by Abby Green
“How did you make a break from all that?”
“One day I ended up in jail for some misdemeanor with a bunch of friends. We were let off with a warning. My mom collected me and took me out of school the next day. I was never the most academic anyway.” I ducked from Johnny’s gaze now, self-conscious to be admitting such a thing. He tipped my chin back up with his finger.
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I cursed him silently even as something swooped inside me. How could he read my mind like that?
“What happened then?” he prodded me.
I sighed. “My mom had a friend working in the film industry, so when I was seventeen I got a job as an intern on films. I discovered that I loved the makeup department the most. I worked my way up the ranks to become chief of the department. In the end the politics and relentless schedules got to me. And I’ve always missed New York. I’m looking forward to going into business with Jenna and having a life again. With film, it’s impossible to plan anything in advance.”
I hadn’t even told Liam exactly what my plans were, and yet here I was blithely spilling my guts to Johnny.
He smiled, oblivious to my inner conflict. “Well, I think your idea sounds like a grand one.”
His approval made something in my chest swell. Danger. So I pulled at his chest hair again. “Why the tattoo?”
He sighed this time and put his head back on the pillow. “It’s stupid.”
“I want to know.”
He looked at me. “I got it when I first came to New York...”
With clear reluctance he said, “You’re not the only one who had a slightly misspent youth. My folks died in a car crash when I was seventeen, leaving Mary, our older sister, acting as both parents. She’s only a year older than me. Caitie was just thirteen.”
“Wow, Johnny, I’m sorry...” I said softly, feeling completely ineffectual.
He made a kind of small, dismissive gesture and then continued. “The thing of it was, I was in the car, too, yet I walked away without a scratch.”
I went still against Johnny. He wasn’t looking at me and obviously wasn’t expecting me to say anything so I stayed silent.
“For a long time I felt like it was my fault...I’d been arguing with my dad and he’d turned around for a second to clip my ear and then...everything exploded. We found out much later after a report that the other driver was drunk and on the wrong side of the road. But it was all a bit much. I couldn’t let go of the irrational guilt with typical teenage self-absorption and I went a little crazy, too. Acting out, missing school. Drinking, smoking.”
He grimaced. “I gave Mary an awful hard time, and she was only trying to keep us all together.”
“You were seventeen,” I pointed out, trying to imagine how traumatic that must have been. I remembered how volatile that age was for me. How precarious the world had seemed and how I’d wanted to control it whatever way I could. I’d done it then by rebelling, and since then by keeping intense emotions at a distance. I pushed that little revelation down.
Johnny’s mouth firmed in clear self-recrimination. “Still, it’s no excuse. And poor Caitie was stuck in the middle, trying to keep us both from killing each other. I always wanted to do woodwork...but not just any woodwork, bespoke work, the stuff you saw. Mary couldn’t understand how I’d ever make a living out of it.”
His mouth quirked and he looked at me. “She’s in recruitment now but she hadn’t always wanted to do that. She’d wanted to do drama and arts but had had to drop out of that degree choice and go for a more reliable career to take care of me and Caitie. I think on some level she resented me wanting to follow my heart when she hadn’t been able to.
“And in spite of everything I was pretty good in school. She pushed me to get a decent degree so I’d be okay...I did calm down for a bit and got enough marks to do architecture. But soon I got bored again. I felt like my life was slipping out of my grasp... I had a huge row with Mary and left home, determined to prove to her that I could succeed at what I really wanted to do. I got the tattoo as a kind of reminder to not let anyone step on my dreams.”
I thought of how Johnny had been fascinated by the structure of the Standard hotel as we’d passed underneath, and my chest tightened. He would have made a great architect, but then I thought of the exquisite furniture he made.
His voice got huskier. “Leaving them behind, her and Caitie...it’s unforgivable. They needed me, and I just walked out. Time went on and I got too ashamed to go back.”
He smiled, but it was bleak. “If my Da were alive he’d thrash me.”
Carefully I asked, “You haven’t spoken to Mary at all since then?”
He avoided my eye now. “No. I let them know I was okay, and sent money home when I could. But I avoided more meaningful contact.”
I felt as though I might be walking into a minefield when I said, “It seems to me as if now is as good a time as any to get in touch. Caitlin is here and you’re succeeding at what you want to do. You could just...pick up the phone and call.”
Johnny looked at me and I was relieved to see a lightness in his expression. “Could I now?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Sure.”
He looked at me for a long moment and then looked at his watch, and a more familiar expression came over his face. He expertly rolled over so that I was underneath him and his body was wedged between my legs.
I almost groaned at the way I was so eager. Already. Again. Forever. That little bomb hit me right in the chest, but then Johnny pressed a light kiss to my mouth and said throatily, “We have a little time left. Seems an awful waste of an exorbitantly expensive hotel room to spend our time talking, don’t you think?”
In silent answer and as keen as he was to avoid inviting any further intimacies or rogue revelations I widened my legs, inviting his body into a much safer form of intimacy. The physical kind. Where no talking was necessary.
* * *
When we arrived at the bar, disheveled and guilty-looking with jelly legs from an overdose of sex against a hotel window, Candy spotted it straight away, as any connoisseur of sex would. She grabbed me and dragged me into the office as soon as she could and said, “Okay, Sullivan, spill. I haven’t seen anyone so sexsatisfied-looking since Liam and Caitlin were wafting around on cloud multi-orgasm for the first month they were together.”
Then she grimaced. “And actually it’s not much better now. Hopefully the holiday might have taken the edge off.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “What’s going on with you and Ryan?”
I scowled at her, feeling far too raw to engage in a girly sex confessional, even though a part of me longed to just blurt it all out to make sense of it.
“Weren’t you the one who encouraged me to go for it? I’m going for it, and that’s all you need to know.”
Candy shook her head, gaze far too assessing. “I don’t know, Ash. You’re looking far more glowy than someone should be if it’s just down-and-dirty-get-rid-of-the-itch-before-you-take-the-world-by-storm.”
A lurch of panic gripped me when I thought of everything I now knew about Johnny and what I’d told him about me. But I forced it down, saying as nonchalantly as I could, “Look, it’s just sex. That’s all. He’s not into anything more and I’m certainly not either. This is just physical.”
Candy raised a brow. “Hmm.”
I protested, “It is.”
She looked at me with a pitying expression. “I’m just saying, Ash, one Sullivan’s bitten the dust. You might not be far behind. See ya tomorrow. I’m going to have a little feel of Johnny’s ass before I go.”
I glared at her and she winked at me. “Gotcha.” And then she blew me a kiss and left. I scowled.
Damn, Candy.
The mere suggestion that I could go the way of my brother and
fall for Johnny made me feel clammy with panic. I’d had far too close a brush with Steve, and even though I’d realized the wound wasn’t fatal...I didn’t want to experience that again. Ever.
I’d steered clear of relationships because witnessing the ugly breakup of my parents’ marriage had cured me for good of ever wanting to risk the same. But Liam hadn’t let it stop him from falling in love. I blocked out the voice. Liam was different, he’d been older, more able to cope and see things for what they were.
I’d been decimated by seeing my mom and dad rip each other apart...
No, I assured myself stoutly. This was one last wild ride before Jenna came back and we became entrepreneurs, striking out on our own and forging our new lives. Lives that did not feature hot and heavy distractions like six-foot-three Irishmen.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I looked to see a very hot and heavy distraction in the doorway, concerned.
“You look as white as a ghost. Did something happen?”
I forced a smile and shook my head. Walked toward him. I fisted my hands in his T-shirt and pulled him to me, seeing the flash of desire in his eyes.
“This is still just a fuck...right?”
For a pregnant second Johnny was silent, but then he just said lightly, “Absolutely.”
And even though I should have been relieved to have him confirm where we both stood, I couldn’t help experiencing a kind of sick seesawing sensation every time I caught his eye for the rest of the evening.
Chapter Eleven
Johnny couldn’t shake the niggling guilty feeling as he cleared up behind the bar after closing that night. When Ash had all but demanded if this was still just a fuck, he’d seen something so earnest and almost pleading in her eyes that he’d agreed with her.
But the problem was...it didn’t sit right with him. He wasn’t sure what this was anymore but whatever it was, it wasn’t diminishing; it was getting stronger. No other woman had ever inspired him to book into a hotel room on the spur of the moment to indulge in exhibitionist sex.
No other woman had ever compelled him to spill his guts so comprehensively. Without a second thought.
The truth was that Ash tapped into something within him that had been pushed down and locked away since his parents had died. It was something carefree and light. A sense of that innocence and belief in good things happening that most people enjoyed—unless their worlds were ripped to pieces by tragedy or something similar.
Ashling had experienced it, too, with her folks’ divorce. No wonder she’d been so hurt by the asshole who’d had a family. She obviously didn’t let herself fall for people, and he’d done a number on her.
The thought of Ashling in love with someone else caused a physical pain in Johnny’s gut, and he said “Shite” out loud. And then he went cold all over. Since when did the word love enter his head when he was with a woman?
Any such illusions had been smashed apart with his parents’ death and then when he’d walked out on his sisters.
Angry that Ashling was precipitating these dark thoughts, he strode to the doorway of the office to see her tallying the books, bent over the desk enticingly. She’d obviously heard him and straightened up and turned around, a smile on her face. It soon faded when she saw his expression.
White-hot lust crackled between them. Just like that. As if a live wire pulsed with heat whenever they were within feet of each other.
Jesus. He’d just been fucking her up against a hotel window hours ago and it hadn’t even dented their lust for each other. Damn her anyway.
He said almost curtly, “You asked earlier if this was still just a fuck. Of course it is. Unless you’re getting other ideas?”
Ashling went pale and her eyes shone bright as jewels. And then, as if seeing and recognizing something in Johnny’s expression, she said equally curtly, “No way. I told you—I don’t do relationships.”
Johnny smiled but it felt forced and hard. “Well, neither do I, darlin’. And I want you on that couch, naked, now.”
He was losing the ability to focus beyond the throbbing heat in his pants. Whatever this was, he needed her.
He was already taking his clothes off, and Ashling’s eyes widened. He stripped off completely.
“Well?”
Her gaze snapped up from where she’d been devouring his crotch area and she got out of her clothes so fast he almost laughed. And just like that, the anger he’d been feeling drained away. That sensation of light and fun caught him unawares for a moment.
He walked over and took her hand, tugging her toward the couch. He sat down and smoothed protection onto his erection, too hot to be embarrassed by the way his cock sat up straight, veins pulsing with want.
He looked up at her. She was licking her lips and he nearly spilled.
“Ash, no time for foreplay, I want to be buried so deep inside you, you can’t breathe. Now.”
She carefully straddled him, bracing herself with her hands on the couch behind him, and then lowered herself inch by torturous inch onto his cock, until the backs of her thighs met his and he was seated so deeply inside her he could have sworn he felt the beat of her heart.
And finally, as she began to move, something eased inside him and his mind blanked of anything but her and now. Whatever this was, he’d deal with it. Another time.
* * *
Ten days later
I looked at the figures in the ledger in front of me but they were blurring. I couldn’t focus. The truth was I’d told Johnny I needed to look at the books, but I just needed to get away from him for a moment. When he was near me I couldn’t think.
In the past week and a half since that cataclysmic and orgasmic midnight office-sex session, something had shifted between us. It was as if we were both just waiting for the moment one of us would look at the other and not have that same gut-wrenching need consume us.
But it wasn’t diminishing. It was getting stronger.
I’d been staying over at Johnny’s most nights. We’d have amazing hot, dirty, sweaty, earth-shattering sex, followed by a lazy morning session.
He’d come to the bar with me, either on the bike or in his car. And sometimes we’d have to go back into his apartment for more sex between brunch and coming to work. Fast and furious, just like that night in the office. As if we were dying of thirst in a desert.
I was becoming addicted to the journey over the Williamsburg Bridge, then onto the FDR by the river and into the Lower East Side to the bar. I felt like I’d never seen Manhattan before. It was all new and sparkling and full of infinite possibilities. I was practically seeing little cartoon birds twittering around me like Mary Fricking Poppins.
It was how I’d imagined feeling at the prospect of getting a new business off the ground and starting a new life. Not as a result of some guy I was fucking to get the urge out of my system.
Shit. Or as Johnny would say, shite.
Already I couldn’t imagine not being with him. I’d spent more time waking up next to him than I had with any another human being in my life. It was as if once we’d both agreed that we were in a no-relationship zone, we’d perversely started having a relationship of sorts. How screwed up was that?
In the past few days I’d caught Johnny looking at me thoughtfully a few times. Thoughtfully enough to make my pulse race, and not with desire. Something more like trepidation.
I heard a movement by the door and looked up to see the object of my thoughts leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, muscles bulging. My heart flip-flopped. Shit.
“Hey.”
I deliberately went for light and breezy, even though I felt slightly sick. “Hey yourself.”
He looked serious. “Ash, I think we need to talk...”
My stomach plummeted. Steve had said those words to me right before I�
�d seen an attractive woman holding a baby appear behind him. I joked shakily, “Isn’t that a woman’s line?” Evidently not in my world, a snarky voice pointed out.
Johnny came in and put his hands on the table and loomed over me, all dark and sexy and gorgeous. And just like that I could feel my recently sated body ache and yearn for him again. Aching for his cock to slide into me, that first delicious thrust, seating him so deep—
“The bar,” I blurted in a panic. “Shouldn’t you be out there?”
“It’s empty, relax.”
“I know but someone might—”
“I want to take you on a date.”
My mouth was still open. “You want to what?” This was more shocking to me than if he’d said he wanted to strip me naked and tie me to the bar outside and put on a live sex show. And actually...that would have been preferable.
“A...date...like...”
He smiled and I could see something I’d never seen before in his expression—slight insecurity. Nervous? Johnny? My panic solidified.
“Yeah, you know. Like go out for dinner to a restaurant. I’ll come and pick you up. An official date.”
I felt light-headed, giddy and sick all at once. “But...why? We’re not... This isn’t about dates... You’ve already taken me to a hotel.”
He scowled. “A trip to a hotel for frantic exhibitionist sex is not a date.”
He stood up straight, and now he looked slightly fierce. “This isn’t burning itself out, Ash. I’m not ready to walk away.”
And then he delivered the death blow. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I want more, and I think you do, too.”
Anger rose, and I welcomed it, because I felt like he’d duped me. I stood up from behind the desk. “But you don’t do this. I don’t do this.”
He looked even more serious. “You almost did, with that guy, until he broke your heart.”
I gaped at him and then realized he was talking about Steve. Johnny was right, I had almost thrown caution to the wind. But the reality was that Steve hadn’t broken my heart. Far from it. And I’d only realized that when I’d met Johnny, because he’d come far closer to taking my heart than Steve ever had. That cataclysmic knowledge made me sway a little now just as a little voice said frantically, There’s still time to save yourself.