Corky holds my hand tight and looks in my eyes.
“I feel for you, ladybug.”
I haven’t begun to come to terms with it. I thought I had, but I’ve just put it off. Held it back. I feel like a dam is getting ready to break. I take a breath and another drink. I blink and I feel stronger.
“Now,” I tell Connor, “The Gilligans are a divided family, ripped in two.” I take a breath. “And I’m on the bad side.”
Chapter Nine
Connor
When she’s ready to take a look around, I show her my suite first.
As we’re walking into the suite, it’s the first moment that we’ve been alone since she told us what happened to her father. I lay a hand softly on her shoulder to stop her.
“Don’t fret now,” I tell her. “You’re going to be alright. I’m going to take care of you.”
Corky didn’t exaggerate about the suite. As well as the huge and gorgeous master bedroom, there’s another bedroom off to the side that Corky calls the ‘nanny’s room.’ It’s got it’s own little bathroom with a pedestal and a shower cabinet. I think I see a shadow of disappointment when I tell her, “I’ll sleep in here, obviously.”
Backing out of the little room as Luce is turning, we bump into each other. The heat of her body, the softness of her breasts and the scent of her is almost too hard to resist. Even more when she looks up and the big pools of her eyes seem to be pleading me to hold her.
She presses her lips together and lays a hand on my chest. I put my hand over hers and I try to keep the contact at just the level of friendly, or maybe brotherly. My heart bangs like it wants to get out into her hand, though. And, lower down, a pulsing and thickening stretches me to a painful swelling to answer the heat at the top of her thighs.
Her chin tips as her soft palm pushes against my pec, which flexes and tightens. All my muscles buzz.
It’s like all of my senses flip to extra sensitivity. The bright, fresh scent of her hair ignites me, I can taste her breath and I’m drawn to it as I hear the sound of her tongue. Her head tips back and I catch the perfume from her neck as she draws a long breath through her nose. Her eyelids flutter and she moistens her lips.
“Luce,” I start to say something. She looks up. I pull her to me. Her eyes sparkle and shine as her lips part.
She looks up, into my eyes and says, “Oh.”
So I kiss her.
First, just fitting my lips to hers, letting her feel me. Her lips tremble and she pulls me closer. Opens for me. We share our breath and our bodies curl and wrap around each other. Her kiss is deep and sweet. Our tongues meet like long lost lovers, at an unexpected reunion.
Her arms grip around me and she rakes her fingers through my hair. Her body and mine dance together. Holding, pressing. Finding ways to be close. Places to touch.
“You’re safe with me,” I tell her. But she puts a finger to my lips and shakes her head.
“Don’t,” she says. “I’ll start believing you.”
At first I think she’s being smart. Making a joke. But I see that she’s not. She pulls away. I want to bring her back, fold her in my arms and keep her, but I need to be careful with her feelings. She’s fragile. Especially now.
The bedroom suite and the main bathroom are beyond sumptuous. The apartment has three suites like it, and this one is the second best. Corky’s is half as big again, and it has the best view in the apartment.
Even in Boston we heard tales of the gang warfare and the vendettas here. The way I heard it, the guy who was the last man killed was the man they all blamed for the treachery and murder starting up in the first place.
But I know from my own childhood what it is to lose your parents and hear your family’s name blackened. It happened to some degree in all the major families in Dublin, one time or another. Knowing that someone else’s turn would come didn’t do anything to ease the pain, though.
Life could be cold and very fucking hard indeed when your family name was on the black list.
Even if every word they said about her father was true, none of it was her doing or any fault of her own. To have gotten through all of that, I’m more impressed than ever with the strength in her character.
Luce leans back against the wall. She looks drained and exhausted. I’m getting hard and I try not to think about her slipping out of her clothes, or her skin, glistening wet under the warm, soapy lather and the rush of water. Her eyes shine and flash. She holds on to the wall.
It would be so great to holds her now. But I mustn’t. Even if it weren’t wrong, it’s so much the wrong time. Not while she’s hurting like this.
I want her so much, but she’s too vulnerable now. She’s not ready. It would be fantastic, but the first time would be tarnished forever.
I’m learning her.
But I might need a shower myself. A cold one. Impulse control is not my strong suit. Impulse channeling is more my style. The swelling in my pants is hard enough to ache. Somehow I find the will to pull myself away.
From behind the closed door, the sound of the shower starts. Over the rush of water, she calls through the door, “Would you bring my beer, please.”
“Okay,” I have to clear my throat as I call back to her.
I fetch the beer bottle, but I reach it around the door while I look away, like a guy in a black-and-white vintage movie. I don’t want to look at her body, through the steam. I can control myself, but it’s tough enough when her hot, soft, wet hand reaches to take the bottle from me. If I get a sight of her, steaming, wet, and naked, it would be to hard not to take her hand and pull her in to me.
I go back to the sitting area and pick up my beer.
Corky fills in some of the blanks in the tale of the local gang vendettas for me.
“It’s your typical mob story,” she swigs champagne from the bottle. “It all starts out, maybe eighteen months ago. Some people get arrested. It happens. But two of these people are Fergus McConnell and Colm Flaherty. They’re both dumb little gobshites. Arrogant and entitled bullies, they could easily have gotten themselves caught any day of the week with no help needed, other than their own sheer dumb assed fuckery. They get pinched right after they hit a suburban bank. I mean, seriously, who even does that anymore?”
She takes another swig from the bottle. “But they did and they got taken in for it. So far, so what, right? But, here’s the thing. These particular fuckwits are the also the eldest fuckwit sons of Dermot McConnell and Brendan Flaherty. Those men are high up in the Rattigan family food chain. Captains.”
I nod and she continues, “The two fathers have no appetite to believe that their sons are dough-headed pricks who couldn’t be trusted to fasten their own pants, so there must have been some evil force at work. Some dirty deeds must be at the back of it. Pretty soon a story starts drifting around that there has to be a rat. Somewhere. Deep inside the family. There’s a rat, and the McConnell and Flaherty seniors were going to root him out and give him his just desserts.”
She says, “McConnell and Flaherty are well-known as ruthless and bloodthirsty sadists. So, naturally enough, this made everybody jumpy. So then there are more arrests. A back-room casino gets raided and everybody is taken downtown. Well, nearly everybody. It’s a high-class game and so a senator, a few other politicos and some corporate types, oilmen and the like, are quietly let out the back way. But everybody else, players, dealers, bar staff, hostesses, dancers—everybody gets a ride to the precinct.
“After that, a truck hi-jack is foiled, a couple of drug dealers are popped and so on. Look at it one way and it’s not much out of the ordinary. but if you see it all through a lens of paranoia and suspicion, you might think there’s a highly-placed rat operating under deep cover.”
I’m skeptical, to say the least.
She says, “So, Hank Gilligan was killed at the end of a night when thirty men disappeared or got whacked. All of them were men of rank in the Rattigan firm. Frankie O’Mara ran the all the district’s gambling opera
tions. People said he was in the foundations of a tall office building. The captain, Hubert McGill was second in command to Don Rattigan himself. He was found on the top of the skyscraper where the newspaper offices were on the top floors. That was thought to be a message for a certain Irish crime reporter there.
“A story also went around that six of the city’s top cops, all from vice and homicide, met sudden and brutal ends that night.”
“Is there evidence? Any truth to it all?”
“None of the people in a position to know are great respecters of evidence. Or truth, come to that. So there’s really no way to be sure.”
I asked her, “So, who stood to gain?”
“You’re good at this game, Hoss. You may be smarter than you look.”
“So, did anyone ever finger the supposed rat?”
“Well, there’s the thing.”
I see what’s coming.
“Luce’s father.”
“What about him?”
Luce is evidently out of the shower.
Turning to see her, I say, “You wear a towel well.” One towel is spun up around her hair, and another is wrapped over her curves.
“Guys!” Corky scowls, “Get a room.”
Luce asks again, “What about my father?”
Corky tells her, “I was just explaining some of the background to the Gilligan split. Or the Rattigan split, depending which side you’re looking from.”
“The fact that my daddy got burned as a rat?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t.”
Corky goes to her and gently touches her shoulder, “Can you prove that, ladybug?”
“You can’t ever prove it, can you? Not beyond all possible doubt.”
“For what it’s worth, though,” Corky looks in her eyes, “I don’t believe he was, either. And I’m not just saying that. I didn’t believe it at the time.”
Luce moves back to the couch. “Do you have any proof?” she asks Corky, “Any way to be certain?”
“I don’t.” Corky says, as she goes to the kitchen, “I ordered you up pizza from Tavolino. I’ll get more beers and something to nibble while you guys wait. And, no, there’s no way to be certain. But it’s hard to see what your daddy would have had to gain. On the other hand, some other people came out of the situation quite well.”
She brings the beers with shrimp and crabmeat phyllo cups, and she says, “Hoss spotted that. I think he’s got the measure of it.”
“Why do you call him that?”
“I don”t know.” Corky looks at me and twinkles. “I said it when he first came here, because he made me think of an old TV show, I guess. But I saw right away that it annoyed the fuck out of him.”
Luce’s eyebrow goes up. “So it stuck?” She turns to look at me.
I say, “Don’t even think about it.”
“About what, Hoss?”
Chapter Ten
Luce
Corky announces, “I’m going to leave you kiddies to your own devices anyway.”
I’m going to be alone in this beautiful apartment, with this too-hot to handle, off-limits older man with an evil spark in his eye? A storm whips up inside me.
Connor asks her, “You don’t want pizza?”
Her head shakes. “I’m out of here. You’ve got the place to yourselves.” I don’t know whether I’m more afraid or excited. When Corky throws me a look, I wonder again what her relationship with Connor is. “For the next ten days at least, the place is yours.”
Connor stands. “Corky, I’m not having it. I can’t chase you out of your home.”
“Chase?” she laughs, “Yeah, fucking try it, big boy. No, my dad and his super-villain buddies are out of town for an annual thing they call their ‘hunting trip.’ I have no clue what they actually do, and I positively would not want to know at any price.”
“Okay.” he says, “So...?”
“So what he calls the town house, a Tudor-style mansion the size of a city museum set in a private park, my family home and where I grew up, will be the venue to host the party of the year.” Her eyes flash at me. “You must stop by. Assuming you’re totally unshockable.” and she looks back at Connor. “Are you unshockable, Hoss?”
“I don’t know, Corky.”
Her grin is sinful. “Well, come to the party. We’ll find out.”
He asks her, “When and where?”
“Where, I’ll text you the address. But every limo driver in the state knows it if you just say the Kinahan house.”
“And when?”
“I already called some DJs, dancers, and mixologists. I need to arrange for food and security staff. So it should start happening by about eleven or midnight tonight. There’s no hurry, though. It usually runs about ten days. Last year it was two whole weeks, but it was touch-and-go getting myself un-debauched enough to time the ending. It needs a couple of clear days at least for the clean-up crew before Daddy and his evil horde return.”
“Sounds very special, Corky. I will try to be there.”
“You, too, ladybug. You’re my friend now, whatever happens, alright? Whether you like it or not.”
She pushes the button for the elevator and she slides into a leather jacket. When the bell chimes, she picks up a rucksack.
My stomach drops through the floor. I really am alone with him.
I’m stiff and I’m trembling at the same time. I start to speak and he does at the same time. Then we both stand up at the same time.
We walk around the couch in opposite directions.
Apparently that makes us walk into each other.
We bounce away. My hand goes out involuntarily behind my back. His hand is there, too. Our hands pull us, twirling together. He holds me so hard, my feet leave the carpet.
My arms and legs wrap around him. I grab him by the back of his head, crushing my body against him. His lips and mine slam together and lock. It feels so very wrong and so terrifyingly right, both at the same time.
My head spins. Inside me, sensation whirls and flashes, bursts, filling me like an enormous breath, setting me alight. Making me wild.
His body swells. The pulses in his hard muscles are so hot, his heat comes through the towel, while it slips and slides between us. threatening to drop and slide away.
Our mouths fasten in a hot and needy, savage kiss. My ankles are hooked together behind his waist. I squeeze my legs to pull us closer. Tighter. Harder together. My own heat grinds, sawing against his hard abs.
The rasp of his stubble scratches my palms as I hold his face in my hands. Writhing tighter, closer to him, painting myself on him, I want to rip his clothes off but I don’t want to let go of his skin.
I run one hand down his and attack the buttons on his shirt with the other.
He holds me, squeezes and kneads my ass. My ass feels so small in his hands, so completely possessed by him. My thighs widen and I scrape the insides of my thighs against his waist and his ribs.
We’re still joined in the fire of the kiss. His fingers stroke my cheek, and my neck. As I move and breathe, the towel drops away from my breast. I need his touch on my skin so much, I moan as his fingers trickle down the side of my throat and over my shoulder. He caresses and holds my breast, tweaks my nipple.
I have to reach between my legs to twist and tug the buckle of his belt open. He walks us back to the couch. The button at the top of his pants is stubbornly hard to open. I yank harder, desperate to get my hands on his flesh. All of it. But some parts especially.
He lays me on my back on the couch. Strokes my face. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t want him. I tell myself that he’s way too old. I don’t feel it, though. I want him. Nervously, I look out of the window. I don’t suppose anyone can see us, this high up.
He says, “It’s one-way glass.”
I shake my head. “Super-villain. Of course it is.”
I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him. And he’s definitely a man in the life. Probably in all the worst wa
ys. I still want him. Even more. His shirt is open. Inside, the hot slopes of his chest swell, his hard six pack ripples and glistens. His pants are open. Inside, behind the soft fabric, the heft of his bulge stretches and lengthens, pointing up toward me.
The towel is over me. Still between us. An annoying, fluffy nuisance. But I ca’t worry about that yet. I see what I want most, right now.
As I reach down for him, my fingers tremble, anticipating the pulsing heat of his hard ridges. Parting my thighs wider and moving myself nearer, my hands slip inside his pants. I want to take his cock out straightaway, but I make myself take hold of him through his shorts. A long, deep sigh pulls up through my chest as I feel the weight and the impossible size of him.
He groans too, as I take hold.
“Luce,”
From the look in his eyes and the slope of his eyebrows, I can tell he’s going to ask if I’m sure or tell me we shouldn’t or something. I grip harder and a ripple of thrill vibrates through me from the insides of my thighs all the way though my nipples, up, over my shoulders, and into my throat.
At the same time, I silence him with a kiss, trembling at the thought of the power I could have. As if I could make him do anything. Nobody could force this man to do a thing that he didn’t want to do. Just like nobody could resist or stop him doing anything he wants.
And he wants me. I can feel how hard. My stomach flutters and rolls as I shove his shorts down. I’ve felt him in my hands but the sight of him still makes me gasp.
More than anything, I want to taste him. I want to feel him on my tongue. But my pussy aches for him. The scent of my own heat spurs me on. I need him. I have to have him. My swollen wet petals need to feel him. Needs to be pushed apart. Opened. Pierced and penetrated by him. I need him inside me so much.
My body takes over and my knees pull my thighs wide apart. Gripping the pulsing heat of him, I pull him toward my opening. Rub him against me. Rock my mound and my clit against him.
Break Her Free: A Curvy Captive Romance Page 5