by Aubrey Irons
Her eyes never leave mine, and mine never leaves hers, and in some way, that alone makes this hotter than anything I’ve ever felt before.
Intimacy.
I’ve forgotten that word. That was something I played with - something like matches, or smoking, or swearing - when I was younger, back with Sheila. I dipped my toes in that water a long time ago, and when it all turned out to be poison, I never went back. I shut that out of my life and concentrated on what I was good at: structure, coldness, and being in control.
Sierra Hammond shatters all of that.
She destroys it, and somehow, that thought hits me while I’m balls deep in her ass, having the hottest, dirtiest, goddamn best sex of my life. She shatters all of that and sends my plans and my organization and my rules scattering to the winds, and I know that should scare the shit out of me, but it doesn’t at all.
“Harder,” she moans, panting, her forehead dotted with perspiration, her face flushed red.
And who am I to deny a lady?
I growl, every muscle in my body clenching tight as I start to drive in harder and deeper, our bodies coming together again and again as the inevitable begins to claw at my mind.
Her hand starts to move faster and faster over her clit, her breath starts to come staggered and heavy, and slowly, she loses control of that unbroken eye contact.
“Ohmygod, I think I’m- oh fuck, oh FUCK!”
“Come for me, princess,” I growl, feeling my own control start to crack and shatter around me.
“Make that pussy come for me while I fuck your ass like it’s mine.”
She screams.
She straight up screams her orgasm, her entire body arching off the bed like she’s been hit with high voltage, and her eyes rolling back in her head. I have never seen a woman come like this, and feeling her absolutely shatter around me is the last thing I can take.
And I fucking lose it.
I roar as I grab her hips, bury myself inside of her and just let go, holding her tight as I go crashing over that cliff along with her.
I keep my eyes open. I fight the urge to squeeze them shut with every fiber in my body, because seeing her face when she comes, and being right here in this moment with her is like discovering the part of me I buried years ago.
It’s self realization.
It’s like finding religion.
It’s sweet, beautiful redemption.
Damned if this girl might just save me from myself, and damn do I want more.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sierra
For two days, I lose track of everything. For two entire days, we lose ourselves in each other completely. Day bleeds into night, and night blurs back into day. I’m aware of guzzling water and whiskey when we’re thirsty, and giggling as Connor answers the door naked and completely casually for the pizza we order and then hungrily inhale naked in bed.
There’s a shower or two in there, and some sleep, but the rest is just him and I learning each other’s bodies like they’re our own. It’s an insatiableness that he brings out in me - a craving, a need, an addiction that I can’t seem to and have no intention of quitting. It’s a vacation from life - an escape from everything that’s been pulling me under.
It’s sweet agonizing ecstasy like I’ve never known, and it’s an escape I never want to escape from.
I’m deliciously sore when I wake up at some point on that second night. We’re not really on any sort of set sleep schedule, but I can only imagine it’s late. I raise my head from his sleeping chest, blinking in the darkness and swallowing the cotton in my mouth as I slip from the bed. I take a blanket from the foot of the bed with me as I pad downstairs and grab a glass of water from the kitchen sink.
I swallow eagerly, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and glancing out the kitchen window at the beach dunes. The window’s open a crack and I can hear the surf crashing against the shore down past the sands. My feet take me out to the front porch quietly, leaving the door open and sinking into the wicker loveseat. The waves are louder out here, and suddenly, it’s like I’m back home in Shelter Harbor, listening to the rumblings of the Atlantic Ocean.
Well, home, but different, and the difference is him.
There’s a part of me that knows that there’s no scenario where this doesn’t have an end date. I mean, I’m not fixing anything by holing up here with him and forgetting the rest of the world exists, I’m only escaping from it.
And eventually, the world always finds out where you’re hiding. That I know.
But in this perfect moment of bliss, sitting here with the waves and the sea air, and the moon shining bright, and my heart filled with…well, something, I choose to ignore the things that chased me here. School, Jayson, my family, the goddamn Ukrainian mob - all of it simmers away as I lay back and listen to the waves.
Just enough like home to give me comfort.
Just enough not home to make me feel whole.
“Didn’t peg you for a stargazer.”
I grin and look up and behind me as he steps out of the kitchen door.
“You didn’t?”
He grins. “Nah, that’s a lie. You’ve got science nerd written all over you.”
I stick my tongue out at him. “Dick.”
“Only if you say please.”
I snort a laugh. “Haven’t worn you out yet, have I?” I glance down at his bare-chested torso, my eyes flitting down to his jeans and bare feet, the denim slung low on his chiseled hips in a way that makes me suck my lip between my teeth.
“Down girl,” Connor chuckles in that deep baritone, sauntering towards me and sinking into the wicker loveseat next to me. We sit there side by side for a minute, just looking out over the moon-white sands and the surf beyond, just waiting in the silence of that moment.
And I guess there are words we could be speaking. There are questions we could be asking each other, and plans we could be planning for what comes next.
Or we could just sit here, just like this.
…Which seems absolutely perfect to me.
Connor puts an arm around me, pulling me against him as we sit there in the dark, and I know then that there aren’t any words needed. We don’t have to find a way to explain how the drunk girl on the edge of a breakdown and the gangster who kidnapped her after shooting a man somehow found themselves here, like this. We don’t have to question the foundation of that or wonder how healthy it is for either of us to have started sleeping together and pretending the world and all of its problems don’t exist.
For now, we can just sit here in this perfect moment, and just forget the world around us is even turning.
“I should take a picture of this.”
He grins, turning his head to look at me.
“Of the dark beach?”
“No, of-” I trail off with a shrug, suddenly feeling stupid for thinking it.
Of us, sitting here like this, I want to say. But I don’t.
Because I’m fully aware of what this is, especially with a man like Connor. This is an escape - a vacation from life itself. But like all vacations, eventually, we’ll have to go back to our lives. Eventually, we’ll have to go back to our jobs and our homes, and sort through our mail, and water the plants, and change the away message on our voicemails.
Eventually, this has to end, which is why I want to snap a picture of this moment in time so I can remember it later.
“What?”
I shake my head. “Forget it, you’re right. It wouldn’t come out at all.”
“Just gonna give up just like that, huh?”
I roll my eyes as I turn to grin at him. “You have this thing for trying to get under my skin don’t you?”
“You do have great skin.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to the beach when he clears his throat.
“How about us?”
I glance at him, a brow raised. “Us?”
Connor clears his throat, shrugging neutrally. “Yeah, a picture of you and me being total beach bums.�
��
I swallow, my eyes darting over his face, trying to read him.
“You know, for you to look at later.”
My heart flips.
“It can be your zen thing for when you’re thinking about burning down another building.”
I roll my eyes, the tension suddenly deflating as I turn and punch him in the arm.
“Dick.”
“Told you, you’re going to have to ask nicer than that.”
I grin, biting my lip. “You need a magic word or something?”
“Please does open all sorts of doors.”
“Doors to your cock.”
He growls lowly in his throat. “I think I could watch your mouth say that word all day.”
My eyes flash, and the heat pulses through me. “Oh this mouth?” I blow him an exaggerated kiss. “Saying cock?”
Connor’s jaw tenses. “Say it again, and I might just have to make you eat your words.”
I blush wildly, as his eyes flash.
“But first,” he suddenly stands from the loveseat. “I think we should take that picture.”
I roll my eyes to cover the shiver from the tension he’s just left me with. “My phone’s right inside if you want to grab it.”
Connor winks as he yanks the kitchen door open and steps in. I turn back to the ocean again, hugging the blanket around myself and grinning like a complete idiot.
This isn’t good.
This is starting to go places it shouldn’t. An escape from life in the form of a wild, filthy, no-strings sex-cation is one thing. Letting go completely and letting this gorgeous, dark, broken, dangerous man claim my body every way he wants until I’m screaming for more is another thing altogether.
It’s the feelings that are starting to creep to the surface surrounding that which are the problem.
“Where’s your phone?” Connor calls from inside the house.
“My bag, by the sofa!” I yell over my shoulder before I turn back to grin like a lunatic at the ocean.
Because this is me feeling something I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before, and while that does scare the shit out of me, it also leaves me breathless and spinning.
It leaves me feeling safe, and whole, and better than I have in longer than I can remember.
“Which phone.”
I grin, feeling my heart still swelling bigger than it’s been in a long freaking time at the sound of the door swinging back open and his voice behind me from the doorway.
Swelling, that is, until I actually hear what’s just said. Because after that, it’s like something icy comes clutching up to chill my heart to the core.
I freeze. “What?”
“I said which phone,” Connor growls.
The hair on the back of my neck raises, and my heart suddenly drops right through the floor as I turn.
“Connor-”
“What is this, Sierra,” he says darkly, his voice edged. My heart beats like a drum as I eye the phone that Agent Marlow gave me, which is now clutched in Connor’s hand.
…The phone I’ve never even mentioned to him.
“It’s nothing,” I say quickly. “It’s just a-”
“A burner phone.”
I swallow. “For emergencies, yeah.”
“There is one number programmed into it. One number that’s called it.”
I freeze, and his eyes narrow coldly as he shakes his head
“Agent fucking Marlow,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He strides closer to me, his body hard and on edge as he looms over me. His eyes fiercely glare into mine, making me cringe.
“What did you tell him?!”
“Nothing!”
“Sierra!”
“Nothing!” I yell this time.
I’m scared because of course I am, but I’m also mostly just hating myself. I’m hating myself for not telling him, and once again doing everything I can to self-sabotage my life.
Like I always do.
“At your loft, when he cornered me in the garage, he made me take it.”
“You should have told me.”
I swallow heavily, my eyes finding his. “I know, and I’m sorry, I just didn’t know-”
“But you didn’t.”
“Connor, I-”
“Do you have any fucking idea what it means in my world when someone’s talking with the goddamn Feds?”
I shake my head, my blood roaring in my ears.
“My brother is in jail because someone fucking talked to the Feds.”
“I thought Liam-”
“My other brother, Gray.” He chokes out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “But you wouldn’t know that, because that’s not what this is, is it?” he hisses. “This isn’t anything where you need to know who my fucking family is, is it?”
My fear suddenly turns to anger as I narrow my eyes at him. “Oh, because you know all about my family, right? Because this was so much more to you than just fucking the silly girl having a life-crisis, right?” I glare at him. “Don’t you dare throw family in my face. Like you have any fucking clue about my fa-”
“Stella, Ivy, Kyle, and Rowan, who owns a dive bar.”
He smiles thinly, tapping his head.
I glare at him.
“It was one phone conversation. It’s not like I was ratting out your precious little gang or someth-”
“And that better be true,” he growls. “For your sake.”
I slowly shake my head at him, my lips curling. “Or what? You going to ‘make me an offer I can’t refuse,’ Connor? Am I going to ‘sleep with the fishes’?” I spit sarcastically in this ridiculously comical movie-gangster voice as he just glares silently at me.
“This isn’t the fucking Soprano’s, Conn-”
“You’re goddamn right it’s not!” he roars, suddenly moving towards me, making me shrink back on the loveseat.
“It’s not a damn TV show, Sierra, it’s real fucking life. It’s my real fucking life, and I wouldn’t expect some privileged little college girl from perfect little white clapboard, picket-fenced Shelter goddamn Harbor to understand that in the slightest fucking bit.”
I laugh bitterly. “And there we are, right? Now we’re dropping the bullshit, huh?” I suck my teeth, looking away. “So that’s what I am, right? Just the naive girl stupid enough to fall for your bullshit? Some sort of easy prey who you could tie up and screw around with?”
“I’d hardly say you put up a fight.”
I whirl back, and I slap him - hard, across the mouth.
My eyes immediately go wide, the same hand flying to my open mouth as he slowly turns back to me, his eyes raging with fire.
“I think we’re done here.” He says it coolly, slowly - his words calculated and icy. He stands and flings open the kitchen door. I sit there shaking, my hands clenched into fists as I stare at the stupid burner phone sitting on the loveseat next to me.
Connor reappears a second later, yanking a t-shirt over his head and jangling his keys.
My heart sinks, and the regret chills through me.
“Connor-”
“I’m going for a drive.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, my eyes searching his face for his, but finding only shadow as he purposely looks away.
“Great.”
He strides across the porch, down the side steps, and disappears around the side of the house. A second later, I can hear the belching roar of his Charger, followed by the sound of scattering gravel and sand as he peels out of the driveway.
I deflate, the air hissing through my lips as I drop back into the loveseat and bury my face in my hands.
Fuck.
I glare again at the stupid phone the FBI agent made me take, narrowing my eyes at it before I grab it and throw it violently off the porch. I sink back into the wicker at my back, running my hands through my hair.
What the hell am I even doing here?
And again, the thought comes to me that all of this isn’t fixing a
nything. This isn’t solving any of the shit that’s been building up in my life, it’s just an escape.
He’s my escape, and as beautiful and broken an escape it is, our exchange just now only highlights the reasons why I need an escape from my escape. Because he’s right: our worlds couldn’t be farther apart, and I want to say that doesn’t matter, but I know how stupid and silly that sounds before my brain can even finish the thought.
It’s time to stop running.
It’s time to stop the escape and the vacation from life.
It’s time to face the music.
I groan as I drag myself off the loveseat, padding back inside and slipping on the old pair of Nora’s sleep shorts. I eye the too-tight pink t-shirt and roll my eyes, hating that my mind goes back to the look on his face when I stepped into the living room two days before.
I shake my head and grab the plaid button-up of his from the back of the couch instead. It’s arguably a worse move because it’s such a fucking girlfriend thing to do, but I decide it’s the lesser of two evils.
I sigh heavily as I yank out my phone - my phone - out of my bag and scroll to Stella’s number.
It’s time to come clean about all of this.
There’s the sound of tires over gravel in the driveway, and while part of me hates that I freaking smile at the sound of his return, I make peace with that pretty quickly.
I go to the kitchen sink and pour a glass of water as I hear his boots across the porch, and when the screen door opens behind me, I take a big gulp, readying myself to face him and lay all of our cards on the table. Because it is time to come clean and lay down what this is, come what may.
“You came back.”
He says nothing, and I can’t help but smile at his ever-present stoniness.
“Look, I think we should-”
“And I think you should scream, just a little bit.”
And I do.
I scream as I whirl, the glass dropping from my hand and shattering to the floor at the sound of the Russian voice behind me.
Not Russian. Ukrainian.
I almost bolt, but two of them are on me in a second, hands grabbing my arms and physically picking me up, heedless of my kicking feet as they bring me forward, towards him - the man from the back room of the Rusty Duck.
