For a minute I thought I was hallucinating, but something shifted in his face the moment he laid eyes on me, a lick of unmistakable anger darkening his features and I felt a chill race through me. I wasn't seeing things. Somehow I'd walked into a bar all the way across the city from where I'd been that morning, and the man who'd rescued me was sitting there having a drink.
I drew in a sharp breath, feeling my entire body aching for the kiss I'd half hoped, desperately, pathetically, that he'd have given me earlier. I knew how twisted it was, and I'd been trying to deny it since I got back on the bus, soaked through and shaking.
My nipples tensed at the sight of him and my pussy tingled in anticipation. I could vividly remember the way he'd stalked around me like I was his for the taking, and the eager way I'd reacted to him.
The last thing I expected was for him to get up from his seat and walk over. My voice caught in my throat as he settled a familiar hand on Nora's shoulder.
"I need a word with you."
Jealousy flared to life, swelling thickly in my chest and up my throat as I realised it wasn't me he was talking to. How did he know Nora? Why wasn't he here to talk to me? Did she have something I didn't? Couldn't he feel the charge in the air between us?
My entire body went stiff as I fought the insane urge to throw my drink in her face. I didn't trust myself to look at either of them.
But then Nora planted her hands on the table top, getting to her feet with a weary sigh and an eye roll that made Graham smirk.
"This is my uncle. I'll be right back."
She rolled her eyes playfully and my perspective slotted back slowly like the whole world had tilted back into focus.
I let out a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. My heart thundered in my chest hard enough to make my body rock. This had to be fate, and maybe I needed to start listening to it.
CHAPTER 5
Garrett
Leaving Kilpatrick alone was a ballsy move, given the man didn't like to be kept waiting for anything, but I had to find out what the hell my niece was playing at. I frogmarched her out of the bar into the back where I knew we wouldn't be heard.
"The bar's closed. What are you doing here?"
"We're having a lock in. Didn't you see me close the door?"
"Who's your friend?"
Nora frowned at me, and I could see she was getting annoyed with my tone. I wasn't normally so terse with her, but this woman turning up so suddenly had me rattled.
"Kaitlin. What's your problem?"
I didn't know whether it was better or worse that she was using the same name she'd given me. There was no way she was really Kearney's girl.
"Was it her idea to come here?"
"What? No."
"Has she been asking questions?"
Nora let out another sigh.
"She's not a journalist. She hasn't even been to college yet. You're being really weird, Garrett. I only just met her. She just arrived today and she's having a shit time of it. I'm showing her the city. Me and Graham are. That's my boyfriend, by the way. You can come and meet him any time you want to start acting like a normal human being."
I gritted my teeth, my fist balling at my side, nails biting into my palm. Only Nora could get away with speaking to me like that. But unless I wanted to explain to her a whole other side of me, I had to take it. "Fine."
Whatever this Kaitlin wanted, she hadn't tangled Nora up in it yet. And as far as I knew, she didn't know who I was. It needed to stay that way until I had the upper hand back and I could make sure me and mine were well protected.
Nora stretched up on her toes and pressed a messy kiss against my cheekbone. I pushed her off gently before she could wrap her arms around my neck.
"You really need to calm down, you know that? This boxing match is going to give you an aneurysm. You should go on holiday. You haven't been on holiday in ages."
I hadn't been on holiday in over a decade. All the trips Nora thought I took were for business and had to admit she might have a point. Juggling everything between Kilpatrick and Tiernan was giving me grey hairs. I could do with a fortnight on a beach. But going on my own wasn't so appealing when I could picture Kaitlin in a bikini next to me, right where she was supposed to be.
I rubbed the tension out of my forehead, letting out a sigh of my own. Keeping Kaitlin close would be the best way to figure out her game.
"Give me a minute to finish up. I'll be right over."
Dismissing Kilpatrick wasn't the done thing, but he understood when I came back to the table with a calm but pointed glance back over my shoulder to my niece and her friends.
"I'm sorry gentlemen. Something unexpected's come up. It might be better to hash out the details in the morning, somewhere less public."
Kilpatrick shook my hand, speaking just as low as I had. "I hope there isn't any kind of problem, Brannigan. I heard there was a disturbance in Ballyfermot today."
"It's under control."
"That's good. Ah, you know yourself, Brannigan, whatever you need to sort it. Just as long as you sort it. I'd hate for things to get messy when you're the man to keep them all squeaky clean."
"Conor, it's already done."
A smile and a handshake went a helluva long way. Over the years, I'd learnt that. But I also knew that Conor Kilpatrick wasn't a man you could bullshit. I hoped I wasn't promising more than I could deliver. We'd all be screwed if Kaitlin was a honey trap. I didn't rate my chances of resisting when every atom of my being knew she was meant to be mine.
My smile disappeared again as soon as I locked the door behind him and his thug, glad to see the back of them.
I grabbed a cluster of tumblers and a bottle of whisky from behind the bar, my eyes firmly on Kaitlin as I stalked over to their table.
Nora pulled over another chair and I set the glasses down and poured out generous measures.
"This is-"
"-Rhett." I cut in solidly, sliding one of the tumblers across the table to Nora's weedy boyfriend before she could enlighten Kaitlin.
My niece's eyebrow raised and she leaned back in her chair, arms folded across her chest, looking distinctly amused. "Rhett? My God, are you having a midlife crisis?"
"I'm thirty six and you know it."
Whatever Nora was trying to make out, I wasn't such an old man. And given Kaitlin couldn't take her eyes off me, it didn't seem like she was worried about my age. She might have been young, but that didn't diminish my attraction, or that deep, primal sense that she was meant to be mine. This was no girl, she was all woman and that was all that mattered.
I gave Nora a nonplussed stare and she shook her head at me, laughing as she took a swig from a tumbler of her own.
"Rhett, meet Graham and Kaitlin."
My knuckles grazed Kaitlin's fingers, lingering as I gave the cool glass over to her. She didn't look down and her lips parted like everything was suddenly too hot. I knew the feeling. My cock stirred just being this close to her again.
Out of the rain she was even more perfect, though the evening had left its traces on her. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were wine stained, which made the Guinness a brave choice and the whisky I'd handed her an unwise one, but she mirrored me in taking a swig all the same.
I bit down on a laugh when the alcohol hit the back of her throat making her cough and splutter and wheeze.
"Careful. It might be too much for you to handle."
Her eyes flashed to mine and I saw the bob of her throat as she swallowed again, rasping in another softer gasp of air. "Now I know for next time."
As much as I'd wanted her to get her nose out of my business, it had taken the whole drive back to the city to get the idea of fucking her out of my head and my dick to calm down. Being this close to her had me riled up all over again.
"You breathed. You never breathe with whisky." I reached for her hand, pulling it closer to me as I dipped my finger into the cold liquid. Perfectly trusting, she let me turn her palm over, and I trailed a line of a
lcohol along the flawless, thin skin of the inside of her wrist.
"You have to hold the air away and let the glowing warmth mellow out as you feel it on your tongue and all the way into your belly. Otherwise the alcohol flares along your mouth right to the back of your throat like you took up fire-breathing."
I lowered my head, leaning forward to blow cool air against the line I'd painted along her skin, knowing the evaporation would speed up with a cold fierce tingle, flaring like a flameless fire across her skin.
She gasped, her fingers curling automatically in towards mine and my cock throbbed hard in my trousers. She was so reactive, as though no one had shown her what her body was capable of. Given that Graham must have been the pick of her contemporaries, assuming Nora had good taste, that seemed pretty likely. The boy was pedestrian. I could only imagine his American counterparts would be worse.
Nora cleared her throat pointedly and when I looked up, she was frowning at me.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kaitlin cross her legs, squirming in her chair a moment before she uncrossed and re-crossed them the other way. Her cheeks were a hot red and I wanted to slide my hand up along her thigh beneath the table and give her cause to squirm all the more.
"Excuse me. I'm going to find the bathroom."
I had her flustered and running. But I didn't want to let her get away again.
Kaitlin picked the glass up and I watched her knock the rest of it back in one go, her face puckering with the burn that she hadn't yet learned to school. Her lower lip glistened with the spill of liquid and I wanted to thrust my tongue into her mouth to get the last of the taste of it. Only Nora sitting right between us stopped me.
I leaned back in my chair, letting the two front legs pivot off the ground as I watched her walk down the corridor that lead to the loo. My eyes never leaving her until the first set of swing doors fell closed.
Graham cleared his throat. "I hear you're into boxing?"
He was trying for conversation and I had to take the bait. All I really wanted was to drag Kaitlin into the back and demand to know what she was doing following me about. But I was supposed to be focused on Graham and Nora was getting agitated.
"You could say that."
"He's being modest. He's runs a boxing gym. He's been organising fights for years. And there's this big one this weekend. He's been stressing about it for months."
Graham's eyebrows rose to meet his hairline. "The Kilpatrick fight?"
"That's the one."
I shrugged my eyebrows, tipping back my own glass and draining it, just the way Kaitlin had. I looked back behind me to check the corridor she'd gone down was still empty.
I only lasted another minute and a half before I scraped my own chair back and went after her.
"I'll be right back."
"Uncle Garrett! What are you playing at?"
Kaitlin
Almost hyperventilating, I made it into the bathroom before I did something stupid in front of Nora. The whiskey was making my face hot, but it was Rhett who'd set the rest of me on fire.
He'd stalked over to our table like I was his prey, and I didn't doubt the truth of it. Some primitive urge had me spreading my legs beneath the table as he came closer. The part of me that liked it was so much larger than the part of me that thought I was a fool. He looked at me with a raw realness that no one else ever had. I could sense the danger in him and heaven help me, I liked that too.
What was wrong with me? Had I come totally unhinged?
I grabbed a few paper towels out of the dispenser on the wall and splashed a little water on my face, before dabbing carefully. I felt dizzy in the mirror and like there wasn't enough air in the room. My makeup was smudged, but I didn't have the coordination to fix it.
My wrist was still tingling with the trail his finger had burned into my skin with the whiskey and I was imagining him painting me all over, making me shiver with his mouth around my nipples, sucking on my breasts and my belly, flaring every inch of me to life.
God, I wanted him.
How could he be her uncle? The one man I'd fallen for turned out to be related to the one friend I'd made in this city. How ridiculous was that! Fate must have it in for me. Nothing was going right.
I was younger than her. There was no way she'd understand, so it would come down to her or him, and maybe I should have prized friendship higher, but the pull of attraction I felt bordered on the preternatural and I was too far gone to care.
I'd never seen a man like him up close, and it was like watching a predator in the zoo that could crush me in its jaws. I'd been lucky to get away that afternoon. Who knew if my luck was going to stay the same tonight.
I felt safe enough to look, but I was playing a dangerous game, given there were no bars between us and I was coaxing him closer. Trouble was, I couldn't let him get away without doing something. If I was going to disappear in some dodgy part of Dublin, at least it wouldn't be to a group of teenage wannabes.
He was going to have his way with me, I was sure of that. And after everything else going wrong, that was all I really wanted - for him to take me in his arms and make the world make sense again the way it seemed to when I looked into his eyes. Maybe he'd be rough with me, but I didn't care.
He might have been feral and aggressive, but he'd protected me.
My nipples were hard and my panties were growing wet and I wanted him more than I'd ever wanted anyone in my entire life.
I had to get it together.
What did people do in situations like these? I could bet my last dollar they didn't hide out in bathrooms for the rest of the night.
I straightened up, blinking at myself in the mirror, aware of the room swaying slightly. My head was thrumming and it took so much effort to keep upright, but I had everything under control.
"You go out there, Kaitlin," I told my bleary reflection through the thump of a growing headache. "And you kiss him. Tha's what you do. And you worry about everything else tomorrow. Okay?"
That whiskey was stronger than I thought it'd be. I braced my hands on either side of the basin, breathing slowly before I risked the walk to the door.
One foot in front of the other. That was the only way to do it.
I opened the door, stumbling out into the corridor, and let out a squeak, startled to find him leaning up against the wall, feet crossed at his ankles, waiting for me.
His stubble had gone past what could have been called a five o'clock shadow, but it wasn't the full, carefully tended beard that was becoming so fashionable in trendy coffee shops that only sold cold-press and kombucha, back home. I wanted to feel the rasp of it against my skin.
I was illogically glad that the man who'd scared off the boys - the man who might just have had his own nefarious plans for me - was the most fine example of a man I'd ever seen.
His eyes hardened on me as I struggled to keep my balance on my heels, and I swear my heart stopped beating with the shock of the cool, solid green of them. He gripped my forearm, walking me over to the far wall and I sagged against it gratefully, aware of the physical sweep of his eyes. It felt like he could already see me without my clothes on.
He'd had that same look in his eyes in Ballyfermot.
"That was a twelve year old single pot still you knocked back. It's meant to be savoured."
"Oh." My body didn't care how angry with me he was about the whiskey, just as long as he kissed me. "I didn't know that."
I deserved a little fun tonight. A girl could dream, couldn't she?
CHAPTER 6
Garrett
Kilpatrick had a saying: your woman was your weakness. The man might have a point.
I could see down Kaitlin's top. The plump, smooth swell of her breasts over the top of her bra made me want to tear her clothes off with my teeth to get at them. And she didn't seem to care. My fists balled with the effort of not touching her.
"I thought I told you to stick to the tourist spots."
Her eyes tracked to my face
and mine dropped to the plump swell of her lower lips.
"Maybe I should." She caught her lip between her teeth like she knew I was watching and her breathing deepened the rise and fall of her chest. "Thank you for rescuing me."
This woman was dangerous.
I'd need a cold shower to get over this. My balls were already aching to release my seed into her, determined that it was no coincidence she'd shown up. A voice inside me clamoured that she was mine, and I should take her. But with everything the CAB was stirring up, alongside rising tensions over the upcoming fight, the last thing I needed was a distraction like her, no matter how innocent she turned out to be.
Dad's Irish Mafia Friend (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 110) Page 5