She was tossed roughly aside as he moved out from underneath her. Her knees knocked together as he abandoned her on the bed.
“So much for this place having a privacy policy.” His words weren’t particularly harsh but there was plenty of venom in them.
Stella scrambled to the edge of the bed and reached for him. But she was a fraction of a second too late. He moved out of her grasp and turned to glare at her.
“Anything else you want to tell me? Did you run a background check too while you were at it?”
She pushed back her rising panic and shook her head no. “Van, I didn’t mean to. I just…l—”
“You didn’t mean to?” His voice rose to a roar. “The recording of my session was forced into your ears somehow?”
Pulling in a trembling breath, Stella search for her old self, for her shield of armor that protected her from feeling. The one he’d stripped away. Because what she was feeling in that moment was afraid—afraid of angering him and afraid of losing him—but mostly afraid of seeing a side of him she wasn’t prepared to handle.
Wrapping her arms around her bare chest, she looked up at him. “No. It wasn’t forced into my ears. But I did hear the beginning by accident and then I couldn’t just cut it off. Just like I can’t just cut this—whatever we are—off. So yes, I listened to something I didn’t have permission to hear. And I’m sorry for that. But I just wanted to—”
The sound of a kitchen chair hitting the wall kept the rest of her words locked in her throat. She didn’t even have time to finish flinching before he let his rage loose.
“You wanted to hear it? You want to know what it’s like to see someone you love be destroyed right in front of you? See the light in their eyes go out as they succumb to the voices and the memories and the darkness?”
She felt like that was precisely what she was seeing at that very moment.
“Van, please—”
“She was a fucking kid, Stella. A fucking kid. And they…and I… Then she was gone. You don’t want this. You don’t want this mess, my mess, my messed up shit.”
She felt his pain as if it were being inflicted upon her in that moment. The ache of loss and guilt settled into her bones as her heart took the brunt of his brutal memories.
Miranda’s words came back to her. If she was going to stand in his corner, there would likely be some bystander injuries. She was relieved to discover she didn’t care. Unless he flung another kitchen chair and it knocked her unconscious, she was going to do whatever it took to soothe him. Just like she knew addiction didn’t have a cure, she knew pain like this couldn’t be loved or fucked away. But maybe it could be eased. Embraced with acceptance and understanding.
“I want you, Van. And everything that comes with you. I told you that. I said I wanted all of you and I meant it.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying, cowgirl. No fucking idea.”
“Show me then. Show me your worst, Van. I won’t run. I can take it.”
His anger seemingly subsiding, he lowered himself onto the bed beside her.
“I don’t want you near me when I lose control, Stella Jo. You deserve better than that.”
“You let me worry about what I deserve.” She draped a leg over his lap and resumed her previous straddling position atop him.
His eyes still held remorse, guilt, and something deeper, something she wasn’t sure was identifiable. A self-inflicted penitence he couldn’t seem to escape. She kissed his lips softly before he pulled back.
“So last night was a pity fuck then?”
“No,” Stella said evenly as she lifted her hips just enough to place his hardening length at her entrance. “Last night was because I love you. Because I’m in love with you. Bone-deep, soul-crushing, change-your-genetic-makeup love.”
His eyes widened at her confession. He opened his mouth to respond, but she wasn’t finished.
“This is a pity fuck. And for the record, you’re pretty hot when you’re break-shit mad.”
He growled when she came down hard on him. Her walls accepted the thick intrusion readily, greedily pulling him inward and pulsating in response to the fullness. She arched backward, angling him onto the neediest place inside her.
His mouth sucked each of her breasts in turn, making her moan as she worked him in and out of her.
“I’ve had a rough life. I’m sure I’ll think of some more sad shit soon,” he promised as she rode him harder. “How much pity does it take for you to ride my face?”
Stella stilled momentarily before rising up and standing on the bed above him. She felt his eyes clinging to her throbbing sex.
“I belong to you, remember? Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
After coming so hard he felt drunk, Van stumbled to the bathroom. He glanced at the shower, quickly choreographing the many ways he could take Stella Jo in it. He tried to piss, but his poor dick was so worn out it couldn’t aim for shit. Small price to pay in his opinion.
She was wrapped in his sheets when he returned to bed. Dreamy-eyed with sex-mussed hair. Fucking hell she was beautiful.
Even after he’d sprawled her onto his kitchen table and made her pussy his after sex dessert, licking her to orgasm after orgasm until she begged for mercy, she still looked at him with desire in her eyes. Tempting as it was to sink back into the warmth of her, he wanted to give her what she’d needed in more ways than just with his dick.
“You want to tell me more about those bizarre circumstances, cowgirl? The ones you learned about on your trip home?”
She snuggled in beside him and tilted her mouth up for a kiss. Which he gave her. There was nothing he wouldn’t give her.
Her fingers danced random patterns across his chest. “My mom isn’t actually my mom, not technically anyway. My parents used a surrogate to have me and… It was all just kind of… crazy. How it happened, I mean.”
Of all the things she could’ve said, he was pretty sure he’d expected that answer the least.
“And they just now told you this? Twenty-some odd years later?”
“I’ll be twenty-three next week,” she told him. “You know, in case you wanted to get me a gift.” Her mouth descended onto his chest.
He let his fingers tangle in her hair. “Oh yeah? I’ll see what I can do then.”
“Anyway,” she continued, propping her chin on his chest. “My biological mother’s name was Grace Whitman. She had an abusive boyfriend and…well, honestly, that’s about all I know about her. She died in a car accident with him when I was young.”
Van wrapped his arms around her tightly. “I’m sorry, baby. I know none of that probably felt good to hear.”
And then she’d come to him, and he’d been an asshole of epic proportions. Razor blades of self-hatred shredded his insides.
“No, it didn’t. But I had an idea. Grace’s story kind of reminded me of Val’s and it got me thinking.” Stella sat up suddenly. “What if there had been a place, a place where they could’ve went—somewhere they would’ve been safe, gotten help until they could get on their feet? Maybe they wouldn’t have ended up…like they did.”
“Like a shelter?” Van offered.
Stella bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. “Sort of. Just like… I don’t know. A safe haven where they could get counseling and have a roof over their heads until they figured things out. Grace’s Haven, I’d call it.”
Van sat up next to her. She was beautiful, this woman who he loved, who—by some miraculous gift from the universe—loved him back. Beautiful and selfless.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being here, it’s that we all have to find our own way, you know? Find a way to live our lives without letting regrets and mistakes and painful shit from the past dictate everything we do. Or don’t do.”