Padraig

by Mia Malone

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” he repeated.

  “You can’t have sex with anyone else while we do this,” I said.

  He reared back a little, and his eyes widened, but then they turned angry.

  “For fuck’s sake –”

  “I’m just saying,” I interrupted.

  “Well you can’t either,” he snapped. “Credit me with a little control, Jenny.”

  “I grew up here, remember?” I told him, feeling my temper rise because I had indeed grown up in our tiny town, and I had done this practically marinated in tales about Paddy Callaghan and his women.

  “Oh, no, you do not get to throw that in my face. I heard what you called me on Gibson's back porch and Jenny that wasn't fair. Yes, damn it, I fucked around a lot as a teenager. Never hurt anyone, always made sure they knew what they’d get. It’s also thirty fucking years ago.”

  I opened my mouth to say something because he was right, but he was also wrong. He still hooked up with women, and not infrequently. People talked, and I knew he did.

  “But –” was all I got out before he talked right over me, leaning in and watching me with eyes which were intense in a way I knew I’d hurt him with my man-whore comment.

  “I can go without if I have to.”

  “Paddy –”

  “I think it’s time for me to tell you a little story and you need to shut up and listen.

  “Pad –”

  “Jenny.”

  Okay. I’d seriously pissed him off if the muscle in his chin was any indication, so I put my coffee cup down on the low table, turned to lean my side on the back of the couch, curled my legs up and raised my brows in an indication that he was supposed to start talking.

  He did, and the world dropped out from underneath me.

  “Marybeth lived under this roof for ten years, and she's Annie's mother so while she did, I was faithful. From the day she unpacked until a week after she walked out that door. Not. Another. Woman.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I know, Paddy.”

  I didn’t know why he felt he needed to tell me that because he didn’t have to. Stepping over that line when in a relationship wasn’t who he was, and I always knew. The other guys were the same. I’d not liked either of Gib’s wives, and suspected he hadn’t either, but he would have shown them the same respect. Joke, Day, Mac. All the same.

  “I met Marybeth in a bar, and she was cute. Fun. We went to her place, and we fucked.”

  I blinked. This was not news to me, obviously, since their daughter had spent virtually every afternoon in my kitchen while she grew up.

  “Her place.”

  “Okay.”

  “Her condoms.”

  “What?”

  Was he going to do a play by play of their encoun –

  “Condoms she’d stuck a needle through. Multiple times.”

  “What?!”

  “You heard me.”

  I just stared at him.

  “Jenny, say something.”

  Slowly my eyes filled with tears and they spilled over to roll silently down my cheeks. I was such an idiot.

  “Jenny…” he murmured and reached for me, but I moved back.

  I couldn’t let him touch me.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll just –”

  I was wiping my cheeks and tried to get up. I couldn’t stay, and I didn’t want to hear whatever else he had to tell me, but he caught me and pulled me down and into his lap.

  “Please, Jenny. Please let me tell you,” he whispered into my hair.

  His voice was gentle but also full of something I couldn’t identify. Grief? Anger?

  “Okay,” I said and started to move.

  His arms tightened, and then we sat in silence for a while.

  “Are you sure?” I asked quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “It could have just broken…”

  “Babe,” he murmured, and I tilted my head back to look at him. He wiped my cheek with his thumb and smiled a little. “I was the one with a rubber wrapped around my dick, so I was the one removing it. I would have known if it was broken. I found several other packets she’d tampered with.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Beats me,” he sighed. “I'd met Marybeth, and her friends before, and I'd –”

  He stopped talking abruptly and looked uncomfortable.

  “You slept with one of her friends.”

  He made a face.

  “More than one of them?”

  He sighed.

  “Paddy, really? All of them?”

  “There were only two,” he murmured, and to my fascination, he was blushing.

  “What did the others say when you told them? Gib? Mac?”

  “Nothing because I didn’t tell them.”

  I closed my mouth. He hadn't told his friends he'd been tricked into fatherhood? I would have been screaming it from the rooftops, but they were men, so maybe they didn't talk about things like that. He'd also have been a little embarrassed about being fooled, I guessed.

  “I guess you weren’t happy with Marybeth,” I murmured.

  “No,” he said but didn't elaborate at first, so I leaned back again to look at him.

  His eyes were calm, and he looked a little resigned.

  “I didn’t sleep with her again, Jenny,” he said and tightened his grip when I tried to move away.

  Had he just told me what I thought he’d told me? I suddenly got why he’d started by telling me he’d been faithful, but I couldn’t believe it, so I tried again to move away, and he tightened his grip again.

  “She was crying and wailing. Acting out like a spoiled child. I told her I wanted the baby, but I didn’t want her and she… Christ, Jenny. She was down on her knees begging me to forgive her, and I couldn’t. She’d –” he stopped himself, and restarted, “She’d deliberately made me knock her up, and she asked me to forgive her? Fuck that.”

  “What did you say?”

  He snorted out something that sounded ugly, and murmured, “Said I’d forgive her when I got a hard-on in her presence again.”

  “What?”

  “I never did.”

  “Paddy…”

  “So, baby-girl, I can go without if I have to. I’d rather go with, but I can go without.”

  “Oh, Paddy. Ten years?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I confessed. “Have you told the others?”

  “Not much to say, and Gib knows. Told him earlier today. Don’t want anyone else to know.”

  Of course, he wouldn't. Not because of his pride or because he was embarrassed. Because of Annie. She was a beautiful, talented, happy young woman and she knew what her mother was like, but she didn't need for everyone to gossip about how she had been conceived.

  “I know,” I said.

  “It was all fucked up, and I hated Marybeth in so many ways, but she gave me Annie. So how could I hate her completely? How could I kick her out when she'd given me the only thing that was good in my life?”

  “I know,” I repeated, and my eyes stung, but I pushed it back.

  He'd always been a good father, and I'd always loved that about him. We looked at each other in silence, and slowly I raised a hand to his cheek.

  “Oh, honey. You must have slept with a lot of women in the first months after she left?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe it,” he retorted with a snort of laughter.

  I moved to sit next to him, and he let me. The reality of what had happened was far from what I’d imagined but dealing with it then would mean a lot of explanations on my part. Since these explanations would involve details about how stupid I’d been, I wasn’t willing to get into them, and grinned at him instead.

  “Still catching up, I guess,” I said, trying for cheeky and thinking I’d managed to achieve it credibly.

  He reached for his coffee and relaxed back into the couch.

  “Not really. I’m 55, and it’s
not like I’m Gib who apparently fucks like a goddamned rabbit these days.”

  Lee and I had early on decided not to be shy about sex, and we talked. A lot. As a result, I probably knew a lot more than him about Gibson’s rabbit-abilities, but I wasn't sure what he meant about himself. He'd said he didn't get a hard-on in Marybeth's presence, but maybe there was more to it than that?

  “What does that even mean?” I asked. “Does it mean you can’t –”

  “Hell, yes, I can, Jenny. I’m not im –” he cut himself off, and the look of disgust on his face was too funny.

  I started laughing.

  “Because there’s help available for erectile dysfunction you know,” I said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jenny. I wake up every morning with a hard –” he stopped growling and glared at me. “I do not need any chemical help.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  ***

  Padraig

  How the hell had sharing his miserable past taken them to a point where he had to assure her his dick wasn’t limp? She was laughing at him, and he felt like picking her off his couch and showing her just how hard he could get.

  “I am not joking,” he said.

  “Paddy, I know.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Paddy, relax. I’m sure your dick gets hard with a satisfying frequency. Stop insisting.”

  “Okay.”

  Satisfying frequency. Paddy immediately decided he couldn't do what he wanted which was to jump her without hesitation, not after the talk they'd just had but also because of the line he'd promised to toe. But once he got her into his bed, he'd show her the frequency. And how satisfying things could be.

  “Gib really does seem to have a lot of energy, though,” she murmured with a smirk. “Lee is so damned smug I threaten to fire her on a daily basis.”

  “Feel like punching Gib in the face each time I see him,” he shared.

  “It’s good to see, though. They’re good together.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s also hilarious to see how the badest of all badasses bends over double to give her whatever she wants,” Jenny went on.

  “Even a threesome,” he said, fishing a little for details because he might have told Gibson he didn’t want to know, but he was still curious.

  “With my brother of all people,” Jenny said. “Wish he’d picked someone else.”

  “You have a problem with them doing the deed?”

  “Of course not. Joke is a big boy.” She hesitated but continued with a shrug. “Would have enjoyed hearing the details a whole lot more if it didn’t involve him.”

  “You know what they did?”

  “Oh, please.”

  What did that mean? When she didn't say a word, he raised his brows, and when she kept looking mutely at him, he grinned.

  “You’re gonna make me ask, don’t you?”

  “Padraig Callaghan, do you want me to share sex-details about my best friend and my brother?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he said and hoped to God he’d tucked his cock away in his briefs in a way which hid the fact that he was getting hard.

  She pursed her mouth, and the move shot straight to his crotch.

  “Can you handle it?” she asked, and her voice had turned a little husky.

  Was she getting turned on too?

  “Yeah,” he rasped out.

  “Gibson did her from behind over the kitchen counter,” she said, and the way her lids dropped a little made his breath hitch.

  Jesus, the way she looked with her long, blonde hair in waves over her shoulders and that fucking fantastic black thing with straps he wanted to snap clinging to her waist and breasts.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Joke was in front of them. Watching, and…”

  “And what?”

  He could guess what Joke had been doing, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  “Jacking off,” she whispered.

  “Lee liked it?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Their eyes held and, yeah. It definitely turned her on a little to talk about what their friends had done, although she probably replaced her brother with someone else in her head. He wondered who.

  “Did you really party with the Wolves?” he asked.

  Her smile turned a little smug, and his cock twitched again.

  “Yeah. It was fun,” she said.

  “That’s good because Doug called just before you got here. Asked if we were coming this weekend and I told him we would.”

  ***

  When he’d made sure she locked the door behind her, he turned and walked back home which was a mere six-and-a-half-minute walk. His front door slammed shut with unnecessary force, and he flipped the lock with a snap. Then he walked straight through his bedroom and into the bathroom, getting undressed as he walked. When the water had turned warm, he stepped in and let it wash over him, tilting his head back so the spray hit his face.

  Holy shit.

  He’d gone without fucking anyone for ten years, and it hadn't been great, but it had been manageable. One evening in Jenny’s company, knowing he’d made his move but still not sure where it would take them had given him a hard-on from hell.

  Without hesitating, he soaped up his hand and let it glide over his cock, leaning the other hand on the wall in front of him. He’d fantasized about Jenny over the years, feeling like a fool but unable to stop himself. This time, he thought about how she’d looked when she’d talked about that damned kink his buddies engaged in. How her eyes had darkened, and the lids drooped, just a little. Wondered if she’d look like that here, in his shower, while he pushed her up against the wall. Her long, strong legs would be wrapped around his waist and his cock inside her, pumping in and out. Hard. Fast. Her beautiful green eyes on his as he took her. How she’d look when she came. How she’d sound.

  Fuck.

  With a hoarse groan, he came in long hot spurts, and he kept bucking his hips until he was fully spent, wanting it to last for as long as he could make it.

  “Jesus,” he muttered as he washed himself clean.

  It had only taken him a few minutes, and he hadn't been lying to Jenny before. He had no erectile problems at all but he was not a fucking teenager, so he wasn’t used to building it this fast. Wasn’t used to coming this fast.

  In four days they’d go down to the Wolf-compound for the weekend. They’d share a bed, something he wasn’t sure Jenny had realized, but it didn’t matter. He sure as hell wasn't going to ask Doug for separate fucking rooms.

  His cock twitched at the thought of the weekend, and he winced, but it turned into a grin.

  It had taken him for-fucking-ever to jump off a cliff he’d been standing on for a ridiculously long time, and things were changing in a way that felt like he was in free fall, but he had absolutely no intentions to fail.

  Getting shit off his chest was something he should have done sooner. He wiped himself dry and got into bed, feeling like a fool for not talking to one of his friends before. Hearing Gib tell him to go get Jenny had also shot through him like lightning, so she didn't know it, but there was no way he'd let this thing end in any other way than with her in his bed.

  And in his life.

  Once Jenny had gotten over her stunned silence and agreed to go with him to the Wolves' party, she'd also agreed to spend time with him in the coming days. They'd go running together early the next morning, and he hated both mornings and jogging, so it wasn’t exactly a romantic date, but they were both busy. If that was the time he could get with her, then that's what he'd take.

  His day was packed full, but if he shifted things around, he might find an hour in the afternoon to go and get himself a piece of pie. Talk her into having dinner with him again. Maybe talk her into sitting on his lap again. He knew how to seduce a woman, so maybe he’d get her into his bed, and once she was there, he’d find a way to make her stay.

  He chuckled when he realized his whole pl
an was to fuck her, and then keep fucking her until they died. Or something. But they’d go running, he reminded himself. And they’d do other things, and he’d figure it out.

  Then he let himself drift off to sleep, hoping he'd dream about a pair of pale green eyes like he had so many times before.

  Chapter Four

  Padraig

  Padraig Callaghan was about to die.

  He started suspecting it when Jenny kept going uphill for what felt like forever, and it became a fact when she turned toward him with a smile on her face.

  “Okay if we turn and go back now?”

  What the hell?

  “Sure,” he said, trying his best to sound as if he had no worries in the world.

  He'd been hoping there was some kind of short-cut he didn't know about, but since she did a complete turn and started running back down the hill the same way, he realized they'd just run half the distance.

  And she hadn’t sounded winded.

  When he saw his house, he was ready to cry, and then Jenny increased the pace. He didn't, but he made it home and sank down on the steps, leaned his head down between his knees and realized he was very, very close to hurling.

  “Are you okay, Paddy?” she asked, and he wanted to raise his head.

  God, how he wanted to say something witty, but everything was a blur, so he didn't dare to move. What the hell had just happened? Had Jenny Tucker just run the shit out of him?

  “Paddy?” Jenny said and crouched down in front of him.

  The worry in her voice made him suck in even more air and raise his head. She was looking at him with a strange expression on her face, and he wondered what the hell he looked like.

  “That was fun, baby-girl,” he whispered.

  “Padraig,” she murmured softly and the smile she gave him almost made up for how he felt. Almost.

  Then loud laughter echoed, and Paddy let his head fall forward with a groan. What the hell were those two idiots doing outside his house at oh-fuck-hundred in the damned morning?

  “You’ve been running, Pad?” Gib asked with something which could not be described as anything other than glee in his voice.