by Avery Flynn
“What happened? Did I do something to piss you off?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She took in a shaky breath. “I just need to go home.”
“Gina.” He took her hand in his much bigger one. “Please talk to me.”
Looking up at him, she saw everything she’d ever thought she wanted in a guy. He was kind, smart, funny, and he made her feel like she was someone special, someone who was wanted just for who she was. God, what an idiot she’d been to think that was possible.
She tugged her hand free.
“I can’t do this any more, Ford,” she said before she lost her nerve. “It’s been nice to pretend for once that this thing between us was something that could happen. But we both know it can’t, not for the long term, and I’d forgotten that until tonight. I can’t afford to forget it any longer.”
Ford narrowed his gaze, his green eyes crinkling at the edges with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, my family and your job don’t mix.” It wasn’t not true. It just wasn’t the whole truth, and at this point she wasn’t sure she could give him that. So much for always being honest with each other.
He crossed his arms and stood looking at her like she was talking crazy. “It’s a good thing I’m not dating your family, then.”
Ugh. Why did he have to be so frustrating?
“You know what I mean,” she said, her voice just below a shout, because if she was going to make an ass out of herself on the sidewalk in front of Marino’s with people slowing their pace so they could listen in for a second before walking inside, then she might as well go total fishwife about it.
“No, I know that you’re feeding me a bunch of bullshit right now,” he hollered back. “What is this about?”
He wasn’t going to let it go. He was too stubborn for that.
“Do I have to say it?” she asked, her voice cracking.
Ford’s face softened, and he took a step forward, reaching for her. “I guess so, because I’m not getting it at all.”
Avoiding his touch was the last thing she wanted, but she couldn’t let him touch her. Not now, not if she actually wanted to get the truth out and be done with this horrible conversation. She took a deep breath, pushed her hair back behind her ears, lifted her chin, and stepped into the light coming off the red neon Marino’s sign above the door. Might as well let him really get a good look.
“We both know I’m not the girl who ends up with a happily ever after with a guy like you, so I need to walk away now while I still can.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ford couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It wasn’t just because he wasn’t the charming Hartigan, it was because he really had no fucking clue how to respond with words to such an asinine comment.
So he didn’t even try.
He simply closed the distance between them, took Gina’s face between his hands, and kissed the ever-loving hell out of her. It wasn’t a particularly nice kiss or a gentle one. He didn’t mean for it to be.
When she opened her mouth in surprise, he deepened the kiss with a ferocious need that had him straining against his own sense of self-control. On some level, he knew they were standing in front of Marino’s with people weaving around them on their way into the bar, but he didn’t give a shit. This wasn’t about those people.
It was about him and Gina.
So he kissed her like a man who believed that if he did it right, she’d forget that anyone had ever called her awful names or made her feel like she wasn’t everything a man could want.
“Get a room, Hartigan,” someone hollered.
The words cut through the haze of need surrounding him, and he broke the kiss.
“That is what I think about how you look,” he said, his breath ragged exhales of frustration. “I can’t be around you and not want to do exactly that. All the time. Even when we were on that damn Kiss Cam at the wedding.”
Gina blinked away the wetness in her eyes. “You don’t have to lie. I know what I look like.”
That was it. He couldn’t take it. If he didn’t get this out now, he was going to explode. He grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the side of Marino’s and into the walkway that led to the closed beer garden.
“Where are we going?” she asked, keeping pace with him on those long, amazing legs of hers.
He didn’t answer her question. He couldn’t. He didn’t trust himself with words right now, not where they could be seen.
Inside the alley, he brought them both to a standstill just inside the wrought iron fence surrounding the beer garden. He gave the area a quick look-see. The ivy lining the walls was coming in, and flowers had started to bloom, but no one else was there. Thank fucking God, because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold onto his control long enough to make them leave.
Still holding Gina’s hand and with no intention of letting her go, he marched through to the back corner, where they could finally get the privacy he needed for this. Once there, he dropped her hand and stood to one side so he wasn’t blocking her in. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel like she was trapped. She could go. He wouldn’t stop her. However, he prayed with everything he had in that moment that she’d stay and listen to what he had to say, because she needed to hear it. She needed to understand.
“You want to know what I see when I look at you?” he said, unable to keep the rough edge out of his voice. “I see a woman who makes me absolutely insane.”
“Thank you,” she said, sarcasm thick in her tone. “What a compliment.”
This woman was going to kill him. She had no idea what she did to him. Getting all emotive wasn’t his thing. He was Irish, for the love of Mike. His people didn’t do those crazy public declarations her clients seemed to love. So here he was, staring at the woman who’d turned his life upside down, with no fucking clue what to say. And yet, the words came anyway.
“I can’t get through five minutes without thinking of that sweet mouth of yours, or the way when you laugh when you throw back your head and just let it go. The best part of my day is making you laugh and watching how your eyes seem to just glow with happiness. I think about how, when you look at me, you’re really looking at me and not at a cop or one of the wild Hartigan clan. You see me.” He took a step back, then another, and another, until his back was against the ivy-covered brick wall farthest away from her. “And when I look at you, I don’t see a beautiful woman. I see you, and that’s better than any fucking beauty queen. So, if you need to go home. I won’t stop you.”
Her head was angled away from him so he couldn’t see her expression, as she walked away from him. One step. Two steps. Three steps. Each one leaving his blood colder than the last. Then, at the arbor leading into this isolated section of the beer garden, she stopped.
“You’re gonna break me, Ford Hartigan,” she said, her voice ragged and her back still to him.
“I won’t. Trust me.” And he meant it. He meant it completely.
She turned and the next thing he knew she was in his arms, her mouth on his, her hands yanking at his T-shirt, pulling it out of his jeans. There was so much desperate need running through him that the desire flooding through his blood tipped him over the edge of sanity—or maybe it was the way Gina’s lips felt on his, the way her tongue dared him to take them higher, or it could have been the way she seemed unable to all but attack him, too. He didn’t care that they were in the empty beer garden at Marino’s or that if they got arrested for indecent exposure it would be the least of his worries. He needed her now.
His hands went to her skirt, a flirty piece of red material that had swirled around her thighs when she’d stormed out of the bar. Reaching beneath it, he slid his palms up the outside of her thighs and over the generous curve of her hips. So distracted by the taste of her mouth, it took a moment for the reality of what he was feeling to make sense.
“You’re not wearing panties.”
“They seemed to slow things down,” she said as she kissed
her way down his neck, her hands busy with the button on his jeans. “This seemed smarter.”
“You have the sexiest brain in the world.” Hell, everything about her was sexy—the dip of her waist, the needy moan she let out when he glided his fingers inside her already wet pussy, the feel of her clenching around his fingers. “Jesus, Gina. You feel so damn good.”
He loved seeing her like this, so wanton and free of all the baggage that she carried around all the time. It made him want to push her, give her everything, let her have more than she thought she could take, just so she could have it all. In and out, he moved his fingers inside her, rubbing and stroking the soft swollen lips as she stood there, legs spread, head back, taking it all.
She worked the button of his jeans free and slid her hand inside, curling her fingers around his hard cock. “I need you inside me.”
“What, you’re not going to come for me first?” He pushed a third finger inside her, twisting and turning them together. “I want to feel you come. Show me how you’d take my cock.”
“Ford.” His name came out like such a sweet plea.
Right behind her moan came the sound of Marino’s customers—his fellow officers—passing by the walkway. Gina must have heard them, too, because her hips faltered.
“Oh no.” He plunged his fingers deeper, added the pressure of his thumb to her clit, swirling it around the sensitive bundle of nerves there. “You don’t get to stop. You just have to be quiet. Can you do that?”
…
Gina was going to lose her mind with Ford’s fingers inside her and a bar full of cops on the other side of the brick wall she was leaning against. The voices from people walking by still echoed in her head, and for half a second a dark memory from her past tried to push to the front. A public place. A man she couldn’t get enough of. Losing herself to the moment. The crushing weight of mortification afterward that knocked something loose forever. That recollection tried to take hold, but she shoved it away. This wasn’t then. She could trust Ford. He’d never lie to her like that.
He must have sensed her hesitation, because he stopped that wonderful thing he was doing with his fingers. “Do you want to stop?”
She shook her head.
“Gina, look at me,” he said. “I need to know you’re okay with this.”
Okay with it? That didn’t begin to describe it. She wanted Ford more than she’d ever wanted anyone and she needed him right now. She lifted her head, never more sure of anything.
“I don’t want your fingers.” Her hands went to his jeans again, taking down the zipper with a ruthless efficiency born of desperate need. “I want you.”
Something crackled and sizzled in the air around them as he stared at her, lust swirling in his green eyes. Then everything happened almost at once. His fingers were gone from her wet folds. He grabbed his wallet and pulled out a condom, rolling it on before she’d had a chance to process that he’d ripped the foil package open. Then his hands were on her hips and he spun her around so she faced the wall.
The thrill of anticipation zinged through her as she pressed her palms to the cool brick and spread her legs wide.
“I can’t do slow and easy right now, Gina.” He flipped her skirt up and exhaled a hiss of appreciation as his palm caressed her bare ass. “I’m gonna fuck you hard and fast. Are you ready for that?”
She had a response ready, a good one, but before she could say it, she looked over her shoulder at Ford and everything in her brain scattered. He stood there, his T-shirt rumpled, his jeans shoved down to mid-thigh, and his hand wrapped around his cock as he looked at her with an intensity that made this feel more like a claiming than fucking. Her core clenched in response, and she arched her back in invitation.
It was one he didn’t turn down. He lined his cock up with her wet, swollen entrance and plunged inside her, so deep she felt him everywhere.
“You are so tight,” he said, his voice raw with need, as he withdrew and thrust forward. “I can’t get enough of this. I can’t get enough of you.”
Words. They were in her head but they were beyond her as she rocked back against him, meeting his every push forward and undulating her hips to change the angle so that with every forward plunge into her, he rubbed against that spot just inside her entrance that made her toes curl and the tight ball of energy inside her tighten and expand at the same time.
“Ford,” she cried out, closing her eyes and letting her head drop. “Please.”
She didn’t know what she was begging for, she just needed it.
“Is this what you want?” His slid his hand from her hip to her abdomen and lower. He parted her tight curls with two fingers and circled her clit—soft and hard, fast and slow—until the only thing tethering her to earth was him. It was too much and not enough, and she needed it all.
The brick wall ate into her palms as she pushed against it and thrust backward to meet him. Again and again they moved together and apart until her thighs started to tingle and her orgasm hit her like a lightning bolt that exploded inside her, filling her with a blinding light and fullness. His hand came over her mouth to muffle her cries as he fucked her through her climax, his chest pressed to her back.
“Gina,” Ford called her name in a guttural whisper and came hard inside her.
The world came back to her in bits and pieces, slowly, as if time or their location didn’t matter. The feel of Ford against her. The smell of the flowers starting to bloom. The unconcerned chatter of people walking along the sidewalk on the other side of the beer garden. Ford kissed the back of her neck and withdrew, getting rid of the condom in one of the nearby trashcans as she stood and let her skirt fall back into place. They grinned at each other like they’d just gotten away with stealing the Hope Diamond, that post-sex high too strong to let reality intrude.
Once he had himself tucked away and fastened his jeans—necessary, if unfortunate—he took her hand and they walked to the beer garden’s dark entrance. There he paused and looked around, making sure no one was heading their way from the sidewalk in front of Marino’s.
“Okay.” He started walking forward. “The coast is clear.”
The fact that he’d bothered to make sure no one would see them come out of the beer garden probably looking every bit like they’d just screwed each other’s brains out, that he’d protected her like that, made a comforted warmth spill through her.
True, he hadn’t said he loved her in that speech of his, but he’d surely meant it. Why else would he have said all that?
She may not need a man in her life to make her happy, but with Ford holding her hand as they walked to his car, she was finally beginning to believe that she was going to get everything she hadn’t let herself believe she wanted.
Chapter Seventeen
The Hartigan house was, once again, in total chaos. Gina kinda loved it.
“So, no Honeypot?” she asked Felicia, the smallest and quietest Hartigan who, unlike the rest of the brood, lived across the bridge in Harbor City with her billionaire fiancé, Hudson, and her one-eyed cat.
“No way,” Felicia said, pushing up her glasses. “She has been banished from this and all future family functions. That was the edict that came down from on high.”
“You mean Kate?” Gina asked as she spooned potato salad on her plate, since today’s lunch was being served buffet style to accommodate everyone who wanted to watch the hockey game playing in the living room. The fact that it was the playoffs do-or-die time of the year was the only reason Kate had relented to the many pleas of her family.
“You can’t go higher than Mom,” Felicia said with a chuckle as she and Hudson made their way through the line behind Gina.
“How did you come up with the name Honeypot?”
Felicia’s whole face lit up. “It’s the kind of ants I study.”
“I’ve never heard of them, what are they like?” That seemed like a nicer way of saying she’d always thought an ant was an ant was an ant.
“Don’t ask,
” Hudson interrupted, his face an exaggerated mask of disgust. “They are gross.”
Felicia turned to her fiancé with a teasing gasp. “How can you hate on the ant that brought us together?”
“Easily.” He gave a mock shudder.
And that’s pretty much how lunch went. She chatted with all of the various Hartigan members and those like herself who’d been brought into the fold, including the guy Fallon had brought, Kyle. He worked out of the same precinct as Ford but was still in uniform. When she’d asked how he’d met Fallon, he responded with a shrug of his shoulders and made a comment about cops and nurses always seeming to end up together.
“I know, he’s an ass,” Fallon told her later while they were watching the Ice Knights get killed in the second period. “But his dick is magnificent.”
Gina almost choked on her bite of fried chicken. “You can’t say that. Someone might hear.” She looked around, but everyone’s attention was glued to the TV.
“They’ll live.” Fallon shrugged and took a bite of her drumstick. “Trust me, with Frankie here, they have definitely heard worse.”
That was probably true. Frankie seemed to have been born without a filter and, as he liked to put it, a humble bone in his body. The man was a certified mess, but a fun one. Looking around at the Hartigan clan, who’d made her feel right at home, Gina realized that Ford wasn’t anywhere around. And that’s when she got a gloriously delicious idea that involved his magnificent dick and a quickie in the farthest-away room with a lock. All she had to do was find him.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Fallon, figuring the kitchen was the likeliest spot. “I’m gonna go get some more water.”
Mind made up, she walked out of the crowded living room, more than ready to keep looking until she found him. She didn’t have to look far. Ford was in the kitchen with Kyle. They both had their backs to her as they loaded up their plates with more food.
Found ya. She was about to say something when Kyle spoke first.