36

36

STACEY

Waking to an empty bed has my heart stopping. I panic until I see Kade’s cigarettes and motorbike key on the bedside unit, his phone charging next to the digital clock. It’s just after three in the morning.

I pull the duvet off and check the bathroom, bare feet slapping on the floor as I open the balcony doors and glance down at the grounds, only seeing security. The pool house is dark, and I can hear the water of the loch crashing into the small pier in the rain.

Dressed in Kade’s boxers and top, I slip out of the room and down the spiral steps, stopping when I see two guards. The young one moves in front of me.

“Where are you going?”

For a second, I’m confused. I point my thumb over my shoulder. “Kade wasn’t in bed.”

“Boss had an urgent meeting, though I think it’s over now.”

“Where is he then?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll escort you.” He lowers his head and gestures with his hand for me to continue, following me and leaving the other guard. “Mr Mitchell has instructed us to ensure the safety of all members of the household. We’re… not allowed to let you walk around alone.”

I screw my nose up, but I walk anyway. I get it. The manor and everything within its walls are at high risk, and he’s only doing his job.

He’s tall, blonde and wears a fitted black suit, a gun strapped to his chest. He walks beside me as I hunt the manor for Kade. His earpiece keeps falling out, he yawns twice and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

To make conversation, I ask, “How long have you worked for Kade?”

He thinks for a second as we take the main stairs. “He wouldn’t let me work for him until I was old enough, so only a few months. I’m shadowing the other guards just now.”

“How did you meet him?” I ask. The more I look at him, the more I see a kid holding a gun.

“I was taken from my family and forced into a camp when I was eleven. Mr Mitchell raided the place and saved me when I was sixteen. He slaughtered everyone involved when he found out about the training regime.”

I blanch, unblinking. “Oh.”

“At least I know how to shoot.” His shoulder rises. “My parents keep asking to meet him and thank him, but he’s not one for being praised.”

So he looks like a kid but probably has more experience with that gun than most. “How old are you now?”

“I just turned eighteen. There are five of us here from the same camp – same age. He saved us all. Him and Barry. But we aren’t allowed to fight until we’ve had more training.” He taps his gun. “This is for show. I’m only to use it if absolutely necessary.”

I smile at him, and he visibly relaxes.

Even when going through hell, he still tried to help others. Could I love Kade Mitchell more?

For it being the middle of the night, the manor is quite busy. Preparations are being made for the arrival of Base and his army. Aria has been on a roll with her workers, setting up all the spare rooms, even now, with Ewan handing out food to the crowd at the gate. Some of them are in tents, some sleeping in their cars, but loads of them are drinking around a huge fire and playing music.

Kade is grateful, but I know having to ensure the safety of them all is coming with a lot of extra stress.

Social media has been terrifying. My followers have risen, messages have been flooding my inbox and reporters have reached out to do exclusive interviews with the love of Kade Mitchell’s life.

He laughed at that one.

I turned my notifications off last night, and the thought of looking again now makes my stomach twist.

But on the plus side, the outpouring of love and support for Kade has been insane. Everyone knows his story; everyone knows what he went through and what he did, yet they stand by him. They understand why he killed Archie and the countless others. They want Bernadette to be next, and even set up another petition for him to live-stream her death as well.

The world loves Kade.

Maybe that’s why the police still haven’t forced their way through the blockade.

Base’s wedding has also been all over the news. He’s yet another victim of Bernadette and the underworld’s abuse, and his family isn’t the slightest bit happy.

Luciella is nervous to see him, and as much as she held in her tears when she learned Base is now married, I can tell it’s ripping her apart. Between that, and losing Jason and her father, I’m not quite sure how much more my best friend can take before she flips. She holds a lot in and can sometimes seem emotionless, but she really does have a heart of gold.

One that’s slowly shattering.

We discover Kade is working out, and as the young man walks me to the basement, he tells me he’ll stand at the top of the steps and stay on guard.

“Change” by Deftones plays from the home gym, only growing louder the closer I get. The corridor is barely lit, but I have no idea where the light is, and I can hear metal clanking from his weights.

The basement is huge. It spans nearly the entire length of the manor. I pass by a wine cellar, the walk-in freezer that makes me shiver at the thought of Archie’s remains stored inside and the studio.

To the left of the studio, one of the doors is ajar, a beam of light illuminating the dust in the corridor. I push open the door, and the intense drum and guitars fill my ears, metal banging on metal as Kade lies on a weight bench, pushing a bar above his chest.

Freezing in the doorway, I openly gawk at my boyfriend as if I’ve never checked him out before.

His muscles tense up with each rep, sweat glistening on his skin, his hair wet. The tattoos and scars make him look terrifying as he clanks down the bar and sits up, intense blue eyes clashing with mine in the mirror.

His face is red from exercising, and I drag my gaze from his face, all the way down his body. He’s been working hard the last few weeks and is already building his muscles.

He only has shorts on.

I gulp. “You weren’t there when I woke up.” I hug myself. “I got worried.”

He wipes his face and hair with a towel and tosses it aside then turns the music low. “I had a meeting and needed to clear my head after it.” He’s breathless, his voice strained from his workout. “I should have told you.”

Going by how swollen his muscles are, he’s been working out for hours.

“It’s fine. I’m just paranoid these days.” I drop my hands to my sides. “Are you okay?”

Apart from the murmur of the music, there’s a long silence. Kade flattens his lips, elbows on his knees as he looks for his words. “I don’t know how to answer that, in all honesty.”

I close the door behind me and walk to him, and when I stop near him, he takes my hand and pulls me closer, so I’m standing between his legs. My hands rest on his shoulders, and I massage the tension away with my fingers and give him a warm smile.

He looks up at me, sweat coating his face, his dark brows and long lashes making his eyes more defined.

My fingers slide up and brush through his wet hair. “What’s going on in here?” I ask, tapping his temple. “Tell me, so you aren’t doing this alone.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t need to know. We should move on from the past.”

My voice lowers to a whisper. “I don’t think either of us is ready to move on.”

He sighs and presses his forehead to my stomach, holding behind my knees. “My head’s just fucked. I’m trying to figure out how to save everyone at the same time as staying alive. I’m starting to run out of plans. Bernadette is better protected than royalty, and I have a huge bounty on me. It’s only a matter of time before they come for me.”

“You haven’t been arrested yet either.”

“No,” he says. “I’m starting to believe I won’t be.”

I should be relieved, but that means there’s going to be a war soon.

“Are you okay?” he asks me, looking up when I take a few moments to think of my reply.

“I don’t think I will be for a while. It’s been… constant. As much as we’re in danger now, this is probably the first time I haven’t had to look over my shoulder or worry about Chris coming for me. Even when I was in America, I could never be sure he wouldn’t just show up one day.”

“Did he always come for you?”

I tilt my head. “Mostly, yeah. Every time I went out, I’d come home to some sort of punishment. It only got worse after we got together and I started coming home later, my neck full of hickeys and all your texts on my phone.”

Groaning, Kade presses his forehead to my stomach again. He has no reason to feel guilty, but I know he will. “What else did he do?” he asks, his voice muffled.

“He beat me up. Like, a lot.” I gulp, trying to ignore the memories. “He forced me to go to these messed-up parties with him. He’d make me drink, take pills and sometimes—” I stop, a tear sliding down my cheek. “After he found out I had a boyfriend, he got more violent. I was terrified he was going to start raping me every night. I didn’t know at the time he already was.”

Kade’s grip tightens behind my knees. “I wish you’d told me.”

I stifle a sob lodged in my throat, and my lip trembles. “I wish I did too. I was so scared of what he’d do to you. He would’ve gotten even worse.”

“Worse than killing our kid?” Then he winces. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”

“You’re right though. I was worried about him getting worse, but all the while he was already getting worse. He was sick. Mentally. He deluded himself into believing he loved me. I think he had this idea that he’d be able to Stockholm syndrome me.”

He looks up at my face, his brows knitting together, and there’s rage in his eyes. “I would have killed him sooner. If you’d told me, I would’ve never let you go back to that house, and I would have strangled him to death. Or kept him alive but incapacitated, so he could watch me fuck the woman he tormented, watch her marry me and give birth to my kids. I’d make him watch every fucking second that you loved me.”

I have no idea why, but I smile. “I think the nails in his eyes were better. Your dad hit Barry with his foot.”

He huffs out a laugh. “I knew they’d get along.”

“They did. Sort of.” I lower my voice. “Anyway, I’ve learned from my mistakes. From now on, no secrets. I promise to do better. I’ll be better for you.”

He kisses my hip through the material of his top. “You’re everything I need and want. Don’t ever change. Got it?”

I smile down at him. “Even when I complain?”

“Not everyone is perfect.”

Giggling, I lean down, take his face in my hands and kiss him on the lips. It’s a chaste kiss, short, but it holds so much meaning. “I love you.”

Kade grins against my mouth. “You know, when you say it every hour, those three words lose their meaning.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t get to say them for years. They’ll never lose their meaning.”

“When I started working for Bernadette, I thought you hated me. I kept telling myself you did so I wouldn’t approach you and put you in danger. I wanted you off her radar. But I kind of fucked that up when I picked you up from that house.”

My fingers brush through his hair again. “How did you end up working for her anyway?”

“You already know the story.”

“Tell me the full version, not the watered-down one. If we’re going to talk about this, then please, tell me everything.”

He sighs and pulls me into his lap. “Don’t think any differently of me.”

“Never.”

As Kade tells me from the very beginning, I feel bile rising up my throat. The terror he went through is unimaginable. Bernadette lured him in, saying she wanted to help, only to groom him, turn him into a monster, and force him to kill and fuck and be their lapdog.

Tears flow down my cheeks when he tells how, one time, he was late for an assignment and Archie drugged him up so badly, he didn’t wake for days, and when he did, he just knew the man had violated his teenage body.

He’s shaking beneath me as he keeps going, telling me story after story. Bounty after bounty. How many people he tortured – how he tried to save as many as possible – and the number of people he had to perform for.

His words are spoken against my skin, his head buried in my shoulder, as if he’s too ashamed to look me in the eye.

“How many clients did you have?” I ask, because by the sounds of it, there were loads.

“Please don’t hate me,” he says, lifting his head. “I don’t know. Way over a hundred. You should know, she made me do shit with Base too. You might see the photos. It was only, maybe, five times.”

I’ve already seen the proof, but I didn’t want to ask him about it in case he was triggered by the memories. The amount of torture he went through, I didn’t want to bring any of it up.

“You and Base are okay though?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “If anything, it made us closer. We knew we had to play along to make sure you and Luciella were safe. We didn’t have full sex, but he did stuff to me while I…” He pauses. “Sorry. I really don’t want you to hate me.”

“I could never hate you for that.” Despite Kade being forced into that line of work, I have so much respect for sex workers. I’ve had many students who trained with me so they could apply to clubs, or webcam or gain confidence for lingerie modelling. “Did any of them ever hurt you?”

He laughs. “Yeah. I think Bernadette chose them for that exact reason. Someone actually stabbed me when I was—” He stops and groans. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear any of this.”

“It’s okay; stop apologising. Is it helping? You talking to me about it?”

“Yeah,” he replies, sighing and massaging his thumbs into my sides. “But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not,” I say truthfully. “I want to help.”

“You did help. The memories of us kept me going. I was always in subspace, reliving the times we had while stuff was happening to me. I never stopped loving you, Stacey, even when I was a dick to you. I’ve always been yours.”

I sniff, my eyes burning. “And I’m yours.” I wipe my cheeks. “What age were you when you had your first client?”

He grimaces. “Nineteen. Like a month after we split up.”

“I didn’t think it was possible to hate Bernadette more than I do,” I hiss, raking my fingers through his hair, not bringing up the scars on his scalp. “I think I might help you kill her.”

Kade laughs and snakes his arms around the small of my back, resting his forehead against my own. “Not a chance. As soon as I sort this shit with the police and find out if I’m actually getting charged, and Base arrives with his army of Russians, you’re going to the safe house and taking the dogs with you.”

I frown. “No. I already said I’m staying with you.”

Sighing, Kade easily stands with me wrapped around him, like I’m a featherweight. “I have no idea how to explain this more clearly to you. According to Barry, I have fifty million on my head. Fifty. Do you know how many people are probably rounding up to attack the manor? If the other underworld assholes aren’t already on their way. You staying here is out of the question.”

I fold my arms, and he holds me up. “Why are you changing your mind? You were agreeing with me earlier.”

“I was blinded by your pussy on my cock. I would have agreed to anything.”

My eyes narrow. “That’s irresponsible.”

Kade turns, lowering us onto the weight bench and pushing me to lie back. “No. What’s irresponsible is how many times I’ve been inside you while you’re not on birth control. For that fact alone, you’re going to the safe house.”

“You’re sending me away so you don’t fuck me again?”

It annoys me that he’s grinning, but my annoyance is extinguished as he settles on top of me, causing his top to ride up my body.

“No. I’m sending you away because if I’ve knocked you up, I’m not losing the two of you when they eventually come for me.” He lowers his mouth to mine, softly kissing the corner of my lips and trailing down my jaw. “But seeing you dripping with my cum, knowing the probability of you falling pregnant, makes me fucking hard.” He punctuates the last word by grinding against me once, and I gasp. “Even thinking about it makes me want to fuck you.”

Breathless, I slide my hands up his naked chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can I fuck you now?”

I slap his chest, and he chuckles. “If you keep finishing in me, then—” I stop, my eyes widening. “Oh no. I forgot to tell your mum to get the nurse in.”

Kade shrugs.

“As much as having a baby with you would be perfect, the timing is not. Can we call the nurse once you’re done here?”

He sighs, rolling his eyes. “Fine, but I’m still fucking you.”

As his mouth drops on mine, he turns the music up again, and Deftones echo around the home gym once more.

Kade takes his time as he strips me, and he kicks aside his own shorts until we’re both naked on the weight bench. Then he drops to his knees and dives between my legs without hesitating, devouring my pussy like a starved man.

I tug at his hair as his tongue delves through my entrance, licking, tasting, sucking on my clit so hard, I moan louder than the music.

“Forever my addiction,” he mutters. “I’m obsessed with everything about you.” The suction on my clit grows more intense as he shoves two fingers inside and fucks me with them. “But your pussy is my fucking drug.”

My body convulses under his mouth when he makes me unravel, then he climbs up my body and kisses me. I taste myself as I suck on his tongue, fisting his cock and making him whimper into my mouth as I stroke the length of him.

I’m still tender from all the sex we’ve been having, yet I need more – I want him inside me. Filling me.

He parts my legs wide, hooking his arm under one and hiking it to my shoulder, then slams into me so hard, the bench scrapes on the ground. His thick cock fills me, stretching me with each inch until I adjust to his length, like I haven’t had him inside me repeatedly over the last couple of days.

I cry out as he relentlessly fucks me, the warmth of his body radiating against mine as his mouth sucks at my throat, right over my pulse.

His tongue swipes at my earlobe, pulling it between his teeth. “I can never get enough of you, Stacey. Even when I’m dead, I’ll be haunting you, inside you while you lie in our bed, remembering all the ways I’ve rocked your fucking world with my cock inside this pussy.”

I smile as I moan, throwing my head back as he hits a sweet spot that has my eyes rolling. He hooks his arm under my other leg, hiking both up to give him a deeper angle.

Breathlessly, I grab his chin and kiss him. “We need to be quick. Lu has been going to the studio through the night and she might walk in. She’s quite sad.”

Kade lets my legs drop and straightens his arms, halting the deep strokes of his cock. “I’m inside you, and you’re talking about my sister being sad.”

I bite my lip and try not to laugh. “Sorry.”

Shaking his head, he hides his grin and dives into my throat, sucking on my skin while going slow and deep, his hands on my hips as “Cities” by Toby Mai (featuring Two Feet) begins.

“Fuck, Stacey.” He pulls back to look between us as his thickness slowly pushes in and pulls out to the tip. “Your pussy sucks my cock so fucking good.”

He thrusts harder. “Taking it so well,” he breathes.

My legs wrap around him, and I hook my ankles under his ass to drag him deeper as his name rolls off my tongue like a lyric. “Kade.”

He lowers his mouth to my ear, his breaths heavy against my skin, his cock thickening as my inner walls tighten around him through another wave of euphoria.

“Is my good girl going to take every drop of my cum? Are you going to swell up with my kid and give me everything we’ve ever wanted? I’m going to keep fucking you until we get our miracle. Every day, every night, I’ll be inside you. I want to see you fucking dripping, only so I can shove it back into you, my fingers deep inside your cunt.”

I open my mouth to reply but only a scream comes out as I tense everywhere, my heart racing and my vision blurring as my orgasm rips through me, pulsing around his cock. He fucks me faster until he stills on a tense groan, filling me while his fingers bruise my hips.

When he collapses on top of me, my hands reach into his hair, stroking the dark strands as he pants in my ear.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Did I hurt you?”

I shake my head, unable to speak as I try to fill my lungs. Sweat clings to our skin; we’re naked on the weight bench, the music still playing as the mirrors steam up.

He slides out of me, watching between my legs as he licks his lips. “I think you’re making me crazy. I’ll need to tell my therapist I’ve had the sudden urge to impregnate you.”

I laugh. “He’d be mortified,” I say, wincing as Kade grabs a towel and cleans up my thighs. “Does the therapist help?”

“Yeah. He’s due to arrive today so we can work together in person, if he can get past the crowds outside the gate. He’s been teaching me these mentally stimulating exercises and how to compartmentalise my trauma. When things get dark, I’m learning to work my mind away from the disconnection. I’ve been seeing him since I was young, so I trust him.”

Being so focused on Kade and his downward spiral, I’ve barely spared a second to think about everything that happened to me. Everything I went through was packed into a little box and stowed away, waiting to be opened when the time was right. But it’s really a shattering hourglass, the grains of sand representing everything we’ve been through, and it’s close to cracking.

If talking to someone, a professional, makes Kade feel even a smidge better, then I should do the same. Maybe the weight on my shoulders will vanish – the hollow pit in my stomach threatening to break me.

Chris is dead. He can’t hurt me anymore. Kade brutalised him, leaving him on the edge of death, but it was me who slit his throat. I killed my abuser. So why do I feel like he’s about to pop out of the shadows and pull me under?

“Can… can I see your therapist too?”

Kade takes my hand and helps me off the bench, wrapping his arms around me with a warm smile, so our naked bodies are pressed together. “Of course. Anything you want.”

“Yeah. I think I’m ready to properly talk about everything.” I gulp and lace my fingers behind his neck. “I kept so many secrets, and I’m scared they’re going to drown me if I don’t actually… talk.”

Not with him. Not with my best friends or Aria, or even Kyle, who’s been calling constantly and insists on helping with whatever he can. Nora has apparently cut all ties with me, but I don’t care.

I can hold my hands up and finally have my voice – be heard without the fear of rejection or backlash.

Kade kisses the tip of my nose. “I’m proud of you. I don’t know if I’ve ever said it, but I am. You’re so strong, Stacey. You’ve been strong enough for the both of us. Thank you.”

I tilt my head. “Why are you thanking me?”

He kisses me softly. “I was an asshole, yet here you are.”

Laughing, I pull away and grab my clothes, and we dress. “We have years. Let’s make it up to each other until we’re old.”

Kade takes my hand and presses his lips to the top of it. “Years.”