by Aubrey Irons
“Because this life is burned into me, Sierra. Because I’m not like you, or your perfect little town, or your awesome family. Because I’m broken, and I’ve glued myself back together, but I’m not like people like you.”
“People like me?”
“Loved,” he spits out bitterly. “Surrounded with kindness and goodness. That’s not me, and that’s why this doesn’t shake me.”
He looks away, his face grim.
“Now, we need to get going. I’m sorry I snapped at you, but my goal right now is to keep both of us alive. All right?”
I nod, sniffling and feeling so weak for crying and freaking like this. “Okay.”
We turn and head back to the car.
“Sorry I freaked out,” I mumble.
“Don’t.”
He pulls me close, his eyes lancing into mine.
“You were amazing back there, actually.”
I roll my eyes.
“Oh, you don’t believe me? You do a lot of wheel-grabbing and passenger-seat driving while someone shoots out the window of a moving car?”
I smile quietly.
“Yeah, that was pretty bad-ass, sweetheart.”
He pulls the car out of the rest area and revs us back up the ramp to the highway.
“Well, that’s me. Bad-ass grad school fuck up.”
Connor grins.
“Keep lighting fires, princess.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Connor
“What is this place?”
She shuts the car door and looks up at the old two-story house. The surf crashes loudly farther down the beach, over the dunes, and the sea-salt air I fucking love washes over our faces.
I grin to myself, looking up at the house.
Damn, I missed this place.
“It belongs to some family friends. Me and my brothers and sister used to come here in the summers. I fuckin’ loved it here. And, we’ll be safe here. No one knows about this place.”
She turns to me, her brow furrowed. “I thought you just had brothers?”
“Eh, it’s complicated.”
“Hey, I’m one of five, spill it.”
I grin as I walk around to the big porch that looks out over the dunes and the ocean past them.
“It’s just old family shit, boring stuff.”
“If you say so.”
I find the spare key exactly where I knew it’d be in the mason jar bolted to the underside of the second step. The lock clicks, and the door creaks on sea-brine-rusted hinges.
It’s musty in here, but untouched. There was some shit with local kids breaking in a few years back. Liam and Damien and I put a stop to that real quick by sneaking in here one night, leaving the lights off, and waiting for those little fuckers to come back.
High school douchebags are decidedly less tough once they’ve literally shit their pants when three guys with guns meet them in the dark house they’re trying to use to get laid.
I click on the lights and grin.
The place is exactly the same as it always was back then.
In the old days, pre-Dark Saints, pre all of us kids growing up too fast and too hard, this place was our haven. Mike and Colleen Gallagher would take us here when Boston turned into a fucking frying pan in the summer - out here on Cape Cod to the house Colleen’s parents had left her.
Just me, Liam, and Gray, and our basically adopted siblings, Damien and Nora.
I glance around at the 50’s kitsch decor - the wood walls, the old windowpanes, the old throw blankets over threadbare couches that still look like home. The fireplace to one side, the doorway into the old kitchen where Mrs. Gallagher would make sandwiches and insist on lathering us with more sunscreen before we headed back down to the water.
I barely ever come here anymore, just with life being what it is. I’ve also never brought anyone here, that’s for sure.
Sierra whistles behind me. “Oh my God, this place is amazing.”
“That better not be sarcasm.”
“It’s not! Holy shit I love this.”
I grin. “Thanks.”
“Your family’s?”
“Sort of.”
She sighs, giving me a look.
“Drink?”
Sierra smiles. “Now? It’s like ten in the morning.”
“Yep, right now.”
“Family stuff that hard to talk about, huh?”
“Sorry, were you there when those guys were shooting at us and trying to kill us?”
She grins and looks away, and I kneel down and feel under the bottom shelf of the bookcase before I smile.
Yep, still there.
The bottle Mike Gallagher always kept hidden away. I pull the dusty thing out into the light and shake my head. This shit is rotgut bad, but hell, it’s aged now, I guess.
I pour us some glasses, but then leave them on the coffee table and head out to grab some wood by the side of the house. I come back with an oversized armload and start to build the logs up in the fireplace.
“My brothers and I - Liam and Gray. Eventually, people figured out our parents weren’t around.”
She looks down into her glass.
“My mom ran off when we were real young, and my dad,” I shrug. “My dad was a piece of shit, and he eventually took off too. Jack- that’s Aela’s dad-”
“Aela?”
My brother Liam’s girlfriend. No, fiancée.”
She gives me a look and I shake my head and grin. “This is all complicated, and I’m doing a fucking shit job of explaining it.”
“Well, I’m listening.”
I pluck my glass off the table and take a swig. “So, back in the day, Jack Reilly ran the Saints.”
“The Saints?”
“The Dark Saints.”
“Your gang.”
I chuckle. “It’s not really like that. It’s not like we run around holding up banks or wearing the same color bandanas or shit like that. It’s more like a family. Jack ran things back in the day, and he took my brothers and me in and made sure we stayed out of foster care. He put us up with the Gallaghers, who had two kids - Damien and Nora. Damien brought us those groceries the other morning at my place.”
“I think I was tied to a chair?”
I grin, clinking my glass to hers.
“Anyway, this was their summer place. They weren’t rich, they didn’t have much, but this place was fuckin’ heaven back in the day.”
“Well, hey, cheers to being one of five.”
I grin and clink her raised glass. “Shit ain’t easy.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
She does and I watch her before I turn and start jamming old newspaper under the logs.
“Jack’s gone now, and his daughter Aela runs the Saints.”
“Go girl power.”
“Basically.”
“And her and your brother are engaged?”
“Yep.”
“There’s a joke here about sleeping with the boss, isn’t there.”
I smile and shake my head. “Trust that I’ve made all of them. Literally all of them.”
She grins as I light the fire, letting it get roaring. I move back and sit with my back against the sofa she’s camped out on.
“So, now what?”
“I’m figuring that out. But for now, we wait here while the Saints get shit under control back in Boston.”
“You’d rather be there, helping.”
Her voice drifts down over me from her perch on the couch behind and above me. And it’s not that she’s got one of those sultry sex-kitten voices or anything, there’s just something so fucking sweet and so damn innocent about her voice.
Something too naive, still.
Whatever it is, it makes me want to yank her off that couch onto my mouth and make her squeal before I fuck her right here on the floor.
I take a solid belt of my whiskey instead, calming that beast.
“And what makes you say that?”
“I can tell.”
>
I shrug. “Yeah, I would. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I do better doing, if that makes sense.” I half turn to look up at her sitting on the couch with her legs tucked up underneath her.
“It does, actually.”
“But, boss’s orders. Aela wants me gone and laying low, so here we are.”
We drift to silence again, sitting there sipping our drinks as the daytime fire crackles in the fireplace. I glance back at her, watching her eyes flicker over the flames, and I can feel that beast roaring again inside.
And it’s not just that I want to ravage her and fuck her until she’s moaning my name and coming all over my cock. It’s that there’s something so fucking sweet about her that it calls out to me. There’s something so nakedly beautiful about her that makes me want to shelter her from the world.
But I blink that thought away. That’s not what this is. At all.
“What are you in grad school for?”
She turns, pulling her eyes away from the flames and back to me.
“Law, actually. Well, it’s this combined business and law program that spits you out after three years with an MBA and credentials to finish up with two years at a law school.”
I whistle. “Well, well, well.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah.”
“No, I’m impressed.”
“It becomes less impressive when I mention that I’m not exactly going to class much recently.”
“Shit happens.”
“Well, shit like this gets you kicked out of very prestigious programs.”
She sighs and finishes the rest of her whiskey in one tilt of her head. She blinks back the burn, clearing her throat and making a face before she glances back down at me.
“Holy shit, that’s…”
“Bad.”
She snorts a laugh as I grin.
“Yeah, age has not done much to Mike Gallagher’s shitty taste in booze.”
I knock the rest of mine back and pour in a fresh splash before topping hers off as well.
“Sláinte.”
She smiles back. “Sláinte. So, now what?”
“Bored with small talk and a fire already?”
She smiles shyly, looking away. “No, I just…” She blushes, looking down at her glass.
And my cock throbs, suddenly wondering if she was just suggesting what I think she was.
“I mean, I-”
“You had something else in mind,” I say, my voice edged.
I know what she wants. She wants me to make her feel and forget like I did last night. She wants me to take control, and dominate her like I did. And fuck, I want that too, but I know where that leads.
And I’m not that guy.
And this ain’t that.
And this cannot happen, not anymore.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She recoils like I slapped her, and I immediately feel like shit for phrasing it like that.
“No, I mean-”
“That’s not what I was implying,” she says briskly, sitting up a little straighter as if that’s somehow making her more proper and not just pushing her tits out against her thin top. Cause, that’s what it’s doing.
I drag my eyes up to her face, leveling a look at her. “Really.”
“Yes, really, thank you very much.”
“So, you weren’t about to ask me nicely to bend you over, peel those panties off, slide my big cock inside of you, and fuck you until you’re screaming for more?”
Her face goes bright red and she almost sputters on her whiskey.
“I was not!” she says it shrilly, her whole face pulsing red. “Ugh, God, you are-” she shakes her head, looking pissed. “You’re a pig.”
“Never claimed I wasn’t.”
“Well, I never claimed I wanted you to touch me again.”
I grin. “Didn’t have to, sweetheart. It’s all over your face.”
“Get over yourself, asshole. You think cause you’ve got this cocky attitude and the whole macho bad boy thing, and the sexy loft, and the big-”
She stumbles, her face going red.
“Oh, please continue.”
Her face burns, and she hastily looks away. “You think all that makes you this irresistible gift to-”
“My big what?”
Her eyes dart back, flickering.
“Say it.”
She swallows. “You’re disgusting.”
“I never said I was Prince Charming, sweetheart.”
“Good, because you’re not.”
“And what am I.”
I move closer, and she shivers before she suddenly gets up and steps away. “I need to- we’re done having this conversation.”
“You started it, sweetheart.”
“Well I wish I hadn’t,” she snaps. She steps across the room angrily before she stops and whirls back in a huff.
“Where’s the shower?”
“Upstairs. Hang on, I’ll-”
“I can shower myself.”
“And I wasn’t offering. I was going to go see if there was anything of Nora’s you could wear here.”
Shit, I could use a change of clothes too.
“Oh,” her mouth goes small, her hands clasping and twisting in front of her chest. “Thanks.”
“You are so welcome, princess,” I mutter sarcastically.
She gives me a look before she whirls and stalks up the stairs, leaving me watching that ass walk away and trying to will my cock to deflate even a little bit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sierra
What an asshole.
I shut the water off in the ancient upstairs bathroom and grab the towel from the edge of the sink.
An asshole, but he was right, about what I was suggesting. Even if I wasn’t even trying to suggest it, I kind of was, at least in the back of my mind.
Apparently that’s exactly how it came out, too.
Because it’s like I’m addicted to him, as bad as I know he is, like he’s a smoking habit or something. There’s something about his roughness, and his crudeness, and the easy way he handles a gun or tosses me around.
The way he dominates me so fiercely.
And the fact that he’s more than those things, even if I hate that I’m looking deep enough to see that.
I finish drying my hair and patting dry my skin, and I wrap the towel around myself before I step out of the bathroom. I immediately glance down to my feet to see clothes folded on the floor - a girl’s pink t-shirt with a Care Bear on it and some sleep shorts. Nora’s apparently.
I retreat back into the bathroom and slip them on. I frown, and actually almost laugh as I glance in the mirror.
Apparently, Nora hasn’t been here in a while. Or maybe Nora is still twelve, but I doubt it. In any case, the clothes are way too small, which would be funny if their, uh, smallness didn’t make them, well...
My face burns as I eye my getup in the mirror.
I look like a stripper trying to pull off some sort of naughty babysitter or schoolgirl costume.
I start to peel them off before I think about the alternatives: my clothes from days ago, or the towel.
After that, it’s a pretty easy pill to swallow.
I’m still trying to stretch the shirt out a little as I pad back down the stairs into the living room. Immediately, I can feel his eyes on me, burning right into me and devouring me.
I swallow. I know that look.
It’s hungry.
“What,” I mutter, frowning.
“Apparently you’re a size bigger.”
My jaw drops. “Wow, you know exactly what to say to a girl to make her-”
“No, I meant you’re a size bigger than Nora from when she was twelve. Relax.”
I cross my arms over my chest and head the rest of the way down the stairs, grabbing a blanket from the back of the lazy-boy chair in the corner and draping it around myself. Connor hands me a glass of whiskey, and I snatc
h it from him before dropping down into the easy chair.
He smirks. “Pouting about the shirt?”
“No, I just don’t need to stoop to your level.”
“My level?”
“Being gross and filthy.”
“I think you like it when I’m gross and filthy.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
Immediately, I hate the thoughts I had about his sexy roughness and his masculine dominance back in the shower.
“Says the girl that was drooling for my cock earlier.”
My mouth flies open. “You’ve got some nerve!”
“Why fight it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why pretend I’m not right?”
My face burns hot as I glare at him.
The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know why I fight it, maybe because I feel like I should. Maybe because I feel like giving in and saying yes to the wicked desire he brings out in me is letting go of myself completely and fulfilling this Stockholm syndrome prophesy.
“Princess, we both know that uptight, prudish, good-girl pussy is dripping for me right now.”
Something sizzles inside of me. Something burns hot like fire, something I want to squash down but know I can’t.
“It is not,” I say quietly.
“Prove it.”
I swallow. “You’d love that wouldn’t you.”
“I would.”
He says it evenly, his voice edged in steel. I rake my teeth over my lip, eyeing him right back.
“Show me.”
His eyes burn into mine from across the room, and I quickly take a sip of my drink.
“No.”
His eyes flash fire.
“I said show me,” he growls.
Something pulses inside of me, like this fire sparking to life and quickly consuming everything it touches.
Because I love the crudeness. I melt at the way he commands. And I start to get very hot in places I shouldn’t at how freaking unbelievably cocky and self-assured he is to even say this stuff to me.
“Why should I?”
“Because I know you want to. Because I know you’re dying to see how far you can go with that bad girl facade you like to put up.”
I purse my lips, feeling the fire raging inside of me - feeling the telltale wetness bloom hot between my legs.