Stolen Hearts

by M. O’Keefe

  “No.” I pushed myself up to sitting. “I don’t want that. I don’t want—”

  He kissed me. So sweet, his lips against mine. I opened my mouth to gasp, to breathe, to have more of him. As much of him as he’d let me, and one hand came up to hold my jaw, the other cupped my breast, squeezing my nipple between his hand and his thumb. I groaned into his mouth.

  His mouth was a seduction. Long slow kisses. They never stopped. They rolled one into the other. His tongue against mine. He caught my lower lip with his teeth and pulled until I whimpered. It was too much and not enough all at the same time.

  “Ronan,” I whimpered, and he pulled away. The kissing over, but he still held my jaw. His eyes on mine.

  “You’re fucking killing me, Poppy.”

  “Then we’re dying together. I’ve never . . . I’ve never felt this way.”

  He said something, his accent so thick and guttural I couldn’t understand it. He pushed me back on the bed. His hand slipped between my legs, and his mouth captured my nipple. I saw stars behind my eyelids, and my hands memorized the feel of his shoulders under his shirt. They were wide and strong, and I clutched them as if I could claim him. As if wanting him so badly I was crazed with it, would grant me the right to call him mine. The way I wanted to call him mine.

  And the way I wanted to be his.

  “Fuck me,” I breathed. “Please.”

  “No, Poppy. I won’t. You’re not for me. You’ll regret even letting me touch you this much.” He shifted like he was going to pull away. Like he was going to stop.

  “Ronan.”

  He groaned and pressed the top of his head to my chest and shifted his body so my legs were pressed out wide. “You’ll only get fucking hurt if you keep on like this, Poppy,” he said, but his words barely made any sense. His fingers were inside me, and my body was made out of sugar and light and I was losing my grip on everything except him. Everything except how he made me feel.

  I grabbed his wrist, keeping him close, and I exploded into a thousand ecstatic pieces. And when I came back together, I was different. Different each time he touched me. He was standing up, moving away. His eyes already shuttered. His thoughts and feelings behind glass.

  I grabbed him by the belt, felt the hard press of his cock against the heel of my hand and pressed against it until he groaned. His head thrown back. I was so quick he didn’t have a chance to stop me. To pull against me or push me away. His belt was undone, and I slipped my hand into his pants, catching the hard length of him through his underwear.

  But the reality was, I had no idea what to do with him. How to . . . make him feel good the way he did me. He was a man, a dangerous man, with a past I didn’t understand or know. And I was just this foolish flower, sticking my head out of the snow despite knowing I’d be hurt by what I wanted most.

  “Show me,” I whispered, coming to the edge of the bed. Stroking him, squeezing him. “Show me what you like.”

  Again, he said something I couldn’t understand, but with one hand he shoved his underwear out of the way revealing his cock, and his other hand cupped me behind the neck and pulled me to him.

  “Open your goddamn mouth,” he growled, and I did. His cock slipping past my lips. I had done this once before. Damon in the library. And he’d been so nervous and sweet, and he kept asking me if I was all right.

  Ronan wasn’t going to ask me that at all. He didn’t care. He had lost control and was using me. And all I could do was brace my hands against his hips as he fucked into my mouth. Long and slow. Faster.

  I loved every fucking second.

  And then suddenly, he pulled out, his hands still holding my neck. His head bowed so I couldn’t see his face. Panting, aching, I waited for him to continue or to say something. I leaned forward but he held me still.

  I felt all of my inexperience. Every night in that bed with the senator, unmoved and just wanting it to be over. Those fumbling sweet moments with Damon who smelled like books and weed. What did I know, what could I possibly know about pleasing this man?

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “For what?”

  “For not . . . being what you want?” That made him look at me, not that it mattered. He looked so angry. “For not knowing how to do this.”

  “If I could—” He stopped himself, looked at the ceiling. I looked down, wrapping my robe around my naked body. If he could go back, he’d never have talked to me at that party. Or taken me into the room at the gala. If he could do it all over again, it would never be with me.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “I think—”

  He squeezed my neck, and my eyes flew to his. “Open your mouth for me,” he whispered, and he was smiling. Actually smiling. So, stunned, I did what he asked, and he eased forward, slipping his cock back between my lips. He was salty. Wet. Come, I realized. And so hard. Hard against my lips. The back of my throat. And now, now he was looking right at me, and I was looking at him, and I’d never in my life been so connected to someone. So vulnerable and naked.

  “Look at you.” He kept breathing like he’d stumbled onto something beautiful and mystifying, and no one had ever talked to me like that. The head of his cock hitting the back of my throat and it was . . . I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t want him to stop.

  He pulled away, and I moaned, licking him as he slipped out of my mouth. He stopped, like he might actually walk away. And there’d been too much of that. I put my arm around his hips, pulling him back to me, sucking him down even as it seemed he hesitated.

  “I can’t . . . fuck. Jesus. Poppy,” he groaned, and then I felt him surrender. He cradled my face in his hands and shook, coming in my mouth.

  It was oddly quiet. And almost holy. He trembled against me, his head bowed, lips moving as if praying, and I languished in it. Reveled in it. His surrender, and ease. The power and communion of touching him like this. Making him feel like this.

  I could not ever love this man. It would be stupid beyond even my capabilities. Signing myself up for a pain not even I could imagine. But this intimacy. His slow withdrawal from my mouth. His taste on my tongue. His fingers twitching in my hair. This pinpoint of pain in my heart.

  It was a revelation.

  “I’ve never felt this way before,” I said.

  “It’s sex,” he said.

  “I’d feel this for anyone who touched me the way you do?”

  He stepped back, tucking himself away. Jerking his clothes back into place when he finally looked at me, he was the stranger I’d grown used to. Everything hidden. Everything gone.

  With the senator, I learned self-preservation so well. I was a master. So good in fact, I was barely living. But with this man, I kept throwing myself against his spikes and his stone-face.

  He is only going to hurt me.

  Suddenly I was exhausted. Down to my bones.

  There was no way to hold up my chin. No way to straighten my shoulders for one more cruel word. One more beautiful touch.

  “Come on,” he said, helping me into the bed, pulling out the quilt from under my body and tucking me in. His fingers – perhaps by accident, I couldn’t be sure, I couldn’t be sure of anything with this man – brushed my cheek.

  “How am I supposed to survive you?” I asked.

  “You’re not,” he said.

  16

  I woke up to a dark sky. The day gone. Feeling stoned – not that I’d ever been stoned, which actually at this moment in my life seemed criminal. I was a twenty-two-year-old. How had I never gotten high?

  I’d learned how to drive; maybe smoking a joint would be next.

  Starving, wrapped in the pink silk robe, I wandered downstairs looking for a cup of coffee and my cell phone.

  Instead, I found Caroline in the kitchen’s breakfast nook, a glass of wine and an open manila folder in front of her. Behind her the sky was indigo. The dark shadow of trees taking bites out of the slightly lighter blue. The lamp over the table was glass and gold fixtures, and cast an
gular shadows over Caroline’s face.

  She wore a pair of yoga pants and a cashmere sweater. Her feet were bare. I’d never seen her so . . . undone. She looked somehow even younger. More beautiful.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You’re awake,” she said with the kind of smile that always felt motherly to me.

  “Finally.”

  “You want a glass of wine?”

  “No, but could I get some coffee?”

  “I can get Denise to make it.”

  “I got it—”

  I turned to find Ronan leaning against the counter, blending into the shadows. His feet crossed at the ankles. His white shirt pulled taut over his shoulders. I realized I had not ever seen his body. He’d seen me naked and crying. And he’d only been dressed and distant.

  “Oh,” I said, my face suddenly hot. My nipples beneath the robe, hard. “I don’t mean to interrupt. I can leave.”

  “No. You’re not interrupting anything,” Caroline said. “Well, you are, but . . . it concerns you.”

  “Me?” I turned, coffee forgotten.

  “Come sit,” she said, patting the spot at the wooden table across from her. I slid across the bench seat, and she handed me the folder.

  “What is this?”

  “Something I wasn’t going to talk to you about. But, after last night and the fire, I think . . . I think we need to talk about it.”

  I opened the folder.

  “Oh my god,” I breathed, looking out the window, trying to blink away the image of my husband, bone white with a black and red hole in the middle of his head.

  “Sorry,” Caroline said. “I should have warned you.”

  “What is this?” I asked, still not looking at the image.

  “I hired a private coroner,” Caroline said.

  “It was suicide, why would you hire a coroner?”

  “Because the Bishop’s Landing coroner has ties to the Morelli family. Ulrich – he’s our private investigator, you know – suggested it after getting wind of possible Morelli involvement.”

  “The Morellis?” It was like she was speaking French. And she had a private investigator and coroner on call? “What . . . what do they have to do with anything?”

  “Your husband and I were working together on several issues,” Caroline said. “And many of those issues worked in opposition to the Morellis’ plans.”

  “Plans for what?”

  “Listen to me, Poppy.” Caroline was talking to me like I was a kindergartner which I resented but also probably needed. My brain was on fire. “Your husband had plenty of enemies. But I didn’t trust the coroner’s report, because of the Morelli connection. That’s why I hired a private coroner.”

  Ronan set a cup of coffee at my elbow, and I jumped so high I nearly smacked it out of his hand.

  Caroline reached over and opened the file again. I closed my eyes.

  “Poppy. You can’t close your eyes against this. Jim’s gunshot wasn’t self-inflicted.”

  I gaped at her. Laughed, incredulously. I was still dreaming. I had to be. “You’re saying someone else shot him?”

  “That’s what the coroner report says. Someone shot him and tried to make it look like a suicide.”

  “He’s a US senator,” I cried. “That’s . . . that’s an outrageous cover up.”

  “I know.”

  Ronan faded back into the shadows, but I was aware of him there. In the room. A magnet I could not ignore and felt myself bending towards, despite knowing I would get hurt. Despite knowing he did not want me bending towards him.

  “How?” I cried. “How could someone cover that up?”

  “The Morellis have a lot of power,” Caroline said. “And it all starts with the crime scene and with the original falsified coroner report. And with your statement.”

  “My statement?”

  “You told the police he’d been acting strange. Not sleeping. Home more than in the office. Combined with a falsified doctor’s report—”

  “The doctor lied?” I asked.

  “People will do anything for the right amount of money.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s not what’s important right now, Poppy,” she said.

  “Not important?” I cried. “Am I still sleeping? Is this like . . . a stress dream?”

  “Between your husband being murdered and the fire at your house; I fear that someone might be trying to hurt you, Poppy,” Caroline said.

  “But why?” I was literally NO ONE. Hurting me, killing me would have no impact on the world. None whatsoever.

  Caroline pushed her wine glass away and grabbed my hand. “Your sister—”

  I jerked my hand back. “No.”

  “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought it.”

  “She wouldn’t hurt me. Zilla wouldn’t hurt me. I mean, killing the senator, maybe . . . if she was in one of her manic phases. But covering it up like that? She doesn’t have that kind of power.” I stood up. Frantic and strange in my body. Two families had that kind of power – the Morellis and the Constantines. “How do they know he was killed by someone else? The coroner you hired, what did he find out that the other guy lied about?”

  “The angle of the bullet through his skull.” Caroline said. “No residue on his hands.”

  “This can’t be true.”

  “It’s true, Poppy,” Ronan said. I whirled to face him, and his stillness was not threatening in this moment. It was a comfort. A rock in a storm. “It’s true.”

  “What about the medical records. The cancer?”

  “The doctor who signed the paperwork is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He’s just . . . vanished.”

  Oh god. Officially this was too much. Officially, the room and my world were spinning.

  “So,” I said. “What you’re saying is that someone killed my husband. Made it look like a suicide. Bribed a doctor?” I shrugged, manically. “Killed a doctor? And the coroner was somehow in on it, and now they want to kill me?”

  “Please, calm down, Poppy,” Caroline said.

  “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

  “Of course,” she said calmly. “Of course you are supposed to believe me. I have only ever had your best interests at heart.”

  “Which is why you married me off to Jim. Right? All part of my best interests?”

  It was like the room cracked. Or my brain? Was it my brain cracking?

  Caroline sat up straight. God, she looked like a queen. Regal even in her bare feet. No one ever doubted her.

  Except Zilla and now, apparently me.

  “He was looking for a wife, and you needed money,” Caroline said.

  “A wife. Hilarious. He was looking for someone he could hurt with impunity. And you gave me to him.”

  “You sound like your sister,” Caroline said.

  “Maybe I should have listened to her more.”

  “Right. When she was restrained at Belhaven. After she burned down your childhood home. After she went after that priest? Who made all that go away? Hmmm?” Caroline asked. “When you talk about listening to your sister, who kept her out of jail?”

  “You did,” I whispered. And I let my gratitude for that carry me into whatever she asked of me. I looked at Ronan who was standing to the side, arms at his sides like he could grab me and wrap me in a strait jacket if he needed to. “I’m going to go home,” I said.

  “I know you’re upset,” Caroline said. “But I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “I know. It is a good idea. It’s a great idea. It is in fact the only idea.” I walked out of the kitchen towards the front door, walking down hallways past rooms filled with bad memories. “Where is my phone? I just need my phone and maybe some shoes?”

  “Poppy, you are being ridiculous,” Caroline said.

  Sure. Yep. Probably. But I wasn’t exactly sure what else there was to do in this situation. I needed some distance. A chance to think. A goddamn cup of coffee.

&
nbsp; Denise arrived from some dark hallway. “Do you need some help?” she asked, her eyes taking in everyone.

  “Shoes, Denise. Any shoes will do. And my phone.”

  Denise looked back at Caroline as if to get permission. “Look at me!” I barked. “Talk to me. I want my shoes and my phone.”

  Denise vanished for a second and came back with the boots I’d worn last night and my phone, which was of course dead. “The clothes are still in the wash. They smelled of smoke.”

  “This is great.” I shoved my feet in the boots and grabbed my dead phone from her. “Perfect.”

  I was out the front door before I realized Ronan was behind me. “I don’t need—”

  “I’m driving you,” he said.

  “I—”

  “I’m driving you.”

  We walked down the front walk, around to the side of the house where there were a few cars parked. One of them a sleek black sports car. “Get in.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Get in the car.”

  I slipped in the passenger side as Ronan got in behind the wheel. The engine started with a roar, and we took off so fast my head hit the headrest.

  “Why are you mad?” I cried.

  “I’m not.” He shifted gears like we were in some kind of car race, and I grabbed the seat belt, slipping it over my body.

  “You just always drive like you’re behind in the Indy 500?”

  His lips twitched like he wanted to laugh.

  “Was all of that true?” I asked. “Someone killed the senator?”

  “Yes.”

  We rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill. If we turned right, we would head down to the highway. Left we went up to my house. He didn’t turn the car. He didn’t press on the gas.

  “I’m that way,” I said, pointing left.

  “I can take you anywhere,” he said. “Right now. Any place away from here.”

  He wasn’t looking at me and it wasn’t . . . romantic. It wasn’t about me and him. It was about the Constantines and the Morellis. It was about Caroline and being clever.

  I realized with a sinking heart that maybe everything, every moment between us was about Caroline and being clever.