Untamed

by M. O’Keefe

  UNTAMED

  M. O’Keefe

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  About Midnight Dynasty

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Poppy

  The Irish night was thick velvet around the car. A darkness so dense and plush it felt like we were being swallowed whole.

  In the back seat, Eden Morelli was quiet, a small miracle, so I guessed she was asleep. All her machinations to escape the death sentence waiting for her in the States had worked and she was bringing home the missing Morelli boy and his bride.

  Glad it’s working out for someone in this car.

  Beside me, Ronan shifted gears, his focused gaze checking mirrors as he pushed the car faster through traffic. My husband. It didn’t just seem strange. Strange would be a relief. Strange would be something I could laugh about.

  “Isn’t it wild?” I could say. “We’re married.”

  But being married to Ronan was something well past strange. It was terrifying. Infuriating. Exciting.

  A pig truck was in the wrong lane and going too slow for Ronan. He passed on the shoulder and the loose gravel under the car’s wheels made us fishtail. I braced myself against the dash. “Why do we have to go so fast?” I cried, my voice shaky with nerves, thick with emotion.

  “The sooner we get back to New York, the sooner this is done.”

  And our marriage could be annulled. And he could do what he had planned to do since the moment he started playing with me like a dangerous cat with a stupid mouse. Leave me.

  “Ronan,” I whispered.

  His eyes met mine in the dark. “What?”

  Please. Please go back to who you were in the cottage. Please go back to smiling at me. Please give me something to hold on to so I’m not so scared. We were married. We were friends…sort of. Friendly?

  He’d told me his secrets in the quiet of that cottage, revealing the wounds of his childhood. And I did the same. Though now, in the cold of this car, in the chill of his silence, it felt like all of that had happened to someone else. A different woman. A very different man. There was no softness in him now. And the secrets we’d traded were buried again.

  “I want to see my sister,” I said, instead of any of that. I wanted to sound strong and impervious and as remote as Ronan—my husband—and I did. I sounded like a total bitch and I loved it. Small victories. “I need to see my sister.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Nothing is anymore,” I snarled, pushed to the very edge. “So what does it matter?”

  For the first time maybe since I met him, I had the sense that when he looked at me, he was really seeing me. Not as a mouse he could play with until I broke. Not as a woman he could get to moan and beg. But a person he needed to reckon with. A person with power he could not take away. Or maybe I was exhausted and disoriented by the lights of the highway. Maybe I was only seeing what I wanted to see. Yeah, that sounded like me.

  He handed me the burner phone he’d been using at the cottage and it clicked against the monstrosity that was my wedding ring. The Morelli ring, a dark sapphire surrounded by a starburst of diamonds, was heavy and too big. It looked beyond old-fashioned. Something more than a generational heirloom. It looked like a medieval museum piece, something used by ancient women to hold poison or bring on curses. It was ugly.

  It suited our unholy union. “Call her,” he said, pointing at the phone I held in my hand, caught up in my own thoughts.

  “What can I tell her?” I asked. “We will meet her at your apartment in London?”

  “We’re flying out tonight. To New York.”

  “Ronan,” I gasped, my façade crumbling. “I need to see my sister. Please—”

  He closed his eyes for a second like he was just so done with me. Fine. Good. I was done with him. How preposterous that it took marriage to get us here. To build the wall between us so high there was no getting over it. I called the last number dialed and my sister answered. “Poppy?” Zilla asked. “Where are you? Are you close?”

  The plan—before Eden found us and opened up the Morelli vault of secrets and changed the course of our lives—had been for me to go to London to get to my sister while Ronan went back to New York and found out why the Morelli’s wanted me dead or alive. “I’m…” I turned my back to Ronan as best I could in the small car, fighting for a tiny bit of privacy no matter how ridiculous. “I can’t come, Zilla.”

  “What do you mean you can’t come? You’re on your way.”

  I swallowed. “Our plans changed.”

  “Are you in trouble? Are you safe?” Safe? That was painfully relative, wasn’t it? I was in a car, I was married to a killer. A killer who swore to protect me. To worship my body with his. But we’re ignoring that part. “I’m fine,” I whispered. “But I can’t come to you right now. I’m going back to New York.”

  “Then I’ll come back to New York, too.”

  “I don’t know…” I turned to look at Ronan, only to find him watching me. “Is it safe for her to go back to New York?”

  “My man Jacob is there,” Eden said from the back seat. “He can come back with her. He makes every place safe.”

  “He’s there? Where?” Ronan asked, looking at Eden in the rearview mirror.

  “London. Your safe house is not the secret you thought it was. He wanted to watch her,” Eden said, and I could hear her shrug. “I figured it wasn’t a bad idea. You guys leave leverage that can be used against you everywhere you go.”

  Ronan turned his head to look at me. And for a moment his face revealed his emotions. Volatile and dark. And in the lack of real warmth between us, those feelings felt white hot. And as much as I wanted to reach out my fingers and warm myself against him, I knew it was false.

  He seemed warm because I was so, so cold.

  He turned his eyes back on the road. “I’ll have arrangements made for them to get back to the States.”

  “Instructions will come to you for how you can get back to the city,” I said into the phone. “Eden Morelli left a man looking after you at the London apartment,” I said. “He’ll come back with you. He looks—”

  “Like a goddamn accountant,” my sister said.

  “He’s not. He’s absolutely not.”

  “No shit,” Zilla said. “When I get back to Bishop’s Landing, I’ll come to your house. I gotta warn you, it’s pretty trashed, but we can fix it back up.”

  I closed my eyes, thought of that stupid shower I’d built. That backyard I’d tried to turn into something I could call my own. And none of it mattered. It wasn’t a home. It was just a place.

  “It’s not my house anymore,” I said. “It’s not safe.”

  “Then you can get to my apartment. I’ll take care of you for once.”

  Until we figured out what everyone wanted from us, my only safe place was beside Ronan. The ties that bound us together were varied and never-ending.

  “I’m staying with Ronan.”

  “Ronan Byrne? The fucking kidnapper? The killer?”

  Husband.

  But I kept that to myself.

  �
��Poppy? What are you doing?” she whispered into my silence.

  The answer, like it had been through most of my life, was simple. “I’m doing what I have to to survive,” I told my sister, with more edge than I should. “I’ll be in touch when we’re in New York. Be safe, Zilla. I love you.”

  “Oh, Poppy. I love you too and please, please be careful with Ronan. You can’t trust him.”

  Like I didn’t know that. Ronan would keep my body safe and incinerate my heart. Trusting him would be my worst mistake.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. I waited until Zilla hung up and then I pressed the phone to my lips and closed my burning eyes, missing my sister but unable to feel it with the ache of everything else in my body.

  “Poppy?” Ronan asked, and with my back still to him, unwilling to show him anything else when I’d already shown him so much, I tossed his phone at him over my shoulder. I heard it thunk against the dashboard. Being childish felt good. And I was never childish. It had always seemed selfish to rail against the things I couldn’t control. But right now? Oh…I felt a real temper tantrum coming on.

  “We’ll be at the airport in an hour,” he said in a quiet voice. What was there to say to that? What was there even to feel about it? I kept my mouth shut and tried not to cry.

  “Here.” From between my seat and the door appeared Eden’s hand and a pretty silver flask. “You need it more than I do.”

  I grabbed on to that flask like it would keep me from drowning. And I drank.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The jet was sleek and modern. The smiling attendant checked us in, got us settled. She wore a black pencil skirt and a black button-down shirt and she looked somehow sexy and professional at the same time.

  “Mr. Byrne,” she said to Ronan, her voice pitched low. “Welcome aboard.”

  He paid her little to no attention and still I managed to be jealous. Which wasn’t fun. Or reasonable. “I would like a drink,” I said to her.

  “Of course.” She smiled at me. “What kind?”

  “One with booze.”

  “Champagne,” Eden said. She sat next to me on the long banquet seating, the white leather smooth and expensive beneath my legs. “We’ll have a bottle of champagne.”

  Ronan walked through a doorway into a back bedroom. Despite the ambient noise of the jet, I heard a shower turn on. At some point in the day—between breakfast and getting married—he’d been sprayed with blood. It somehow worked during our savage ceremony, but now that we were heading back to civilization, that madman who’d told me he’d worship my body with his had to be put away. Replaced by that stone-faced killer he’d been before. If it weren’t for the bloodstained cloth in my back pocket and the giant ugly ring on my finger, it could have been a nightmare.

  Our champagne was delivered, popped and poured and before I could register even taking off—it seemed we were in the air. I spun the ring on my finger and drowned my sorrows in expensive bubbly.

  It wasn’t all that different from the night I met Ronan. The engagement ring on my finger had been another man’s. And the champagne had been Caroline’s. I really needed to start buying my own jewelry and my own fucking champagne.

  But the rage was all mine.

  “What are you going to do?” Eden asked. “When you get back?” She was like a jaguar trying to make polite conversation. She wore her fur coat; the black dress beneath it poured over every curve. She’d reapplied her red lipstick and pulled all that black hair up into a messy bun on the top of her head. A jaguar at the end of a long day.

  Admittedly, I was a little drunk and my world was utter chaos, but I remembered with sudden and exciting clarity how she’d hit on me. Twice.

  My marriage to Ronan seemed to have changed dramatically the way he talked to me. Looked at me. It was nice to think that someone on this plane might still find me…desirable. It was a weird, selfish comfort but whatever. This was a cold dark night and I was taking what I could.

  Taking what I could. There was Ronan in the cottage, telling me that as he crouched over my naked body. There is only what you take.

  How clearly I understood that now. I’d waited my whole life for people to give me things. Crumbs of affection. Opportunities. A way to keep me and my sister safe. That was over. I would take what I needed. What I wanted. I drained my champagne flute and held out my glass for more. Eden obliged. “I’m not thinking about tomorrow,” I said.

  “Probably smart,” Eden agreed. We both sipped our champagne, the hum of the engines quieter than on a big commercial jet. Almost like a purr. “For what it’s worth?” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” I almost spat the word. God, how much of my life had I spent apologizing. Sorry for who I was and who my sister was and what our parents had done to us. I looked at Eden, the sexy jaguar in the sexy jaguar dress. “Stop being sorry. It doesn’t change anything.”

  She blinked at me and I looked away, enraged by her surprise. Even a mouse gets pissed if you fuck up her life enough times. The back door to the jet’s cabin opened and Ronan was there, wearing dark slacks and a darker sweater. Clothes that were on this jet, apparently. His jet. Evidence was mounting that my husband was a very wealthy man.

  There had been a meeting with lawyers before my marriage to the senator. A prenup we’d signed basically stipulated that if I left him for any reason, I got nothing. I’d signed it because I had nothing to begin with. And, of course, because I was dumb.

  Maybe when Ronan was done with me, I’d take all his money. Especially this jet with its leather and champagne. His hair was damp and he’d shaved. The dark growth of his beard was gone, removing all resemblance to the softer man at the cabin. I would mourn the loss of that guy maybe for the rest of my life.

  Now his face was back to unforgiving lines and narrowed eyes and a mouth I wanted to kiss until it was familiar.

  I took a sip of my champagne that ended up being half the glass and held it out for Eden to refill. She made some scoffing noise in her throat but filled my glass.

  That’s right, I thought, getting into the spirit of things.

  He sat down opposite me on another long banquette. Our attendant arrived and asked him in a low voice if he wanted anything. Ronan’s clear crisp eyes took in our half bottle of champagne and our glasses and he shook his head. Like someone on this plane needed to keep their wits about them. The attendant vanished again, leaving us alone with the hum of the motor and the threat of what would happen when we arrived back in New York.

  It occurred to me, suddenly, that one of us—or all of us—could die. It wasn’t such a leap to make. Ronan and Eden’s hired killer had left a trail of bodies in Carrickfergus. I had, up until my marriage, been wanted dead or alive. And just about everyone who knew Ronan probably wanted to kill him at some point. I was trying not to be dramatic, but it really seemed like all signs were pointing to more bloodshed.

  “I talked to Niamh,” Ronan said. “She found the bankers box at your house.”

  “Really?” That seemed like an impossible long shot.

  “She’ll deliver it to our apartment tomorrow.”

  “Our?”

  He glanced at me and then away and I liked it. I liked how for once in my life I was controlling the temperature in the room. It was…exciting. And perhaps it was the champagne or the danger. But that excitement pooled between my legs and began to hum. Filling me with reckless energy.

  More champagne.

  “What answers do you think we’re going to find in that bankers box?” I asked, crossing my legs like I was wearing a formal gown from my previous life and not a pair of black jeans and a borrowed flannel shirt and still no goddamned underwear.

  “Why Caroline wanted you to marry the senator. What he was doing for the Morellis and why they wanted you dead or alive.”

  “That’s a lot of work for a bankers box,” I said.

  “I don’t know who the hell you’ve turned into,” Eden laughed, “but I like her. I like her a lot.”

&
nbsp; “You liked the old me enough to want to fuck me,” I said, reckless and dangerous, and again the temperature in the cabin changed. The energy coiled and it was like each of us took a deep breath and held it.

  “You should get some sleep.” Ronan’s voice was quiet and firm and I remembered the girl on that side lawn, the first time he used that voice. The way I’d wanted to do what he said. The way I craved his attention and approval.

  “It’s my wedding night,” I said. I met his beautiful blue gaze and didn’t look away. My entire body shuddered with a memory, physical and real as if it were happening now and here rather than days ago. His body over mine, the thick head of his cock just inside of me. Just enough to hurt and feel better than anything ever had before in my life.

  For that shaking and delicious second, I’d had the power. And he’d been helpless against me.

  Yeah. I’ll have a side of that feeling with my champagne.

  “It’s your wedding night, too,” I said, which was somehow the weapon that made him look away. His eyes on the dark sky out the window. His jaw tight. “Someone should get fucked.”

  In the stone-cold silence, I drained the last of my champagne.

  “Is this…a volunteer situation?” Eden asked, looking between Ronan and me.

  “You’re drunk,” Ronan said, as scathing as he could be, which was pretty damn awful. I wasn’t drunk. Adrenaline was eating up the alcohol as fast as I could drink it. But I was in that dangerous place, that shaded gray between completely in and completely out of control. Maybe, I thought. Maybe this is where I’ll be from now on. I stood up, my legs spread wide so I didn’t topple in the slight movement of the plane. Eden was looking at me like a prize she’d won. Like we were in a cartoon and she was starving in the desert and I’d turned into a big chicken leg.

  Stand up, I thought at her.

  Like she heard me, like I was super powerful, she did, her body small and curvy and two inches from mine. The plane shimmied in turbulence and that was all it took for her body to brush mine. Our breasts. Our bellies. She reached out a hand to steady herself and I grabbed it with mine. I’m using you, I thought. I’m using you to make him do something. To provoke him into action. But then, she’d used us to save her own damn life, so maybe things were even.