Untamed

by M. O’Keefe

  “How sorry are you for making us get married and bringing us back here?” I asked her.

  Her eyes ignited. “Very very sorry.”

  “Have you ever kissed a woman?” Ronan asked, pulling my attention back to him. He sat, a dark shadow on all that cream leather. His leg was crossed, an ankle on his knee, and his arm was stretched out along the back of the banquette. He looked casual. Uninterested.

  “Yes,” I said, surprising both of them. College. A party gone a little wild. A blonde volleyball player had kissed me and I had kissed her back until some frat boy came in and snapped a picture. The volleyball player had punched the frat boy in the face and deleted the picture off his phone. I’d spent the next week grappling with my sexuality and identity, and the next time I saw the volleyball player she’d moved on to the arms of a woman who worked in the student union.

  “Did you like it?” Eden asked. There was a chance I had liked the idea of it more than the actual kiss, preoccupied as I’d been by the fact that I was kissing a woman.

  “I don’t remember,” I said.

  Eden smiled. She really was so pretty with all her manipulations and bright red lips. “Let’s try and jog your memory.”

  The hand I wasn’t holding slipped up to cup my face. She wore heels and I wore boots that weren’t mine. But the heels gave her enough height that I didn’t have to bend and she didn’t have to stand on tiptoe. Our lips met carefully and softly, sweetly almost, and it was a surprise. I was using her to make my reluctant husband jealous and she’d leveraged my entire future to keep herself alive. Gentleness would have been the last thing I expected. And, truthfully, I didn’t think I wanted it. I wanted rough and wild and nearly violent. I wanted to use and be used.

  I wanted power and control and for someone, one of us, any of us, to feel something. The gentleness reminded me that I was human. That she was human. That our bodies were fragile and the night had had terrible trauma.

  I gasped, my lips opening against hers.

  “Shhh,” she whispered like she knew exactly what I was thinking. She stepped closer, pulling my body against hers. Her hand against my cheek slid to my neck and held me there. Our kiss went from tentative—from a show I was putting on for my dispassionate husband—to something I needed. Connection in a world that had been turned upside down.

  I dropped her hand and grabbed her hips, pulling her to me. Holding her tight and close. Kissing her with more passion than I thought I felt. But the hum that had settled between my legs had exploded in my body. And I wanted Eden. I wanted Ronan. I wanted everything. I broke the kiss and turned to look at him. Eden kissed her way down my neck, pulling open my flannel shirt one button at a time. My lips were swollen and my eyes were heavy.

  She licked the top of my breast and I groaned, never looking away from his eyes.

  I wore no bra, and when Eden opened my shirt enough, she pulled my nipple into her mouth. My head fell back and my eyes wanted to close but I didn’t let them. I watched him, watching us. The way his eyes went from cold and distant to fiery. To intense.

  He shifted, uncrossing his legs and stretching them out wide, and I knew he was getting hard. Watching us. Eden’s hands cupped my breasts, her thumbs stroking my nipples.

  “Ronan,” I breathed. Eden turned to face him and I couldn’t see us, but I could see his reaction to us. He was not unmoved. But he didn’t get up. He only watched. The disappointment I felt was so sharp. So keen it took me a second to get my breath.

  I craved him. Needed him. The only way any of this made sense was if he was touching me. If he was wanting me like I wanted him. But he did not move. He did not say a word and I wondered, suddenly, if this was the only way left for me to have him. He wouldn’t touch me. But he would watch someone else do it.

  “She’s beautiful,” Eden said.

  “She is,” he said, his dark voice filling the cabin, and my knees went loose.

  “So soft. Fragile.” Eden’s hands spanned my waist, her fingers edging towards the buttons of my pants.

  “She’s tougher than she looks,” Ronan said, and it was as close to a compliment as I’d heard from him.

  “She kisses like a virgin,” Eden said and I scowled.

  “She practically is,” Ronan said. “She should be.”

  “Should we pretend she is?” Eden asked, walking around my body, turning me to face him. She cupped my breasts, teased my nipples with feather-light touches that made me crazy. I whimpered in my throat. “A virgin on her wedding night, sacrificed to two terrible people who shouldn’t be touching her soft, sacred body?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to pretend that. I was done being sacred.

  “Good. Virginity is overrated,” Eden said, like an expert. Her fingers on my nipples were suddenly rough.

  “Fuck,” I breathed, resting my head against her shoulder, everything spinning in the best possible way.

  “Tell me what she likes,” Eden asked him as she touched me. “Tell me how to touch her. Make it good for her. For her wedding night.”

  Ronan was silent. And my body still hummed and I was strangely grateful to Eden for the way it seemed she had read my mind. The way she’d tried to pull him in because she knew that was what I needed. But he wasn’t playing along, which honestly, I should have known. My eyes closed, blocking him out, because this connection through Eden didn’t feel like enough. This connection felt like loss. “Over her jeans,” he said, his voice like gravel, and I gasped from the relief. “Touch her through her jeans. She likes it hard. A little rough.”

  I kept my eyes closed as my heart pounded in my throat. Eden skipped the button and the zipper and instead she slid her fingers right along the seam, pushing them hard against me until I gasped. Until my knees really did buckle. “Wait,” I breathed, grabbing on to her wrist.

  “No,” he said. “Don’t let her catch her breath. This was what she wanted.”

  “What do you want?” Eden asked in my ear, still giving me the power that Ronan was trying to take away from me.

  “She wants to come,” Ronan answered for me. “Don’t you, Poppy? You want her to make you come. To put her fingers inside of you. You want her to bite on your nipple just the way you like and whisper something dirty in your ear. Something about what a good girl you are and how pretty your tits are and how she’s going to use you so hard, until it doesn’t hurt to think about what’s going to happen next.”

  “Yes,” I sobbed. Eden’s hands left me and my eyes opened wide, hoping it was because Ronan would be there, giving me what I needed. But no, Eden just pushed me back so I was sitting on the banquette again, legs splayed, breasts bared. I had to look wild. Feral. My eyes met Ronan’s and still he sat there. If he hadn’t just said those words, I would have thought he wasn’t even paying attention. He was so calm. So…unbothered. I undid my pants myself, shoved them down my thighs, revealing my body.

  “Don’t.” He stopped. Looked away. Again, the hard clench of his jaw. He cared about something. But what? He didn’t want to see me naked? Or he didn’t want any of this?

  Jesus, Poppy. He’d done nothing but make that clear.

  I’d stepped into waters so deep and so turbulent I was drowning. I crossed my arms over my body, feeling as if I would explode from want and embarrassment.

  “Oh no, sweetheart,” Eden said, quietly, like she was talking just to me. “That’s not what he wants.”

  “I don’t know what he wants,” I whispered. “I’ve never known what he wants.”

  Eden pulled up her skirt high over her own hips, revealing a black satin thong, wet between her legs, pulled askew. I reached up and touched her, ran my thumb along the fat seam between the lips of her pussy. She was so wet. Swollen and hot. My body kept humming and she bit her lip.

  “Honey,” she whispered. “He’s not interested in watching me come. He wants to watch you come. So let’s…let’s give him that.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I whispered.

  “Because I
fucked up your lives pretty good,” she said. “I owe you. And this is a goddamned delightful debt to pay. They should all be so fucking hot.” She pushed me forward until I was on the edge of the seat and then she pulled me back against her chest, so I was reclining in her arms. Across from us, Ronan was looking out the window, his cheeks flushed, his jaw tight but his eyes very carefully, very deliberately, not on us. Eden’s hands cupped my breasts, lifting them like she was offering them to him.

  Still he didn’t look.

  She pinched my nipples and he was utterly indifferent. We might as well have been reading the paper. He wasn’t going to break. Everything I was doing, all the ways I was trying to provoke him and he didn’t care. Ronan never cared. A sound came out of me, a sobbing moan from the very place in my chest where my heart was being twisted and broken.

  That sound made him turn his head. Our eyes met in the burning distance between us and I saw everything that had happened between us. The engagement party, my kitchen, the gala, Caroline’s house, Ireland…all of it. Every moment of Ronan and Poppy was in his eyes. Eden touched my knee, pushing my leg out wide.

  “Now,” Eden purred. “When you say rough, how rough?” Her fingers slid from my knee to my pussy and I arched into her. This build-up had been days in the making and I was suddenly desperate. Burning. An orgasm building in my clit. A small touch. A tiny bit of pressure and I would explode into a million pieces.

  “Stop,” he demanded. Barked, really. Eden stopped, her fingers on my belly. But I was too far gone. My hips arched, my own hands reaching between my legs to give me the relief I needed. I was past wanting to feel good. Wanting a wedding night. I was in some kind of animal need. Desperate.

  “Stop her,” he growled, and Eden grabbed my hands, pulling them away.

  “What…what are you doing?” I whispered, my body arcing up and away from Eden’s towards him. Needing…him.

  “I think you’ve awakened the beast,” Eden purred, her fingers like manacles around my wrist. “And I think the beast doesn’t want anyone touching you but him.”

  I started to close my legs. “Ah ah ah,” she said and used our linked hands to keep my legs wide. Open. For him. I liked this too much. The orgasm built despite not being touched. Because I wasn’t being touched.

  “Is that true?” I asked him.

  He said nothing, his jaw moving like his teeth needed to be punished. Oh fuck. I lifted my hips again. Punished. I wanted to be punished. “You don’t want anyone touching me but you?” Eden wasn’t very strong and she certainly wasn’t trying too hard to restrain me. I think she was on my side more than his when it came to this little power struggle, so when I pulled my hand back between my legs, she didn’t try too hard to stop me. In fact, when I switched my grip so it was my hand holding hers and I pushed her fingers down on my clit, she did it with some eagerness.

  “Fuck,” she groaned and bit my shoulder. “You are the hottest goddamn thing.”

  “You don’t want her to touch me because I’m your wife?” I asked, pushing Eden’s fingers against me just the way I liked. The way he taught me to like. My eyes never leaving his face. “I’m going to come,” I said. “And if you won’t—”

  “No.” He stood and Eden flinched, and even I felt a moment of hesitation. A real and cold fear of him. He walked over to us and leaned down, just a little. Enough to put one hand against my chest, his fingers curling around my neck. His other hand knocked Eden’s fingers away so his palm cupped me. Long and thick, his fingers slid down between the thick, wet and hot folds between my legs to tease the entrance of my body. I gasped and shook and pushed myself against him. He held me down, against Eden.

  “This is mine,” he said. His fingers speared inside of me and I screamed at the pleasure/pain of it. “No one touches this but me.”

  The orgasm was coming. So hard and so fierce I was shaking. I could actually feel tears burning in my eyes. Eden’s hands were cupping my breasts, teasing my nipples, and he must not have minded that because his eyes burned as he watched. I was held open for him. Pried open by him. “You can play all the fucking games you want, Poppy but this…this is mine.”

  “Then take it,” I said.

  We were all frozen in the moment. Stay or go. Love me or deny me.

  I’d gambled everything on this one thing and I had no idea what he would do. His hands left my body and without them I felt like I might float away on the pain. On the ache of wanting so much from him and always being denied.

  But then he scooped me up in his arms, cradling me against his chest. I wrapped my arms around his neck, buried my face against his chest, breathing him in. From the floor he grabbed my pants and carried me away from Eden to the back cabin. To a place where it was quiet and dark and just us.

  He slammed shut the door behind him, like he could stop time. Like he could stop this plane’s travel through the sky back to the city and the people who would kill us. He tossed me on the bed where I bounced and spread my arms out wide so I didn’t fall off.

  “You’re my wife,” he said, saying the word like he was tasting every edge of it. He shook out my pants and found in the back pocket the bloody stretch of fabric that had tied our hands together during our ceremony.

  “What are you going to do about it?” I asked, taunting him mercilessly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Poppy

  He reached behind his head and pulled off his fine, expensive sweater. His wiry strength was revealed, his sleek muscles across his chest, down to the waist of his pants. He was beautiful and sharp and I wanted him so much it hurt.

  My eyes on his beautiful body, I lay back, my hand between my legs.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Or what?”

  He grabbed my hand in a grip that was too rough, which made it perfect, and then he put one knee on the bed, making the mattress dip under his weight and my body rolled into his. He pushed my hand up over my head and then grabbed my other hand and forced it over my head too. With the bloody cloth that bound us in holy matrimony, he tied my hands together, the fabric rough against the tender skin of my wrists. I sucked in a breath. And then another.

  He was silent, his eyes blazing over my body.

  “Ronan,” I whispered and reached for him with my bound hands, but he caught them and pressed them back to the bed over my head. He slid the palm of his other hand between my legs and gave me that pressure I loved so much against my clit. And I could have nodded. I could have said yes. I wanted to. Lord knows at the moment I would have said yes to anything. But we’d done all of this before, this territory of his hand between my legs and me coming alone while he held himself aloof was well traveled and I couldn’t do it again.

  There was something I wanted. Something he’d been keeping from me all this time and his reasons were noble and very nearly kind. But we were past nobility and kindness. If I was his, then he was mine.

  “Only if you fuck me. Husband.” The word was an endearment and a curse. I wanted him and I was scared of him.

  I could love him if he’d let me and he would undoubtedly destroy me. “You’re my husband.” Whatever control he’d been clinging to snapped in his hands and he fell onto my body, his mouth finding my breast, pulling a nipple into his mouth as he undid his pants, cupped his cock, stroking the length, holding the tip as come oozed out. I wanted to lean down, put him in my mouth. I wanted to taste him. I wanted to be covered in him and by him. I wanted to soak him into my skin and hide him behind my heart.

  “I’ve got no fucking condom,” he said in his thick accent, his old code standing strong even under this onslaught.

  “I’m your wife,” I said. The word mapped the unknown and treacherous space between us. Wife. It was my key into all the places he kept dark and secret. If he would only let me in. I met his eyes and for a second it was as if Eden and the plane and the danger that waited for us was gone. And it was just us. Ronan and Poppy so deeply mad for each other, so painfully entwined that whatever happened after
this didn’t matter. Couldn’t possibly matter.

  If I got pregnant, then it was meant to be.

  That’s how it felt right now. Like the stars had aligned and I saw the same leap of faith in his eyes. Or maybe it was just the sight of me, wet and pink and his.

  “You can’t go back, a chuisle.” The words were practically lost in his thick accent. And then he took my bound hands in his and braced them over my head, and with his other he guided his cock to the entrance of my body. And I was wet and I was ready but he was so big. Between my legs I stretched and burned and I pushed my head back against the mattress. Tears trickled out of my eyes.

  “Shhh,” he whispered, stroking my neck, my breasts. “You can take it. You can take it all. Look.” He touched my chin and I looked down, the sight of Ronan’s thick cock splitting me open. “Look at how hot you are. How fucking perfect you are. Such a good girl. Taking my cock. Such a good fucking girl.”

  His words became gibberish in my ear as the pain became pleasure and then back again.

  “I can’t—” I whimpered. Ronan’s eyes met mine, wild and dark, and I saw in the killer the boy he’d been. Unsure and scared and he would pull out and leave me, that’s how badly he didn’t want me to be hurt. But then he’d be gone for good. I would never get him back.

  “Don’t stop,” I breathed. He shook his head. Sweat dripped from his hair and down his face and I reached for him with my bound hands, but he held me immobile, so I lifted my face to his, holding myself close so I could kiss him. Taste him. Breathe him in. He turned his face aside. Like he didn’t want to kiss me. But then he was inside of me and it was all I could do to keep breathing.

  “You’re my wife,” he said. “Mine.”

  I arched against him, fucking myself on his cock, trying to somehow get closer. How ridiculous was that? He was as close as he’d ever been to me and it felt like he was miles away somehow. Was it Eden?