number! (866) 808-7289 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.! Central time!”
She breathed a sigh of relief as the answering machine finally clicked off, turning up the volume of the TV to drown out the memory of the message altogether, letting his deep voice fill the room instead. Her bottom lip began to quiver as her eyes raked his face on the screen. His dark blonde hair, laid perfectly by the hair and makeup team she knew was watching him anxiously on the other side of the camera. His bright blue eyes, nearly reaching through the screen and taking her around the neck—not roughly, but tenderly—the way his gentle fingers always used to. His flawless, tanned skin—not a single blemish to be seen on either side of his chiseled jaw. Soft pink lips, not too big and not too small—a perfect match for the very lips screaming into her ear right then.
What seemed like a never-ending valley of desert sand dunes served as his backdrop as he spoke into the camera.
“Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Erbil in northern Iraq, where the sun is just coming up…” His luminous smile lit up the camera, but Stella knew him well enough to recognize that his smile shook and quite didn’t reach his eyes, the way she knew it could. “We’re here because, for the last several months, we’ve been covering the fight to drive insurgents from the city of Mosul, which is about 50 miles away. The fighting isn’t entirely over yet. There are still small, but fierce, pockets of resistance…”
“Maybe Daddy will make you feel better, huh?” Stella sniffled while taking Blue under the armpits and turning her toward the TV. Blue didn’t stop crying, her fingers and toes curling tight as her screams only grew louder, trembling in her mother’s hold. Stella spoke over her anyway. “I bet you’d love him just as much as you love your auntie DJ if he were still here. You’d definitely love him more than you love me. Everyone did. And, honestly, who could blame you? He was pretty great—” Stella had to take a moment when her voice broke before she slapped the tears away from her face.
Blue craned her head to look up at Stella, her own face still curled up as she wept, as if she could sense that her mother had now joined her in her rapid descent into misery.
“We weren’t much older than you when we first met, you know. Just babies. I used to chase him and your uncle Justin and Rocco all over the neighborhood. They never wanted to play with me because I was a girl. Always ditching me on their bikes. I was never fast enough to keep up. It wasn’t until middle school that your daddy stopped trying to ditch me and started trying to catch me.” She laughed. “He was my first kiss. My first everything.” She smiled as best she could down at her. “And, man, he would’ve loved you. All the way down to your dirty stinking diaper he would’ve loved you, and cherished you, and taken care of you, and made sure you never wanted for anything in the whole wide world. Just like he did for me.” Stella sniffled and looked back at the TV, setting her chin in Blue’s curls. “You have his eyes, and his chin, and his stubborn streak too. He never stopped fighting and hollering until he got his way, kind of the way you are right now. I guess that’s how he got as far as he did, right? First Chief Foreign Correspondent at NBC under 30… no one climbs so high so fast without chopping off a few heads along the way, huh?”
It was as if Stella was expecting an actual answer from Blue because when it didn’t
come, a sob rose up her throat. She tried to swallow it back, but when her gaze rose up from the TV screen to the black-and-white photo right above it—her and Troy on their wedding day—she couldn’t hold it in. A whimper flew from her downturned lips and quickly evolved into a series of cries that tightened her stomach. The moisture filled her eyes and blinded her, blurring her vision and erasing her wedding photo from view. But the photo was still as fresh in her mind as the beautiful day it was taken. The smile on his face. The sparkle in his eyes when he’d whispered in her ear at the altar that he couldn’t wait to make her his wife. His admission that he was already dreaming about the beautiful babies they’d make.
When her cries began to rival Blue’s in sheer ferocity and volume, Stella wondered if anything in the world was capable of drying the tears in her eyes and the pain in her heart.
Then, the growl of an engine invaded her mind. Headlights filtered through the sheer white curtains hanging down from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The very aura of him drying her tears in an instant, a hot tightening in her heart replacing them as she jumped up from the couch and stomped to the foyer with Blue in her arms, wiping the residual wetness from her face with the sleeve of her grey business dress as she went.
Rocco was halfway up the porch stairs outside when Stella threw the door open. He paused mid-climb when their eyes met. The black jeans and t-shirt he donned hummed against his ivory skin. Even as the dark clothes made his green eyes seem brighter, something about him still seemed inky. Starless. Like a solar eclipse delivering a black sky.
She’d always believed his last name was appropriate. Just like a “wolf”, he’d always been a loner at the core. The kid in pre-k who played with his toy trucks alone in the corner. Utterly unapproachable through all of grade school and middle school. So deathly silent for all four years of high school that most of the students wondered if he even had vocal chords. An island to the core to every soul but one. Loyal only to his best and only friend. It was a loyalty that had proven to be beyond measure, just like a wolf to its pack. Even in death.
Stella’s eyes shifted to the police cruiser he’d parked next to her Range Rover. Just like a wolf, his instincts were sharp, which was how he’d survived behind the wheel of that car for as many years as he had, and what made him such a good cop in a sea of utter incompetence. Highly intelligent. Deeply protective of his freedom.
As far as Stella was concerned, the only thing Rocco Wolfe didn’t have in common with the wolves that roamed the tundra was their propensity to mate for life. Monogamy had never been a phenomenon he’d aspired to, and he clearly had no plans to start.
After a long pause on the steps, Rocco continued forward with vacant eyes, as if the sight of her had left him narrowly resisting the urge to roll them into the top of his head.
“You’re late,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he spat, stepping into the foyer.
Even at 5’8” and 175 pounds, Stella was still no match for his broad 6’6” frame as it barreled unapologetically into her space, forcing her to stumble backward without even having to touch her.
He slid his hands under Blue’s armpits and took the screaming baby from Stella’s arms. “Give me my goddaughter. Do you have any goddamn idea what I left behind to come down here and bail your ass out?”
“I’m sure your latest victim will understand.”
“Didn’t seem like such a victim when she was screaming my name.”
“Screams of horror, I’m sure. Did you at least remember to un-cuff this one from the headboard before you left?”
“Why is she crying so hard?” Rocco demanded, distracted by Blue’s wet, blubbering face. “Did you feed her? Change her?”
“Yes, Rocco, I fed and changed my child.”
“Never know with you.” He kissed Blue’s forehead and shushed her, causing her to look up at him, her cries slowing immediately the moment their eyes met.
Stella nearly screamed when Blue’s cries didn’t just stop completely but were replaced with delighted giggles when he started bopping her up and down on his arm. Blue inserted four fingers into her previously screaming mouth, filling the foyer with the soft sound of her contended suckling instead.
Rocco smirked at the sudden silence, and Stella could almost hear the smart remark lingering on the tip of his tongue, but instead of speaking it out loud he cocked his ear toward the living room, where Troy’s voice was still resonating out of the TV.
A cringe darkened his face. “The fuck you watching this for?”
“Maybe because I want my daughter to know her father.”
“By showing her videos of the war-torn hellhole that took his life?”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my kid.”
“You can’t even get her to stop screaming for five minutes whenever she’s in your arms, sweetheart. I don’t have enough time to tell you how to raise your kid.”
“You have no—” Her eyes went ablaze, hands clenching into fists. Her heart rate kept doubling until the simple act of speaking seemed almost impossible, forcing her to hiss at him through clenched teeth. “You have no idea what it’s like… what I’ve been through… doing everything on my own… you have—” She was forced to take a moment when her voice cracked. “No idea what it’s like to have to raise a little girl all by yourself! A little girl who will never know her daddy because he was stupid enough to go over to that ‘war-torn hellhole’ and get himself killed! You have no idea what it’s like to know that your baby girl will never know her father even though you begged—begged him…” She couldn’t finish, her throat closing and wide eyes falling, fighting for control when she felt hot tears threatening them once more.
“I’ll tell you what I do know.” Rocco nodded down at her left hand. “I know how fast that ring came off. All his belongings packed away and banished to the garage. Not even six months in and already searching for the next simp to bleed dry? Maybe this new boss of yours, who always has you running out the door at all hours of the night?”
“So, now I’m sleeping with my boss. That’s wonderful. Fantastic.”
“I know you’ve got yourself convinced that you’re some kind of superhero over here. A special little sunflower who is saving the world one shitty diaper at a time. Like you’re the only woman alive who’s ever pushed a screaming kid out of her snatch. But contrary to what you’ve grown to believe in that shiny little bubble you’ve been floating around in your entire life, you don’t get extra credit for doing what you’re supposed to do, Freckles.”
“Don’t call me frec—”
“There’re tons of single mothers out there who didn’t go straight from the sorority house to college dropout to spoiled-ass housewife. Mothers who actually finished college, started real careers, and work their asses off every single day just to come home to a house full of babies who don’t go full nuclear the moment they’re in her arms. And those single mothers don’t have a Rolodex of people in their phone willing to press pause on their own lives just to cater to her every precious whim either.”
“It’s the least some of the people in my Rolodex could do. Considering how I became a single mother in the first place.”
The color drained from Rocco’s face. He licked his lips as they grew pale and pinched, nostrils flaring as his breathing picked up. He tried to smirk, but his trembling lips couldn’t finish the job.
Stella dug in. “And you still have no idea what it’s like, and never will until you have kids of your own.”
“Why would I need to? Been raising this one since the day she was born.”
“So now I’m an absent mother. Awesome. What else you got? Might as well get in a few fat jokes too. You’re on a roll.”
“Those top two buttons fighting for their lives? Nah, that’s none of my business.”
Stella’s eyes fell to her white-button up blouse. Sure enough, the top two buttons were strained, holding on by a prayer under the tension of her breasts, which were three times bigger than w
hat that blouse was used to supporting. One false move and they’d pop right off. With a roll of her eyes, she snapped the top button open, then the second one, easing up the pressure. Her irritated eyes rose back to him in a “happy now?” manner.
But his gaze was locked to the newly freed buttons that had left a gaping v, putting her cleavage center stage. His hold on Blue slackened.
“You’re an animal.” She turned toward the coat rack next to the door and grabbed her Chanel purse, feeling his eyes running her backside the entire time.
“What are you now? 180? 190?”
Her stomach turned at how close to the mark he was. Knowing that he’d probably tacked on an extra fifteen pounds just to really get under her skin, and snatched her purse onto her shoulder. “I’ve gotta get to work.”
“Tell me…” The silky scent of his cologne came in closer behind her, his breath warming the crown of her head. That warmth slowly traveled down until she could feel it tickling the hairs on her neck, proving his eyes were running her body once more. “How exactly does a secretary with a high school diploma manage to keep up with the mortgage on a six-bedroom in Cascade Hills, a Range Rover, and a Chanel Boy Bag? Planning on blowing through every dime Troy left before Blue even hits college?”
She spun on her heels, taking in a deep breath at how much closer he’d gotten, nearly breaking her neck to look up and meet his eyes. “It’s very concerning that you can identify a Chanel Boy Bag by name, Rocco. Are you sure your anger about my missing wedding ring isn’t really about something a little more deep-seated? I mean, I could go upstairs and grab it for you so you can wear it on your own ring finger if that’s what you really want. How about this? We can both pretend Troy got down on one knee and gave it to you instead of me, okay? I’ll even let you borrow my Boy Bag to match. Would that make you feel better?”
Forbidden (War Book 1) Page 3
