Page 4 of Stone

“I have an important matter to discuss with you, if you’d grant me the privacy of your office.” Azrael’s voice plays out as an echo.

“I haven’t eaten dinner yet. It’ll have to wait until after,” my father states.

“It’s regarding the O’Connells.”

My father’s cutlery clangs to the table, and he pushes back in his chair with an irritated huff. I’m unfamiliar with the name Azrael used as a decoy tactic to help disguise my struggle, but I’m grateful, nonetheless.

He storms toward the dining-room door, throws it open, then leaves the room yelling expletives while Azrael casually pushes back on his chair and walks over to me until he’s directly in front of me and leans down. “Get your shit together; you’re going to get yourself killed,” he hisses into my ear. “Her too.” He nods toward Sienna, and my heart skips a beat at his savage words as my throat becomes impossibly dry.

I can’t allow her to suffer because of me, so I know I’ve no choice but to push her away, ripping my heart to shreds in the process. If Azrael is able to pick up on her being my weakness, then others may realize it too.

Chapter Three

Sienna

I wait until Azrael leaves the room with my father, then tilt my head toward the door at Czar. He releases a loud huff and rolls his eyes before vacating his seat and exiting the dining room, leaving Stone and me alone.

Stone’s spine straightens as the door clicks shut, and I force down the hurt him being uncomfortable around me brings. Then I lick my lips, push back on my chair, and round the table, taking measured steps of confidence toward him I don’t necessarily feel. A need to reassure him during our father’s tirade had my skin prickling with irritation, and I was desperate for some time alone with him to help ease the visible pain on his handsome face.

His cheeks burn brighter as I approach, and when I kneel beside him, he doesn’t so much as turn to give me his attention. He simply stares ahead as if I don’t exist.

“Where are you hurting?” I whisper from my position. My head doesn’t so much as reach his bicep, and I can’t help but love the fact that he’s so huge in comparison to me.

His jaw tightens, but he remains unmoving.

A heavy sigh I had no intention of releasing escapes my lips, and I reach over the table and slowly uncurl the firm grip his fingers have on the damaged spoon.

“Sienna,” he growls without facing me.

I place the crooked spoon down, and without warning, I cup his handsome face. It’s littered with jagged scars that aren’t from a MMA fighter, and I glide my palm over his cheek to where his dimples remain hidden. Without thinking, he turns into my touch, and jubilation floods me, a sense of happiness from providing him with comfort he rarely has. “Are you still in pain?” I whisper to my broken giant of a man.

“Not anymore.” His smooth words send a rush of arousal through me, and I don’t have it in me to care how wrong society thinks this attraction is that I have toward him.

We live in the underbelly of evil, an upbringing based on cruelty and control. Is there really any wonder why we find solace in one another?

His hand moves quicker than my racing heart to push my palm away from his face, and he finally turns to give me his attention, but gone is the softness he so easily bestows on me. In its place is the mask he’s been forced to wear.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

His words shouldn’t sting; they shouldn’t slice through my heart like a well-crafted blade intent on causing severe pain.

Tears spring to my eyes at the despondent look in his. He’s becoming exactly who they want him to be, and I hate it for him. All I want is for him to be himself, but I know deep in my heart that he isn’t Stone.

He isn’t the man they carefully crafted as a puppet for their sick games, and I also know he can’t be my brother, because God wouldn’t have been so cruel to gift me with a love that’s unable to be reciprocated.

I stumble back at the realization that the love I feel from him may one day die too. The look of awe in his eyes I’ve loved from the first moment I saw him will one day be gone too. The thought of never being able to act on that love before it gets stolen has my lungs burning against my chest as I rise to my feet and rush toward the door.

The inevitable is happening, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Nothing we can do.

Maybe he was always destined to be Stone.

Stone

She scurries from the room with her head bowed, and I drop mine into my palms. “Fuck.” The look of hurt on her pretty face flashes in front of me. I want to tell her I’m sorry, that this is for the best and she’s better off not touching me because I don’t think I can control myself around her, and my actions will get us both killed, or worse, tortured.

My veins simmer with guilt. She’s the only person to ever show me affection, and I push her away at every opportunity, but only to protect her. Fuck me, would I like to give in to her and her tender touch just once.

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