Carys frowns and rubs her forehead. “A month?” She massages as though she can conjure unknown details from her memory. “I can’t remember something the company is doing that’ll be concluded in a month.”
One side of my lips quirks up. “Hence the conspiracy.”
She’s stopped crying, thankfully. I’m not sure how much longer my willpower would have held out if those silent tears had continued. Each one shred the bit of heart still beating in my chest. Men have begged me for their lives, and I’ve felt nothing. But her sadness burns through me, leaves a scar.
I clench my hands.
“Neither of them would hurt me on purpose,” she says.
The sound of Eric’s grating laugh as he mentioned Carys’s first miscarriage—our miscarriage—echoes in my ears. He cheated, lied, shown her who he is, but she doesn’t want to see it. “Eric is a dick. You’re wrong about him. He doesn’t give a shit if you get hurt.”
“He can be misguided. So can my father.” She shrugs and doesn’t look at me. “They’re men.”
Her comment sets me off. “I don’t understand what that fucking means.” She’s constantly lumping me in with them, and I don’t deserve it. I leave my corner of the room and saunter closer to her. “That’s the second or third time you’ve implied men can’t be trusted.”
“Sometimes men do stupid things. Then,” she says, her gaze connecting with mine, “I have to figure out a way to forgive those men for those things.”
Fucking hell. She’s got me there.
When we’re only a few feet apart, I pause. If I get close enough to touch her, to slide my hand around her waist, tug her flush against me, there won’t be any more talking. These events happening to her, between us, around us, are creating fires of need, of desire, of another emotion I’ve never admitted to anyone. I enjoy playing with fire. Who doesn’t? But she’s the last person I’d want to burn.
“How did you get here?” she says.
I smirk. “You won’t like it. Though I was pretty fucking pissed when I woke up and found you gone.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t still angry.”
“There are more pressing emotions aimed at other things.” Like that fucker Eric. My mind swirls around any and all solutions to make sure he never gets a second chance with Carys. It wouldn’t be a true second chance, anyway. He seems to have screwed her over at every turn. What he’s done makes me vibrate with suppressed anger.
“So how?” she says.
“Demid. One hundred thousand dollars. A private plane. Thomas Byrne. A few other people I owe favors if I ever have any money or influence again.”
“I can help with Thomas, pay back Demid.” She turns away and her fingertips dance across the mini-bar bottles. “You shouldn’t have come. The risk...”
I stare at her back. She doesn’t know? Seems impossible she wouldn’t realize. The inferno threatening to consume us surges, forcing the words out. “Did you really think I’d want to be anywhere fucking else? Throw me in prison. Gun me down in the streets. I’d go to hell and have that shit happen on repeat it if meant you were safe and happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
She goes still at the table. Her back tenses. When she turns toward me, she braces her hands on the table. Tears are trickling down her face. My gut twists in response. “Finn—I—”
“The whole time I was listening to those two dickheads spout off, I couldn’t stop thinking it’s my fucking fault. It’s my fucking fault her life is like this.”
“Finn.” She steps toward me, but I step back. “It’s not—”
I clear my throat and ask the second question that’s plagued me since Eric laid it out. “The other miscarriages—the fact that you haven’t been able to have a baby—is it because of that night?”
She shakes her head and closes the distance. Her fingers trail from my bicep down to my wrist and she links our hands together. A simple touch, but it electrifies my body, makes me even more aware of her in this room, the bed behind us.
“The first miscarriage was trauma related.” She swallows. “The others? There was no reason. Every test money could buy said I should be able to get pregnant and sustain a pregnancy.” Her shoulders rise in the tiniest shrug. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Another tear slips out unchecked, and I tug her toward me, locking her against my chest. Her cheek is over my heart, and I squeeze her tighter. “Do you ever—” I don’t have the guts to finish my question. Asking wouldn’t be fair. I can’t offer her what she wants, what she needs.
“Finish it.”
“Carys.”
“I’m tired of lies and half-truths and bullshitting each other. Ask me.”
Silence lays between us for a beat. The question is dumb. But after listening to Eric and Charles talking, after realizing she hasn’t gotten the things I wanted for her, I can’t stop wondering. I’m plagued by a giant what if?
Regrets are for indecisive, weak people, aren’t they?
I bend my head, my lips close to her ear, as though my weakness is a secret. “Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if that night hadn’t happened?”
She presses her forehead into my chest. “I never used to. I thought I understood, realized what we’d meant to each other.”
The implication is that she’d meant nothing, we’d been nothing to each other. God, I was such a fool. Still am. This road with me does not lead to any happiness for her. I shouldn’t ask. “And now?”
“And now, I can’t stop thinking about how happy I used to be with you.” She still won’t meet my gaze, and her manicured fingertip traces figure eights across my chest. Her closeness muddles my thoughts, turns my focus to the way her body fits against mine, how good it is to be skin to skin, buried deep inside her.
The path we’d walk is impossible. Wrong, maybe. I have no right to hope, to ask. “For the rest of my life, I’ll be a wanted man.”
“I know.”
“With me, you’ll always be checking over your shoulder. The CIA, the FBI, other mob organizations, they’ll be searching for ways to draw me out.”
She raises her head and meets my gaze, her lips only inches from mine. “I understand the reasons I shouldn’t be with you, Finn. You think I haven’t had them on repeat since I rescued you?” Her amber eyes sear me with sincerity. “What do you want?”
“I want you to be safe and happy.”
“What if I can’t be both?”
I run my knuckles along her cheek. “Then I want you to be safe.”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “And I’ve decided I’d rather be happy.”
“The things you used to want—”
“I gave up on those a long time ago. Years ago. I’ll never be a mom. I’m not telling you I’m not sad. But the other thing I wanted? It was a partner I could trust, who would be honest with me, who would love me.” Her eyes waver from mine, a hint of unease in their depths. “You tell me the truth, even when it’s not something I want to hear.”
I stare at the wall, contemplating her words. When we were younger, she told me if I ever wanted to stop sleeping with her, all I had to do was some human trafficking. It was a hard line for her. We were in bed, and I laughed. Told her it was weird to be okay with murder and not okay with trafficking. Then I promised her I’d never do it.
So easy to lie, to tell her I forgot our conversation when Zhang’s trafficking business landed in my lap in Boston. When Antonio asked what we would do with the human arm of Zhang’s business, I thought of Carys, of the promise I made, of how after we had sex in Boston she told me she was so drunk and horny I could have been anyone. So I kept Zhang’s business because I was pissed I meant so little to her when she meant so fucking much to me.
She tries to back away, and I clutch her closer.
Her nervous laugh is muffled by my chest. “Clearly, I misread this. Forget I said anything.”
“I’m thinking.” I smooth her hair and kiss the top of her head. Agreeing
to be with her makes me a selfish bastard. Normally, I’m quite happy with being a bright, shining example of what it means to be both selfish and a bastard. God knows I’ve had both thrown at me so many times I’ve lost count.
“You shouldn’t have to think this hard.” She tries to escape my grasp. “If you can’t—if you don’t believe you can love me—”
I chuckle, and she slaps my chest and struggles with more force, trying to break free. “It’s not fucking funny, Finn.”
Love her? I barely remember a time when I didn’t love her. My body may have belonged to others, but my soul, what’s left of it, is hers. My obsession started when I was thirteen, jacking off into a sock at the idea of her, and it’ll end with me whispering her name on my death bed. I laugh again, and then I realize why she doesn’t find it funny. Swallowing down my amusement, I let her get away from me.
She strides halfway across the room and stops, her back facing me, as though she’s not sure what to do with herself.
Can I let her tie herself to me? Can I be that selfish?
“You think I don’t love you?” I say.
“You’ve never said it.”
I shrug and quirk my lips up, but it isn’t with amusement. “I’ve never said it to anyone.”
When she turns, her expression is pensive. “No one? Ever?”
“Maybe my mom.” I grimace. Remembering her is a sharp thorn in my side. “She was murdered when I was five, so I don’t recall saying it.” I dig my hands into my pockets. “Donagheys never say it. Not out loud. Never occurred to me you might need to hear them.”
She searches my face but doesn’t come back to me. Her hands are linked, and she stares at them. One of her rings goes around and around. “Sometimes I felt it or thought I felt it. Maybe you did.” A sad smile flits across her face. “You were hard to read.” Her smile vanishes. “You’re still hard to read.”
“Are you sure about this?” I shove my hands deeper into my pockets, trying to keep the rational distance until she’s decided.
Letting her go last time was almost impossible, but I did it because I was standing in the way of her getting the things she wanted. Once we fall back into each other, could I pull myself out? Walk away? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.
“Yes.” She closes the space between us and places her hand on the side of my face. “I want to be happy. Being with you, around you, makes me happy.” She rises on her toes to mold herself to me. In my ear, she whispers, “I’ve loved no one else the way I love you.”
The heaviness in my chest eases. I draw her tighter to me. “I love you, too.” Those words, from her, from me, crack me open, lay me bare. I’ll do anything to make her happy, and whether or not she wants it, to keep her safe.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Carys
Finn’s hands cup my face, bringing my lips toward his. I meet his kiss, driving my fingers into his hair, pressing myself as tightly to him as I can manage with our clothes on. His tongue massages my mouth, and he skims the hem of my shirt, easing it up, circling my back. At the skin-to-skin contact, I shudder with pleasure. He grips my ass, molding me to his erection. God, I love the way he feels.
When his mouth leaves mine to seek the most sensitive places along my neck, I moan and clutch onto him, afraid my legs might give out. My adrenaline spikes. His declaration of love is a drug coursing through me. Impossible to believe someone like him could love me.
“Say it again,” I murmur.
Finn chuckles against the curve of my shoulder. “You going to make me say it all the fucking time?”
“Consider it the price of admission.” My voice is breathless, and I’m already reaching for the button on his jeans.
He sucks on my earlobe and nibbles. “I fucking love you, Carys. Just you. Always you.”
His gruff voice in is like another shot of desire.
Is there anything better than hearing those words from him? I’ll never tire of being important and precious.
“Promise me.” I tug his shirt over his head. Our lips barely break apart, and he makes short work of my clothes as I strip him bare. “It’ll only be me and you. I can’t do that again.”
He grabs my hand and presses it to his heart. His lips trail a line from my jaw to my collarbone as he speaks, “What’s in here,” he drags my hand from his heart and settles it over top of the prominent bulge in his underwear, “and what’s in here are yours and yours alone.”
I circle his cock and squeeze. He groans, and his lips find mine again as he disposes of my bra.
“You think you can do that?” I say.
I’m practically panting as his hand slides into my panties, his finger gliding across my folds.
“I did it last time without you asking.”
His words are muddled by the sensations rushing through me. I’m drunk with need, with love, and his fingers slipping inside me only intensify those feelings.
“What?” I bring my hands up to cling to his shoulders, to hold myself steady.
“You heard me.” He lifts one of my breasts to his mouth and tugs on the nipple with his teeth.
I gasp.
“Then why did you—oh, God, do that again.”
His thumb grazes my clit a second time with the right amount of pressure to make every nerve ending spring to attention.
“Because...” He picks me up and carries me toward the bed. He tosses me on top, and I shriek as he follows me. “I was young and stupid. Then I was old and cynical.”
His eyes, such a pale, pale blue, examine me with such intensity my breath stalls. “I didn’t want to ruin your life a second time.”
With my finger I trail a path from his temple to his lips. “You won’t ruin me. You’ll show me what I’ve been missing.”
His hand skims up and down my bare leg, and he seems lost in thought for a moment. Impossible to read.
“Finn?”
Both of his hands slip under my shoulder blades and he rocks against me, his underwear the only barrier between us. I arch to meet him.
“I don’t understand how a bastard like me got another chance with you.” His face sinks into my neck, and I run my fingers through his hair, my breath hitching each time he slides against me. “But I’m not letting you go this time.”
His lips work their way to my mouth, and he deepens the kiss as his hips rock against me again. “You’re mine. Just mine.”
I grip his ass, locking him tight to me. “I want to feel you. All of you.”
“Don’t worry.” He’s going down my body again. “You’ll get it all.” He kisses my inner thighs, making me squirm. “When I’m ready to give it to you.” His tongue flicks along my center. “Anticipation is half the fun.”
While his tongue and fingers bring me to the edge over and over, I dig my hands into the covers on the bed and then slide them through his hair.
“Finn,” I murmur. “Please.”
He rises off the bed and removes his boxers. His body is still riddled with bandages, but his movements are sure and fluid. “Turn over.”
I don’t need to be asked twice. I flip onto my stomach and rise onto my knees. Finn kisses my back before sliding into me. His hand comes around and rubs my clit in a circular motion. Each thrust is slow and deliberate, so slow I try to increase the rhythm, but his grip on my hips slows me every time.
I moan. My body is so rigidly strung I’m not sure what I want more. Half of me never wants the pleasure to end, and the other half is begging, straining for the release.
“Faster,” I pant. “Please.”
He picks up the pace for a few thrusts but doesn’t increase the pressure of his hand. I take one of my own and urge his fingers to rub against me.
“I want you to come so hard you forget where you are.”
His lips brush my neck as he plunges even deeper. I gasp.
“And then I’ll get you to do it again.”
His fingertips circle me as he glides in and out faster and harder, and I have t
o put my hand back on the bed, pressing my face into the mattress to muffle my scream as my orgasm rocks through me.
With a few more thrusts, he follows me over the edge and collapses onto my back.
“I think I saw Ireland,” I mutter.
He chuckles, and my heart warms. “Fuck Ireland.” His voice is rough in my ear. “Next time, we’re aiming for the stars.”
~ * ~
I stuff the last few things in my purse, and I glance over at Finn who is still lying in bed, the covers snug around him. He’s drinking the coffee I made him and watching me pack. We didn’t get much sleep last night. But I saw stars. So many stars.
“Intergalactic travel is hard on me.” He raises his cup to his lips and smirks.
I laugh. “You think we discovered new planets last night?”
“You realize the obvious joke is something involving Uranus, right?” He winks at me.
Another laugh escapes me. “You’ll stay here? You’re not going to appear suddenly at my breakfast meeting.”
“I’m staying here. I got plans for you when you get back.” He twists to put his coffee cup on the nightstand. “But when we land in Switzerland, we need to discuss security for you. Most of the countries and cities you visit, I can’t go without taking a massive risk. What happened yesterday isn’t fucking happening again.”
“I know. Jay will be with me. I’ll be more careful. The meeting will be fine.” I pick up the hotel notebook and consider putting it in my bag along with the pen.
“Yeah. Jay’s stellar—as a secretary. Yesterday proved he’s shit at keeping you safe. That’s unacceptable.”
“We can talk about it later.” I gather my purse and check my phone. “I don’t want them coming to the room, so I need to go.”
“You’re eating at the hotel restaurant, right? You’re not leaving the hotel.”
I sigh. “Yes. If I said no, what would you do?”
“Get dressed and tail you.”
“I’ll make sure we stay here.”
“Jay will text me if you don’t.”
I roll my eyes. “And why would he do that?”
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