by Joanna Bell
On the other side of the room, Darcy calmly got up from the table like nothing out of the ordinary was happening (which, Astrid's presence aside, it honestly kind of wasn't) and began gathering food containers to take back into the kitchen. Something about her calmness just infuriated me further.
"Sit down!" I shouted. "Just sit the fuck down, Darcy!"
That set my dad off well and good. He grabbed Séan, trying to drag him out of the way so he could get to me. He almost succeeded, too, until Connor also wearily got to his feet and added himself to the human buffer between Jack Devlin and his second-born son.
"Cillian. Cillian!" It was Astrid, clutching my wrist and looking very unhappy. "Let's go. Please. Let's just go."
I could hear in her voice, as wobbly as a newborn fawn's legs, that she was about to cry.
I let go of Séan, who I didn't even realize I'd been holding onto.
"OK," I said, putting a protective arm around her. "OK. Yeah, let's get out of here."
My dad's voice followed us out of the room, his tone exaggeratedly incredulous. "Leaving? Why're they leaving? It was just a little disagreement, that's all it was. Why is he gettin' so upset about it? WHY'RE YOU SO UPSET!? GET BACK HERE CILLIAN, YOU FUCKIN' SNOWFLAKE! WE'RE HAVING A NICE FAMILY DINNER HERE!"
Chapter 17: Cillian
Outside the house, Astrid retched one more time as the smell of the ranch filled her nostrils.
It was only when I took her hand in mine, though, and realized it was shaking, that I understood how upset she was.
"Hey," I whispered, lifting her hand to my mouth and kissing it. "Hey, Astrid. Are you upset? You can't let my dad get to you. He's always like –"
"I can't let your dad get to me?" She cried. "I can't? What about you?"
"Me?" I replied, confused. "What about me? I wasn't –"
"Can't you see he was trying to bait you? None of that in there was about me – it was about you. It was about whatever messed up psychodynamics there are between the two of you."
"Psychody–what?"
"And why didn't you say something?" She continued, her voice raised. "When he started talking about – about those disgusting things?"
"What?!" I burst out. "I didn't think you wanted me to say anything! You shook your head at –"
"Don't yell at me, Cillian."
"I'm not yelling!" I yelled.
"You are," she replied. "And I was trying not to get sick again, OK? That doesn't mean I wanted you to just sit there and do nothing while your dad said those things!"
"I – I'm sorry," I started, stumbling over my words. "I just – I think maybe I'm more used to it than you are? I thought you didn't want my help."
"And why would you think that?"
"I told you!" I barked, instantly ashamed as it sank in that she had wanted more help during dinner – and that I failed to adequately give it. "You shook your head at me – I thought you were telling me not to interfere! I'm not a goddamned mind-reader, you know."
She sighed heavily and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. "I can't deal with this. Your family is crazy. I don't even think you know it but that – whatever that was in there – that's not normal. You – you know that, right?"
For the first time ever, I took real offense to something Astrid said. It's a weird thing with families. Even if they're dysfunctional as hell and you know it, there's something about hearing criticism from an outsider that can get right under your skin.
There's also, I suppose, the fact that she was right. We weren't normal. Normal dads don't take sick glee in emotionally torturing people. Normal brothers aren't constantly on the verge of physically fighting each other.
It used to be easy to tell myself my family toughened me up. To pretend I could take anything because I grew up in that fucked-up household. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger – right? The typical lie a young man tells himself when he can't face how much pain he's actually in.
Astrid, in her innocence regarding just how deep the dysfunction ran in the Devlin family, put one of her fingers right on one of my sorest spots. Right on the place where the pain lived, unlooked-at and unacknowledged, for years. And I – being who I was – reacted badly.
"You have to deal with it, though," I replied. "Don't you? You have to deal with my family, because we're married. You can't just walk away."
My wife looked at me, shocked at the coldness in my tone, and I knew at that moment that I had fucked up.
"Oh yeah?" She replied, turning on her heel. "Watch me."
And then she started to walk away. At first, I let her. She wasn't going to get far. There was nothing at the end of the driveway except the road into town – and there was no way in hell she was going to make it all the way into town. Not on foot.
But she kept going.
"Astrid," I called as she approached a bend in the driveway that would take her out of my view. "Astrid!"
She kept going. I sighed and jogged after her.
God-fucking-damnit.
I caught up quickly and walked next to her. Her legs were shorter than mine so her angry speed-walking was just a little faster than my regular pace.
"Where do you think you're going?" I asked. "It's a ways into Sweetgrass Ridge. You can't walk that far."
"How do you know how far I can walk?" She snapped, picking up speed.
"Come on," I cajoled a couple of minutes later, when she continued to show no signs of giving in. "I'm telling you, you won't make it into town."
She ignored me. No response at all. Wouldn't even look at me. When I tried again a few feet before the driveway met the road, she still refused to respond.
"Astrid."
Nothing.
"Astrid!"
Still nothing.
"Goddamnit Astrid! Stop!"
But she didn't stop. So I grabbed her by the wrist and stopped her. She tried – unsuccessfully – to shake my hand off.
"Let go of me."
"No."
"Cillian!" She screeched. "Let me go! Now!"
I shook my head. "No. People drive way too fast on that road – and it isn't well-lit. I'm not letting you go. Sorry, but no."
Unsurprisingly, Astrid did not like being told no. She continued her fruitless attempts to free her arm – and get herself killed on the road – until she was out of breath. And I got an immediate and very unhelpful hard-on at the sight of her in such a state.
We'd barely known each other a week but we were already figuring each other out. And one thing I figured out about her was that she put a lot of stock in her own unflappability. Not for Astrid Walker would there be any yelling or foot-stomping. Not if she could help it.
And that night, she couldn't help it. Not quite. Not as she was being held back, like some disobedient toddler, by the man who singularly failed to stop his own from father bullying her. Something about seeing her so flustered – and about my own need to reassert my wounded ego – just flicked a switch. When she made her next attempt to free her arm, I pulled her in close and buried my head in her neck. She smelled like expensive perfume and femininity and refinement. She smelled like a future I spent my whole life unaware I wanted – a future I could now literally feel slipping out of my hands.
I had to have her. Right then, right there. I had to make her mine again.
"What –" she started, putting her free hand on my chest as I leaned down to kiss that little spot at the base of her neck, the one where her heartbeat fluttered visibly below the skin – "what are you doing? Cillian, what are you –"
But even as she was protesting her body was going soft in my arms. Yes. That's exactly what I wanted. Her submission. Her acceptance. Her approval. I could hardly fucking breathe with how badly I needed to be inside her.
"Cillian –" she continued, trying to keep up her protests but finding herself betrayed by her own lips as they sought mine.
When I finally let go of her wrist all she did was snake her arm around the back of my neck and pull me closer.
It was strange. I was still angry. At my dad, yes – but at Astrid, too. What kind of childish jerk tries to walk miles down an unlit rural road, risking their own life in the process, over a squabble?
Mostly, though, I was angry at myself for needing her so much.
The anger didn't dissipate as we pawed and clutched at each other. It didn't go away. Instead, it drove me on. It flavored my kisses with aggression, made me dig my fingers into the soft flesh of her ass a little harder than was necessary.
I wasn't the only one. I could sense the anger in Astrid, too. I could feel – even as her body opened up to me, even as her hands pulled me close – that part of her still wanted to shove me away and head right back out onto the road.
We stumbled off the driveway and fell into the tall grass, tearing at each other's clothes, panting with hunger.
"Don't –" she started, as she lay back and lifted her hips off the ground so she could slip her pants – and panties – down over her hips and kick them off. "Don't think this means I'm OK with – with –"
Her voice trailed off as I knelt between her soft thighs, pushing them open with my body as my cock throbbed with anticipation.
"I just don't want you to think –" she tried again, fiddling with my belt buckle and then going utterly silent for a few seconds when she finally saw the proof of what she was doing to me standing rigid against my belly.
"I just don't –" she tried again. "I – oh my God, Cillian."
So far, with Astrid, there had been an unusual tenderness to sex. An unusual tenderness in me, I mean. I found myself concerned for her comfort, worried that I would hurt her or do something wrong – not concerns I had previously found myself troubled by.
Not that evening in the grass. Something about the note of surrender in her voice when she spoke – Oh my God, Cillian – drove me completely fucking wild.
She looked up at me, sensing the invasion to come coursing through my veins. And then, without looking away, she lay all the way down on her back and opened her legs a little wider. I knew she was still upset, still just as angry as I was. But I could also see how deeply she needed what I was about to give her. And it was that need, that sweet, helpless yielding that made my cock ache for her.
I put my palm flat on one of her thighs and pushed it open. Then I pushed a little harder.
"Cillian –" Astrid sighed, arching up towards me even as her dark eyes still burned with antagonism.
It fleetingly crossed my mind to leave her there.
Do it. Get up, zip up your pants and walk away. Teach this spoiled girl a lesson about respect.
The problem with that was that I could no more walk away from her than I could reach up and pluck the moon out of the sky. Pissed off or not, shamed or not, a goddamned army would not have succeeded in pulling me away. Whatever emotions I felt simply didn't matter. The only thing that mattered in the whole universe was how perfectly wet, how exquisitely warm and tight and slippery her pussy was going to feel around me.
It pleased me to know she was fighting the same battle. I could see that part of her wanted to snap her thighs shut and tell me to fuck off.
But she couldn't do it. And if I could have distilled the resentment in her eyes, at the precise moment it morphed into need, into an actual liquid? I would happily have drowned myself in it.
"You're still pissed,' I whispered, not bothering to hide an arrogant smile as she squirmed underneath me. "I can see it. Look at you, baby. You want to stop but you can't – can you? You can't."
"Screw you!" Astrid whispered as her legs opened wider. "Screw y–"
I wrapped my hand around my cock and nudged the tip of it between her lips. I wanted to hold it there for a little while. I wanted to torture her. Make her beg. Make her apologize. But my self-control was no better than hers and she felt too good. Her pussy was everywhere I needed to be. I braced my forearms on the dusty ground and plunged into her.
"OH!" She cried, throwing her head back and exposing her pale throat. "Ohhh!"
I could have come literally on that first thrust if I let myself. Could have just relaxed into the orgasm, let myself throb the entire contents of my balls right into her. That ugly urge to teach her a lesson about poking at my soft spots was still there, lurking in my chest.
But there's more than one way to teach someone a lesson. And the truth is I already cared way too much about Astrid Walker's opinion of me to go off early like a chump.
My anger did give me one useful thing in the grass that evening – rock solid self-control. Although I could have come right away, holding off was easy. Almost easy. Astrid still felt like warm, silky heaven. I was just determined to win, is all.
To win? During sex?
Yeah. To win. To show her who she was underneath all those layers of well-bred hauteur.
To that end, I fucked her slow. Excruciatingly slow – and deep – until she was panting, thrashing around, absolutely beside herself.
"Cillian," she gasped, barely able to speak.
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Cillian –"
I would have bottled that, too. The tone in her voice, the shamelessness. And then drunk myself to death on it.
Her need for me was fucking addictive. I took a deep breath and thrust myself into her once more, her pussy pulsing and tensing around me in an attempt to keep me there, buried inside. One of the muscles in my jaw, clenched so tight it was actually sore the next day, popped as I pulled out.
"Mmm... Cillian..."
I fucked every last ounce of defiance out of her. Eventually, she was so close she just begged me for it. Begged me to go faster and harder, begged me to give her what she needed. Her body began to shake and tremble, like a rope frayed almost to the point of breaking.
"Are you sorry?" I asked, pushing myself up on my arms so I could look into her eyes.
"Yeah," came the immediate, breathless reply. "Yes. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
I knew, I think, that by that point she didn't even know what she was apologizing for. I knew she would have said anything. And yet it still pleased me.
"Good," I replied, pushing myself up onto my knees so I could look down and watch myself disappearing into her again.
She was going to get it. I sped up, groaning through clenched teeth as the pleasure built up at the very base of my cock.
Jesus, she felt so good. Nothing ever felt that good. Nothing was ever as perfect or right as that. Nothing.
She came just before I did, her hips suddenly jerking up towards me, her sex pulsing around me until I exploded, pumping her full of everything, every fucking drop, and not pulling out until every last shudder of pleasure had been wrung out of her.
***
I couldn't think right away. I couldn't even feel. Was I still angry? I wasn't anything for a few minutes. I was just a mindless, exhausted sperm delivery machine.
"I'm not sorry."
My ears were ringing. Did she say something? "What?" I asked, wondering if coming that hard could permanently lower IQ. "What did you –"
"I said I'm not sorry."
It sounded like she was getting up. I opened my eyes. She was. She was stuffing her soaking panties into her purse and yanking her pants back on, trying to hide the fact that her hands were trembling by turning away from me.
"Hey," I mumbled, reaching out to touch her leg and missing as she moved it out of reach. "Hey – Astrid. Where are you – what are doing –"
"I'm going to a hotel!" She cried, her cheeks visibly pink even in the low evening light. "And I'm not fucking sorry, Cillian!"
"Not sorry for what?" I asked, suffering from a form of amnesia that genuinely made me forget it was only a few minutes ago I'd been insisting she apologize before I made her come.
"For – for that!" She cried, gesturing towards the house. "None of that was my fault!"
"I know," I told her, still lacking blood flow in my brain. "I – I know."
When she couldn't get her bra fastened s
he threw that in her purse, too, and pulled her shirt on over her head. Then she began slipping her feet into her shoes and it hit me that she really was leaving.
I didn't want her to leave.
"No," I said, reaching out again and managing to connect with her ankle, which I grabbed. "No. Don't go."
She turned towards me, exasperated and flushed and so beautiful.
"What are you going to do? Drag me back inside? Enough, Cillian. Let me go."
I was still too sex-dazed to do more than repeat that I didn't want her to go and ask her why she was still angry.
She hesitated, clearly considering kicking my hand off her ankle and leaving me there in the grass. But then she sighed and sat down next to me.
"I'm not angry anymore," she said eventually, after sitting silently for a few minutes. "I'm just trying to be angry now."
"Why?"
Astrid turned her gaze towards the road as a truck sped by, throwing a shower of grit onto the shoulder. "I'm not sure anymore. But you need to know I can't live there. I can't live in that house with your family – with your dad. I can't do it. I don't even know if..."
"You don't even know if what?" I asked, brushing her hair off her shoulder as it began to sink in that I might not have handled things perfectly.
My wife met my eyes, and then looked away again. "I don't even know if this is going to work. I mean – do you? Isn't this actually kind of... crazy? I mean, we're married. We're married and we don't even know each other. We don't know each other's families. I don't know how we're going to do this. How are we going to do this?"
I almost laughed. Not at her – at myself. I felt like such a big man fucking her. I always felt like such a big man fucking Astrid, and that time – when I knew she was pissed at me but also that she wanted my dick too much to let it stop her – in particular. I could lie and say that did nothing for me but what would be the point? I am who I am, and I was who I was then. I didn't just like it, either. I fucking reveled in it. The feeling of her thighs parting for me as her eyes shot daggers... fuck.
And what was all that testosterone-fueled I-own-this-girl bullshit even for? Nothing, apparently. Because there I was a few minutes later, almost in a panic at the idea of her leaving. Not just leaving to go to a hotel but really leaving. For good. Coming to her senses. Going back to Miami and calling a lawyer.