by Holly Hart
I grip the back of her head, digging my hands into her long, red hair, and pull her towards me. I press my lips against hers and kiss her with a fierce longing. She responds in turn, moaning against my body like I’m all she’s ever wanted.
Casey’s nipples graze my skin like meteorites bouncing off the atmosphere. They feel like goddamn shooting stars, and I dip my mouth to them. She lies there a second, moaning under the attentions of my tongue and then pulls my head roughly with one hand. “Enough,” she pants. “I want you inside me.”
I growl my appreciation.
I push the rest of her bath robe aside, and it falls off her body like it’s trying to be a part of the action. My eyes surf across her body like they’re being pulled along by a speedboat. There’s so much to see, and so little time. I love those tits, those curves, the way her skin dimples at her hips. I love every goddamn inch of her body, and it’s all mine.
I lean over to my bedside table, searching for a condom, but Casey reaches for my arm.
“No,” she whispers. “Not this time.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. I want to be sure. Everything with Casey, from now on, it’s got to be on the up and up. I fucked up once; I’m not going to do it again.
She nods and I don’t ask twice. My cock leaps from underneath the bath towel covering it like it’s heard the starting gun at a race.
I pull Casey down on top of it and her mouth forms a perfect ‘O’ as she sinks down onto it, gasping with pleasure. Her tits wobble as she lowers herself, and I can’t help but grab a handful. They’re too goddamn perfect to miss.
“I love you, Casey Samuels,” I say, closing my eyes as her hips meet mine, and my cock buries its entire length inside her. I grab a hold of her curves and push her up, and she takes the hint. She closes her eyes and puts her hands on my shoulders and starts riding me like we were never apart. I lie back, and my cock starts to twitch with pleasure. It feels like someone’s got a hold of my balls, squeezing, but with hands that are as light and gentle as a fairy. There’s an urge building inside me, an urge that needs –
– to be fulfilled. I flip Casey over in one powerful movement, and she yelps with surprise as she lands on her back.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” I ask, circling her throat with my hand.
“You’re not so bad –”
I don’t give her a chance to finish. I drive my cock as far inside her as it’ll go, and she closes her eyes. Her eyelids twitch with pleasure as I drive in and out of her pussy, long, deep strokes that don’t give her a chance to relax.
Casey starts to yelp, and I bite down on my lip. I’m so close, but I can’t finish now.
My breath is ragged and uneven, and I feel that tell-tale growing, swelling feeling of desire surging up from my balls. I know I haven’t got long, and judging from the look of rapture on Casey’s face, nor has she.
“Please…” She moans. “Don’t… Stop…”
I don’t. Somehow, I hang on … I start doing the alphabet back in my head, and I have to close my eyes so that the sight of Casey’s nipples doesn’t spark me into coming inside her before she’s ready. I don’t know how I hold off, but I do.
Just…
Long…
Enough.
She moans my name, and I explode. The last thing I remember is her fingernails clawing at my back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Casey
I turn up at Declan’s family home without him. He won’t tell me where he’s gone, but judging by the look in his eyes, I think I already know. There are only two things that make his face light up like a string of Christmas lights: the things we do in bed, and … his kid.
After hiding Carla’s existence from me all that time, all he’s done for the last two weeks is talk about her. It’s like all that time, he was dying to tell me, but couldn’t, and everything was building up in that brain of his like a dam’s reservoir at a river’s birthplace.
Still, after raising Luke all those years, the idea of a new kid to look after … it’s bittersweet.
Not because I don’t want a family, because there’s nothing I want more in the world…
I guess it’s just nerves: that I won’t do it right; that Carla won’t like me; or that I’ll mess things up with her dad. Silly things, really; she’s just a kid, after all.
Anyway, I guess that’s where Declan’s gone. After Vince died, CPS took Carla. I don’t know the details, but I guess her mama found Vince’s safe. It was either stuffed with coke and crystal, or it was stuffed with money. Either way, it came to the same end: she was now facing the long arm of the law.
So what was happening with Carla?
Let’s just say that the custody agreement Declan had before – supervised visitation with a woman who was never around to supervise – that wasn’t going to hold.
I rap my knuckles on the front door, and Kieran opens it. My heart skips a beat as – for just a second – I think he’s his brother.
Kieran grins, reading my mind. “I’m much better looking than him,” he says. “How are you?”
“Not bad.”
“You still walking funny?” His expression darkens. “I tell you, I ever see one of Mickey’s boys walking past and I so much as get a sniff that he was involved –”
I blush. I can’t believe that Kieran’s pointed out my limp. It really has nothing to do with the trouble of a couple of weeks ago – with my being kidnapped – and everything to do with a certain sex swing that his brother installed the yesterday afternoon. I’m not sure my hips will ever go back to the way they were before…
“You embarrassed?” Kieran interrupts. “Don’t be; you’re family now. Anyways, Mary said to bring you back when you got here. Come with.”
I follow behind him without a word. Not because I’ve got nothing to say, but because I’m worried that whatever comes out of my mouth, Kieran will read a whole lot more into it than what I intended to say.
Kieran pushes the door to the kitchen open, and before I manage to put more than one foot inside, his mother begins barking orders.
“Casey, girl, I can always use an extra pair of hands. Come chop these onions. ”
“How are you, ma?”
The word slips out of my mouth, and I stop dead in my tracks with embarrassment. It’s just that I’ve heard Declan and the boys say it so much … and it feels really nice.
Mary Byrne doesn’t seem to notice. She keeps right on chatting. “I’d get Kieran to help, but the boy’s got black fingers; everything he touches burns to cinders.”
Kieran looks at me and winks. “Even the ladies…” he whispers, as he begins to make a stage exit. Then just before he disappears, I hear, “Don’t be embarrassed; she likes it.”
“I’m doing fine, girl,” Mary continues happily. “Course, I’m still not used to it. These old bones miss the warmth at night. Still, I have me boys, and now you, of course …”
I shiver. But it’s not a cold, unpleasant feeling, like so many times before. This is different: warm. I feel accepted, and I like it.
I’m just not used to it. The Byrnes’ are a close knit family. I never had that, and getting used to it takes some time.
“Tell me, girl: is my boy treating you right?”
I laugh. I can’t help it; especially when I’m looking at the serious expression on her face. “Sure is… ma.”
I don’t know if I’m just imagining things, but Mary seems to stand up a touch taller when she hears me call her that.
“They need a firm hand, these Byrne boys. Did I ever tell you how my Seamus courted me?”
“No,” I chuckle, picturing an old-timey date. “You never have; was it cute?”
“Ha! You would think so, wouldn’t you? The way he pushed himself about – all Lord of the Manor – so he did. No – the cheek of the lad; he stuck a bun in my belly, and that was that.”
I laugh, pulling the skin off another onion. I can’t help but think it would be nice if, in fifty years
’ time, Declan and I still think of each other with that kind of warmth.
“I guess you raised all of your boys the right way.”
Mary looks at me with a beady eye. It seems to cut right through any defense I could have mustered against her Inquisition. It’s no surprise that she survived so long married to one of Boston’s leading mobsters. She is sharp-witted enough by half again.
“If he picked you,” she says, staring directly into my eyes, “I must’ve done something right, and that’s fer sure.”
I blush. “What do you mean?”
“Yer good people, Casey me girl. Puttin’ up with me boy when other women would’ve walked away … then showin’im a firm hand when he needed one –”
I looked at her shocked.
“Oh, I know, girl. There’s not a lot happens in this town I don’t hear about. Where was I?”
I try and speak, but my throat’s too dry.
“Ah, yes; that nastiness with Detective Mackey … What I’m saying, girl, is that you are good people.”
I feel a tear beading at the corner of my eye, and flinch as Mary wipes it away. “It’s the onions…” I lie. She sees right through it, but doesn’t say a word.
“You’ll do fine; but you get my boy to put a ring on that finger before he puts a bun in your oven, you hear me?”
This time I really do blush, but I’m saved by the bell. Declan shoulders his way through the kitchen door, dressed in a purple backpack decorated with flowers and the letter ‘C’. However, I don’t see any of that, not at first. My eyes are drawn immediately to the little girl he’s cradling over his shoulder. She is fast asleep, and her long black hair – streaked with white – is forming a blanket on his arm.
He walks straight for me, a broad smile on his face. I can tell he is damn pleased with himself. He’s has a definite right to be proud of himself. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
I’m stuck, frozen. When, finally, I regain use of my voice, its quiet – awed. “Can I –,” I whisper. “Can I hold her?”
Declan hands her over slowly, cautiously – trying valiantly to not wake her. It’s no use.
As I accept her into my arms, Carla stirs and opens a pair of bleary eyes, rubbing them to try clearing her vision: “Mama?”
“No, baby,” I whisper: “not yet.”
But one day. Soon.
Epilogue
You know, it’s nice to have a kid around the house again. I didn’t know whether I would be able to manage it, not after Luke. I won’t say it didn’t hurt at first – hell, it still does sometimes – but little Carla’s got the kind of face you just can’t stay mad at for long.
Not that I started out mad. She is just so freaking cute, you know?
So, I guess we grow up, grow older, and we move forward. Luke’s grave scared me at first, after what happened in that churchyard. However, like everything that’s important, I just kept at it and kept going, and the fear faded. Besides, Declan has been there, by my side, the whole time. I could not ask for a man to give me more support than he has. He’s a rock, my rock. It’s his arm that I cling to when I’m feeling down, and his face that I clutch to mine when I’m feeling up.
He’s a dream; he’s my dream.
I know we’re never going to have that white-picket-fence life. Maybe it’s what I wanted when I was growing up, but now? That life scares me more than anything. This life that I have tumbled into is so much more fulfilling than anything I could ever have imagined.
It’s a whole world I didn’t even know existed, this little Irish community. I guess, maybe, it’s America, the way it used to be: a community where you can leave your kid with another family all afternoon, and come back to find her playing in a group of fifty! Something that brought it home was going to see an old couple to make things right after their store got vandalized. Dec tried to hide it, but I after I pinched him, he admitted the truth – they suffered because of me. But even after all we – I – did, they thanked us! It’s hard to come to terms with, this role I play now.
I guess the thing that is so different is … I’m someone now.
It’s kind of hard to describe, but going out with a Byrne in Boston is like being the First Lady. People stop me on the street to ask my opinion, and they come to get me when they need help. What I really feared, when I started dating Declan full-time, was that I’d become some kind of mob lady, a piece on the side.
Let me tell you, the first thing I talked to Declan about was that. I marched right in front of the television and got in the way of his eyes and the football game. So sue me; I was a bit hormonal. I’ll tell you why later. Anyway, I told him there was no way in hell that I was slinking off behind some curtain while he got to rule the roost.
Then you know what happened?
He laughed! It was a full on belly laugh that went on for minutes! When he finally stopped gasping for breath, he made a pretty good point. His mom: he told me to look at a woman like her and tell him whether I still thought women in the mob had to be retiring wallflowers, whose only job was to fetch their man a drink.
So, yeah, he had a point …
I’m still glad I did it. After what happened with Luke, I tried to pull back and withdraw from the world. That situation took me to a place that I never want to visit again, even if I did end up with a guy like Declan out of it.
What were the chances of that? Worse than the lottery, I’d wager. Plus, standing up to Declan: even when it wasn’t needed; even when he gave me my fifteen grand back; even when he told me the whole ownership thing was over; it was important, even if just to me.
It showed me that Declan wasn’t anything like the man I thought he was when I thought our whole relationship was based only on lust.
I’m not stupid. I know this world is dangerous, but with Declan by my side, I feel like I can handle the threats. I feel like there is nothing that life can throw my way that will topple me over, not now, not anymore. It’s not that life is going to stop hurling problems at me, but at least now, I know how to cope with what it throws.
His brothers make jokes sometimes; about Declan settling down. I can’t blame them; not really. We do everything together: cook; take Carla to the park; family events. You name it, we do it, together: we’re inseparable. I swear, though, Kieran’s next. If you ask him, he’ll deny it as much as the day is long, but I can see it in his eyes. Call it woman’s intuition.
So what about us?
Okay. Sure. There is something I have to tell you: well, two “somethings”, actually.
We’re getting married!
I swear. Mary Byrne is still an old-fashioned woman. From what Declan tells me, she was pestering him – almost from the day she first met me – to stick a ring on my finger. There is no way I doubt him. She was saying the same things to me! So, a couple of months after all of the drama, he took me to dinner; then we walked by the river, and he dropped to one knee.
It must have been freaking freezing! There was snow on the ground, and my cheeks and nose were painted red with the cold. I’m so glad that no one else could see me, but it was perfect in every way. Once I got my voice back, I said yes without even needing to think about it.
Casey Byrne. I like it. It’s got a ring to it. Plus, I’ve got a ring on to prove it!
So, about the other thing …
There might just be another reason we’re getting married: at least, so soon.
You know how I said that Mary Byrne is an old-fashioned kind of woman? Let’s just say I might be looking for a wedding dress with enough stretch to hide my belly … I’m only a few months along, and you can already see the bump. I can’t wait till I can feel him kick.
I don’t know that it’s a boy, but I know, if you know what I mean. I was worried that Carla might get jealous: after all, I’ve come into her life and stolen her dad’s heart. Now I’m bringing another kid into it! But I’ve never seen a little girl so excited about having a baby brother.
As for Will, after Declan ream
ed him out for – you know, letting me get kidnapped – he survived. He’s made of something harder than nails that guy, I tell you. You’ve never seen a man as sheepish as he was when he came to apologize. But I couldn’t stay mad at him… After all, he wasn’t the reason Lenny was after me, and then there was the whole shot-twice in-the-stomach thing…
Anyway, I better go. I’ve got to sit down and talk flowers, you know – for my big day. Don’t worry, though, you’ll be hearing from me soon …
* * *
THE END
* * *
The second Byrne Brothers novel will be out in November 2016.
Byrne Baby Byrne
I wanted love, marriage, and babies. I got it all. Just not in that order...
* * *
Sofia Morello. Heiress to the Morello crime Family. She's got cherry red lips and seductive, curvy hips, and - goddamn - she gets me hard.
* * *
I didn't meet her by chance. Boston's one city, with two crime Families - and there isn't space for both of us. Not if we fight. The only way to stop it? Wedding bells and a damn seating arrangement.
* * *
There's just one problem: Mickey Morello. Sofia's brother, and the leader of the Italian mob. He wants me dead, and his sister is just collateral damage. But Mickey didn't just mess with my woman. Sofia's hiding a secret. A nine month kind of secret. A baby in a carriage kinda secret. A secret I'd kill for, and a secret I'd die for.
* * *
Mickey threatened my family, and now I'm going to rip him apart. You have my word.
* * *
She's cold as ice. I'll make her Byrne.
* * *
Burn Baby Byrne is a standalone, 70,000 word mafia bad boy romance. Holly Hart's books are dark and dirty, she hates cheating, and guarantees a happily ever after every time.
