by Holly Hart
I take Ridley’s hand and we step into the dorm room. It’s old, but it’s clean, and tidy. Four beds are pressed against either wall, each one neatly made. Ridley tries to hang back. I can tell he’s not sure he should be here. My heart fills with warmth at that. Ridley’s got a heart of gold: man enough to recognize that these girls might be traumatized by what they’ve been through.
Are traumatized.
I drag him along with me.
“Isabella,” I call out softly.
All of the girls are in a huddle in a far corner of the room, some sitting on one bed, the rest on the floor. They are chattering easily with each other. If I didn’t know what they’ve been through, I might have mistaken this place for a traveller’s hostel .
“Frankie!” A dark-haired girl squeals, her light Eastern-European accent coming to the fore with her excitement. “It’s you – you came!”
Isabella comes running towards me. Our bodies collide with a heck of a force, and she pushes me back. I wrap my arms around her.
“Of course I came,” I whisper into her ear. “There was someone I needed you to meet.”
The other girls come to join us. Some quick, other slower – shyly looking at Ridley: though with curiosity, not fear.
“Everyone,” I say, croaking through the unexpected pressure of having nine sets of eyes focused on me. “Meet Ridley. He’s the man that saved all our lives.”
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur. Before I know it, visiting hours are over, and we have to head home. This time, I do it with a happy heart. The girls will be out of the halfway house in a couple of days, and free to return to their lives. It won’t be easy – I know that as well as anyone, but at least they’ll have the choice of what to do with the rest of their lives.
Ridley promised that he would help anyone who decided to stay in Boston find a job. I don’t doubt that he’ll be true to his word. I don’t know how many of the girls will stick around. Most of them are from small towns in Eastern Europe – lured to America by the promise of work, only to find themselves in the same Templar hellhole that I did.
But some will stay. I’m sure of that. And I’ll make it my mission to stay in touch with every single one of them. I’m not going to let what happened to me define my life, and I won’t let it define theirs either.
As long as there’s life in me, I promise that much.
“Ye okay?” Ridley asks as the bolthole’s steel door slam shut.
I sigh, looking around the vaulted brickwork. “Just thinking.”
“I promise,” Ridley says, jumping ahead of me. “It’s our last night here. I just wanted to make sure –.”
“– That there aren’t any Templar assassins lurking, waiting for a chance to take a pot shot at me,” I grin. “I know, Rid. Trust me, I don’t care. Home’s where you are, okay? Though I am pining for some natural light…”
Ridley throws his hands above his head in mock outrage. “There’s no pleasing –.”
I don’t give him a second to finish. I press my lips against his, stealing the words from his mouth.
“Some people,” I whisper. “But if there’s one thing I know about you, Ridley Byrne, it’s that you please me. You please me like no one else ever has.”
Ridley nibbles on my lip. He looks down at me, hazel eyes glittering. It’s not hard to tell that I’ve piqued his interest. Sometimes he’s like a teenage boy. Or at least, as horny as one. Not that I’m complaining.
“Bed, or…”
“Bed,” I nod.
Ridley picks me up and carries me over. I squeeze my thighs around his thick, muscular torso. His heat excites me. He throws me down, falling with me, and the second we’re both on top of the mattress his mouth is on mine. His tongue darts out, looking for my lower lip.
“Yes…” I whisper.
Ridley takes the sound, and acts on it like I’ve fired a starting pistol. His hands attack my body. One second they are stroking my breasts, the next pushing my legs apart, the next taking a firm handful of my ass. I arch my back as the pleasure explodes on my skin. It’s like a wave of fire, pooling everywhere Ridley touches me.
Ridley breaks the kiss for a second, reaching for the bedside cabinet. I moan my disapproval. “Not today,” I growl as I hear the crinkle of a condom.
“You sure?” Ridley asks, his eyebrow arching. “I don’t mind –.”
“I do,” I growl. “I think it’s time I felt you, all of you, Ridley Byrne.”
Ridley doesn’t need asking twice. He rips my clothes off, not bothering to make sure they don’t literally rip. I’m sure I hear a couple of buttons popping off and skittering across the floor.
“Jaysus, gal,” he whispers as he pulls my jeans off. “Where did you get these?”
My cheeks redden as I look down my body, eyes passing over the peaks of the angular mountains at my breasts and hips. My chest is heaving, light, shallow breaths. I can’t hide my excitement. The focus of Ridley’s astonished, desirous attention is clear.
It’s the brand-new set of Victoria’s Secret lingerie I bought yesterday.
“It’s a present,” I whisper. “You like it?”
“Like it?” Ridley growls, his eyes hungry with desire. “Like it?” He repeats.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I grin, biting my lower lip.
“I should let Mac take you shopping more often,” Ridley mutters.
“He’s got great taste,” I agree, wiping the smile of my face.
“He didn’t –?” Ridley says, biting on the lure I laid in his path.
“Oh, I asked him how it looked,” I nod, pasting an innocent look on my face. “You’re twins, right? I figured that anything he liked –.”
“You’re a minx, ye know that?” Ridley says, his voice throaty and gruff. He grabs me by the hips and pulls me towards him.
“I try,” I say.
For the first time in a couple of weeks, my back doesn’t hurt. The cuts and scars the Templars left me with have healed. They’ll mark me forever, but at least they’ve begun to fade. And it’s all because of Ridley; because he took me in, when no one else would. Because he saved me, when he didn’t have to. Because he loves me, and I love him.
“Shame I have to take them off,” Ridley says, his voice laced with genuine regret as he hooks his thumbs underneath my panties and pulls them down my legs. “Ye look unbelievable, gal…”
“Don’t worry,” I whisper, writhing underneath the unexpected pleasure of the cool air kissing my pussy. “I’ll wear them for you whenever you want.”
Ridley kisses me on the lips. It’s a rough, hungry, thankful kiss. I lean into it, wrapping my arms around his body. Then he lays a trail of kisses down my neck. One by one, they land like the stroke of a feather. By the time I feel my nerves explode with pleasure, he’s kissed me again, lower, lower, lower.
I arch my back again, losing myself in the sensations.
“Ridley,” I moan, eyes squeezed shut. “I’m ready…”
My voice is husky; more breath escaping my lungs than anything intentional. The words even surprise me as they escape my mouth.
Ridley stops dead, his lips somewhere near my belly button.
“Are ye sure?” He growls. “Really sure? Because I don’t want to be doing nothing ye –.”
My eyelids spring open, driven by exasperation. “Ridley, the Prince Charming act is cute, and all, but –.”
Ridley gets the message.
More than that, he doesn’t give me a second to finish my angry sentence before his mouth dives between my legs. I know he’s been waiting to go down on me for weeks. I haven’t let him. I didn’t feel ready. I don’t know why, perhaps because it feels too intimate.
But I’m ready now. I think I’ve been ready for this for a while.
“Oh God,” I moan.
Ridley’s tongue licks the heat between my legs from bottom to top. I squeeze my eyes shut again, letting my head tip back. It’s the only way to cope with the stars exploding in
my skull.
I run my fingers through Ridley’s hair, pulling him into me. His tongue darts across the little bundle of nerves between my legs. The sensation is almost unbearably good. I don’t know if it’s because no one’s done this to me in so long, but I’m already ready to come. I’m in heaven.
Even if I wasn’t, Ridley’s about to send me there.
I ride his face. That’s the only way to describe it. All of Ridley’s attention is focused between my legs. He envelops my clit, licking and sucking until I’m lost to the world.
When I feel a finger entering me, I know it’s over. Ridley knows exactly where to stroke me, where to kiss me, where to touch me. I feel the orgasm exploding a couple of seconds before it hits me. My back arches, head tips back, my fingernails claw at Ridley’s scalp. It’s like I’m surfing a rainbow through space, flying a million miles an hour through a galaxy full of stars.
When I return to my senses, Ridley’s lying next to me, head propped up on his arm. It’s all I can do to turn my head to look at him. My body is crackling with electric pleasure. It’s like a wildfire is burning me up, and instead of putting it out, Ridley’s pouring on fuel.
I don’t care. He can Byrne me whenever he wants. Wherever he wants…
“So…” Ridley chuckles.
His hair is messy from my attentions, and his lips wet from my juices. I don’t care. Anyone who can give me head like that can look however they want.
And besides, Ridley Byrne: with his chiseled jaw, perfect body and glittering eyes is hardly bottom shelf material. He’s Grade A. In another life, he could’ve been a Hollywood star.
“Ready for round two?”
I grab him with my legs and pull him toward me.
“God,” I growl, still panting from my lover’s attentions. As I move, and as his heat presses against me, little aftershocks crackle across my body. “I love it when you say that.”
26
Epilogue - Frankie
Two years later.
What to say? Heck, what can I say?
The last couple of years have been amongst the happiest of my life. Actually, there’s no “amongst” about it. They’ve straight up been the best I’ve ever lived through. Sure – you might say it wasn’t a high barrier to hurdle, then my life wasn’t any great shakes before I met Ridley – and you would be right.
But that doesn’t make what’s happened any less incredible, not to me.
I was a pretty awkward teen. I didn’t have many friends, especially not after my little sis Katie died. Kids can be mean – even about something as awful as that, and they were. I don’t think my parents ever really understood quite how bad it got for me at school. For a while, between the loss of Katie and the bullying at school, I wondered if I should just end my life, there and then.
Then my parents gave me away. They washed their hands of me. I understand it – and I don’t. They couldn’t cope anymore, I get that. Maybe they saw Katie in me. Maybe they just didn’t care.
But did they ever put themselves in my shoes? Did they ever imagine what it would do to a young girl to be abandoned at the age of six? Abandoned into the foster system, shunted around for week after week, year after year? No one wants to adopt an older kid. The parents are told that kids like me have behavioral problems; that it’s safer to go with a baby.
Sure, that might be the case. But no one tells you that, not while you’re waiting all those years for someone to just see the goodness in you, to choose you. After all that, was it any surprise that I had low self-esteem? That I became a target for a predator?
I don’t think so.
But Ridley saved me from all that. He helped me understand that low self-esteem is exactly what drove me into that Templar pervert’s hands. That man saw me for what I was: an easy mark, just desperate for attention. Desperate to be loved. Perhaps I should have known better. Growing up in care, you learn that someone’s always out for your stuff: whether that’s your lunch, your clothes, or even your happiness. I learned to be guarded, when I was a kid. But I hoped that afterwards, as an adult, I could cast off that life and become a different person.
Yeah – that approach bit me in the ass. I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Still, I don’t think I was wrong. Maybe taking the path I chose hurt me. Heck, it definitely hurt me. But it also made me the person I am today. It made me braver, stronger, and an all around better person. And more than anything, it gave me a gift. A man who loves me for who I am, not what; who looks in my eyes and sees a goddess, not an object of pity.
I guess in the end the experience was bittersweet. And every day, as the years pass, the bitterness fades away and the sweetness just grows ever more intense.
Ridley Byrne.
Really – what can I say? He is the best man I could possibly know, and the only man I could possibly love. Every day he surprises me. Whether it’s flowers, or coffee in bed. Whether it’s a kiss out of nowhere, or just the warmth of his touch as he caresses my hair. Whatever it is, and whenever, I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I guess you want to know what’s been going on in my life. That’s good – because I can’t wait to tell you! We’ll go work, then play. How about that?
I started a charity. Living through the Templar’s kidnapping – and knowing what they planned to use me for, was the only push I needed. After Ridley saved me, I started looking into human trafficking. If only I had known then what I know now: that almost twenty thousand people are trafficked into America every year, perhaps I would have been more careful.
Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have been.
I help girls. We all do: the women Ridley saved. It turns out that when you marry the resources of a huge Irish gang that’s spread out across the whole of the United States, and a bunch of tireless, resourceful women, you get something pretty special. Something unstoppable.
Of course we can’t admit to the cops where all their tips are coming from, but we send them anyway. And the second those despicable trafficking rings are busted, we swoop in to help the girls, the kids – sometimes even the men who were chewed up by that awful machine. It feels nice to help, and I think we’re doing good. Maybe that’s all anyone can ever try to do in their life.
Did I say something about marrying? It was a slip of the tongue, I promise…
It happened a year ago. Ridley popped the question, and the second my brain started working again, I threw myself into his arms, wrapping my legs around his body, and peppering his face with kisses. I can still hear his voice inside my head: “so – is that a yes?”
It really, really was. A thousand of them.
I don’t have to go looking to know that I’ll never find a man who will treat me like Ridley does. He looks at me like I’m the only woman in the world, like I’m the air to his lungs. He makes me feel sexy. He makes me feel desired. He makes me feel needed. And you know, since I met him, those creeping doubts I used to get: the lack of self-esteem, the voice in my head that told me I wasn’t good enough? It’s the funniest thing, but they’ve gone quiet. I haven’t heard a peep in years.
There’s one last thing. I’m not sure whether I’m technically supposed to tell you. Not yet, not for a couple more weeks. You know – it’s too early. But what the hell, I guess if you’ve made it this far, you deserve to know…
I’m pregnant. With Ridley Byrne’s baby. I’m going to be a mom. He’s going to be a dad. We’re going to be parents! I can’t wait.
I only found out a couple of weeks ago: I’m only a few weeks along. I keep dragging my fingers across my belly, waiting for my baby’s first kick. I know what you’re thinking, that it’s way too soon. I know, I know: you’re right.
But can you blame me?
***If you haven’t read Byrne Baby Byrne, Kieran’s story, then why not! And why not now? I’ve included it as your exclusive Bonus book, just keep reading!***
Byrne Baby Byrne
1
Kieran
“Brother, ye sure you
’re making the right decision?”
The bedroom goes silent. Ridley shoots me a side-eyed stare, the kind that says: “you’re treading on thin ice, boy.”
I clear my throat. “I’m just wantin’ to be sure, now. Casey’s a good girl, no doubtin’ that; but once you get up in front of the Father, that’s it. Are ye sure yer ready fer tha’?”
I hear the rustle of clothing coming off the rack, and the rattle of coat hangers colliding with one another. The closet door squeals as its hinges take a punishing. I wince. I guess my joke didn’t hit the mark.
Declan steps out of the walk-in closet. His black dress pants are open at the crotch, a starched white shirt falling loose around his boxer shorts. His face is grim. It doesn’t bear the slightest hint of a smile.
“Ye gonna, uh, finish up there?” I grin, taking a half step backwards. I’ve been on the receiving end of my twin’s bunched knuckles enough times to know better than to stand in close. “Or are ye planning on walking up the aisle with yer pants around your ankles? I t’ink Casey would appreciate tha’ just as much.”
Ridley leans back. I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye. A grin plays on my younger brother’s lips.
“Ye know something, Kieran,” Ridley says, with a hint of humor on his chords, “you’re braver than ye look, talking to a man like that on his wedding day.”
A broad grin stretches out on my face. “Always have been,” I nod wisely, “that’s me motto, ye know. Did I ever tell you that? Least, it is now.”
Declan reaches down and zips his fly closed. He doesn’t break eye contact with me.
“How long, Rid?” Declan growls, not bothering to glance down at dad’s old watch. It has graced his wrist ever since the old man’s passing. The faded, worn leather strap doesn’t look like something a man with Declan’s power would wear to a wedding. I know my brother wouldn’t have it any other way.
“‘Til the boys arrive?”
