The Irish Lottery: A Friends-to-Lovers Contemporary Romance (Irish Kiss)

by Sienna Blake

  That’s what this felt like.

  I’d never felt so wanted. So beautiful. So loved.

  It took a stranger with the most gorgeous blue eyes to show me that this was possible. That this was what I’d been missing. What I deserved.

  I wanted to thank Blue, to pour out my heart to him, but some words are too valuable. Too precious. These admissions were delicate butterflies made from parts of my soul, not meant for strangers. That’s what Blue was to me—a stranger, I had to keep reminding myself. One I’d probably never see again.

  I reached up towards his head instead.

  He stiffened.

  “I just want to touch you,” I whispered. “I won’t take the mask off. I promise.”

  He relaxed into my fingers threading through his hair. So soft between my fingers. With care, I pushed aside threads of hair stuck to his forehead, ran my fingers along his scalp like I was writing out my secrets just for him. All the while, his stare burned into me.

  I wanted desperately to push off his mask, to know the man who was loving my body like I’d never been loved before. But I didn’t. I’d promised him. I couldn’t betray him like that. We were strangers but…somehow, we felt right. Like our bodies knew each other from before somehow.

  He made a low noise in his throat. The vibration hit my clit like a bolt of pure lightning. An orgasm crashed through me before I even knew it was coming. I let out a stunned cry as everything faded out and the only sense I had was pleasure.

  I came to, finding him kneeling between my legs, his eyes still on me, his chin glossy with my wetness. His fingers played along my entrance before sliding into me in a long, gentle stroke.

  His fingers pressed a bit harder into me, touching something magical inside.

  With every push of his fingers everything started gearing up again. Somehow, he took me from finished to climbing again right away. It was so effortless I couldn’t figure out how he did it. How did he know my body better than I knew it myself? It just didn’t seem possible.

  His thumb parted my flesh easily and began to work slow, maddening circles around my button. I could hear myself, hear my pitiful little whining moans and gasps as the pleasure began to intensify. Again.

  Dear God. Were the four orgasms I’d had not enough?

  My insides clamped down and I cried out in pleasure. I felt his hand clamp down on my mouth as a near scream ripped out of me. “Shhh,” he growled in a tone more animal than man.

  His hand left my mouth as the orgasm faded. I let out a long sigh. If he stopped now, I could be satisfied.

  The whole bed shifted as he stood at the side of the bed. He finally pushed off his jeans. My gaze dropped to his naked body. He was glorious. Like a living statue of David. He tore a small packet I hadn’t noticed in his hand before rolling it over his length.

  Oh, shit. He was…big.

  His lips lifted in a smirk before he climbed naked over me and lowered his naked body onto mine. Our twin groans filled my ears.

  I lied. I would not be satisfied until he was inside me. I needed to feel him press into me, wanted to feel my body stretch around him. I wanted to feel him come.

  He had other plans, though. He slid his cock between us in that maddening way that shoved me headlong towards yet another orgasm. My heartrate doubled. My eyes rolled back as my hips began to move against his to match his rhythm. A maddening rhythm that promised so much more.

  This wasn’t enough. I wanted him.

  My eyes snapped open and locked onto his eyes blazing into mine. Maybe he didn’t want to sleep with me?

  “Don’t you want…me?” I asked.

  He nodded, a tight, controlled motion that made something flutter in my belly. His jaw tight. I realized then how much control he was exerting. He did want me. He wanted me badly. He was holding himself back from entering me as he slid himself between us.

  I realized what he was doing. He was giving me every form of the first three orgasms I’d had, but with his own particular style. Like he was painting over them, wiping over my memory of them with him—only him.

  “Please, fuck me,” I begged.

  But he refused. As he rocked against me, his lips pressed to my throat, followed by the slight sting of his teeth scraping the delicate flesh there. I was on the edge, teetering between sanity and total destruction.

  Suddenly, the world imploded and I cried out, arching my back, my nails digging into his shoulders as I clung onto him like he was the only thing tethering me to this earth. “Oh, my God,” I breathed. My eyelids fluttered open to find two blue irises in the center of my world.

  “Are you okay?” he growled.

  I nodded. I’d never been more okay in my life.

  I felt him shift, felt the head of him press against me. He paused. I wrapped my legs around him, telling him it was okay, telling him I wanted him. More than anything.

  He leaned down to kiss me. This time his kiss was soft, gentle, loving as he eased into me inch by inch, stretching me around him. We both exhaled as he slid in to the hilt.

  I could feel his heartbeat against mine, smell the thick, spicy scent of him. I felt safe, loved, and secure.

  My beautiful Blue. Perfect stranger. I don’t know your name and I probably will never see you again, but being with you has changed me.

  Thank you.

  I will never forget you.

  Noah

  All logic and reason had vacated my brain. Seeing Aubrey come over and over and over again was a slow descent into beautiful madness. Sliding into her warm body shattered that last wall I’d had up between us.

  I was hers.

  And she was mine.

  Her body was so responsive, like it was made for me. How had that douche never given her an orgasm? It was so easy, so quick I almost felt like I’d cheated her. I didn’t want to stop. Not now, not ever.

  I began to move, sliding my length in and out of her. Fuck, she felt like heaven. She moaned into my mouth and I chased each one trying to catch them like falling raindrops. Her hands fisting into the sheets, my arms caging her face.

  She was glorious surrender.

  She was war and peace.

  She was home. My home.

  I loved her more than I could even admit to myself, let alone to her.

  Though, if I’m honest, I had admitted as much to her. She just didn’t know it. Every touch, every stroke, kiss, lick, every orgasm I gave her was an admission.

  I might have been wearing a mask, but in my heart, I was naked.

  “Oh, God,” she said in that sweet voice of hers.

  She was going to come again and I couldn’t wait. I wanted a lifetime of making her come. I wanted forever revering her. I wanted to adore every inch of her body like this for the rest of our damn lives.

  I pulled her knees up higher, tilted my hips so I would hit that spot inside of her. And I fucked her, hard. Desperately.

  Like this orgasm would make her mine.

  Mine.

  I slammed into her, loving the way she gasped and cussed. Sexy and cute all rolled into one. And pressure was building, my mind was unravelling and she was tightening up and—

  She let out a scream as her body convulsed around me. I couldn’t hold back anymore. I came, hard.

  “Rey!” burst from my lips.

  I felt her whole body stiffen.

  Just like that, on the heels of the most intense pleasure I’d ever experienced, I knew that everything had just fallen apart.

  She recognized my voice.

  Aubrey

  I knew that voice.

  It wasn’t possible. My lungs squeezed so hard I couldn’t breathe. I froze for a second, but only for a second.

  He cursed and pushed himself up to kneeling, holding his hands out in surrender. “I can explain.”

  Noah’s voice.

  My best friend’s voice.

  My heart began to pound so hard in my chest it throbbed. I backed up on the bed and yanked the blankets up to cover myself.

>   Mortified. I was absolutely mortified.

  I stared into his familiar blue eyes. Noah’s eyes. The line of his jaw, his chin, the broad shoulders. All the little things I should have recognized stood out now, mocking me.

  How had I not recognized him? How had I not known from the very first second that Noah was Blue?

  Because I never thought my best friend would keep something so fucking huge from me.

  He was behind the infamous Irish Lottery. And he never told me.

  He knew I’d won. And he never told me.

  He just fucked me and…

  How could he do this to me?

  Why would he do this to me?

  Suddenly, things started falling into place. His standoffish behavior in the car, him asking about Sean, asking me what I was doing tonight. He’d been testing me.

  “Why?” I forced out.

  “To raise enough money…Ma…” he trailed off.

  Oh, fuck.

  Oh, my God. My cheeks flared as a realization hit me square in the chest. “The other three were…” I trailed off. I could see very well in the shame on Noah’s face that I was right.

  The three other guys. They weren’t friends of Noah’s; they were his brothers.

  Eoin.

  Michael.

  Darren.

  Suddenly, I saw them in my mind hidden behind their masks. Their frames, the way they moved. I’d spent enough time with them that I knew them. It was so obvious now.

  All three of them had seen me naked. Touched me. One of them knew the taste of my pussy, the second had his fingers inside me, the third knew the feeling of my pussy sliding along his cock. They’d all made me come.

  What the actual fuck? A voice inside me screamed.

  I swallowed back bile. Had I even won legitimately?

  I couldn’t get past the unbelievable coincidence that out of thousands of people who entered this contest, I’d been chosen at random.

  I was chosen. On purpose.

  Was it all set up so they could get me into bed? All four of them? Was this some kind of sick brotherly pact?

  Tears stung my eyes and I sucked in a deep, pained breath as it all hit me. I’d just had the best sex of my life. With Noah! With my best friend.

  “You bastard,” I hissed.

  Noah flinched as if I’d slapped him. “Rey—”

  “No fucking way this is a coincidence.”

  “It was. I swear.”

  Lies. He was lying to me now just like he was lying to me then. I shook my head, trying to shake this whole situation out of my vision. Trying to wake myself up from this bad dream.

  Some part of me begged for this to all be a joke. A mistake. If it was a joke, it was the sickest, most twisted, fucked up joke anyone had ever pulled in the history of mankind.

  Noah and his brothers read my entry. They read my fantasy. I just want someone to make me come. My insides burned. How they must have laughed.

  “Rey—”

  “Did you and you brothers laugh over my entry? Laugh over how pathetic I was?”

  “No! We would never. Your entry broke my heart that—”

  “You fucked me because you felt sorry for me?”

  “What? No!”

  “Poor Aubrey. Can’t find her O. Can’t keep a man who gives enough of a shit to give her one.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  They fucking saw me naked. Saw me come. Made me come, over and over again.

  “Are they outside now, high fiving each other?”

  “No!” He looked horrified.

  “And after tonight? Were you four going to walk away from me and keep me in the dark?” His brothers had brought me to orgasm and Noah had let them. They had seen me naked, heard the noises I made when I fell apart. How could I ever face anyone in that family ever again? “I’d have to see you again—you all again—at your fucking ma’s house for Sunday lunch and sit at a table where every single man there had made me come?” I was shrieking now.

  “No! I was going to tell you…” He trailed off, guilt flashing across his features.

  How could I ever trust him again? How could I ever even look at him again without feeling betrayed?

  “When? Before or after you made me come for the seventh fucking time?”

  “Aubrey, please,” he begged. He snatched off his mask and moved towards me.

  The sight of his face—Noah’s face, my best friend’s face—made me wail. Before now I could almost pretend it was someone else behind the mask. This made it all too real.

  He reached out for me.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said. I planted a hand on his warm, bare shoulder and shoved him. The same shoulder I’d been gripping as I came not all that long ago. The shoulder I’d cried on. That I used to lean on.

  Was it all a lie? Was he ever really my friend? Or had he spent this whole time waiting for the right moment to make me another notch in his bedpost?

  That couldn’t be true. I knew Noah. He was a good man, a—

  The Noah I knew wouldn’t have fucked me while pretending to be a stranger.

  “Rey—”

  I shook my head.

  I didn’t want to hear it. None of it. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. I didn’t need him to explain it to me. I didn’t want to hear his justifications or his reasons.

  It was too little too late. Wrapped in my blanket, pain flowered in my chest and I felt my chin begin to quiver. It all ached so much I couldn’t breathe, my heart shattering into a billion shards.

  I’d been betrayed by the best friend I had in this world.

  I should have seen it. I should have known the second I saw those incredible blue eyes.

  “Get out.”

  There was a long pause. Where Noah looked like he wanted to say something.

  I didn’t want to talk anymore. There was nothing to say. Nothing that would make much difference. He couldn’t very well un-fuck me, now could he? He couldn’t un-ruin our friendship. He couldn’t un-break my trust in him. He couldn’t un-lie to me or un-trick me.

  I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore so I buried my face in the blankets.

  I felt the bed shift as he got up. Heard him moving around the room, the rustle of clothes as he got dressed.

  I would not cry.

  I wouldn’t.

  I heard the bedroom door click shut behind him. The echo of the front door.

  I was left alone in my bedroom that still smelled of sex and of Noah.

  Over his scent, the smell of his betrayal lingered.

  Noah

  Stunned, I stepped out of Aubrey’s building onto the sidewalk. The door slammed closed behind me. The wind hit me hard, plastering my clothing to me, but I didn’t feel the chill I knew should come with it. I didn’t feel anything except numb. Which was a fucking shame considering all the pleasure I’d just experienced watching her writhe in ecstasy. Seeing her whole face shift as she neared the edge, the excitement and joy as she plunged over the edge…

  I’d never seen a woman look half as sexy as she did naked, vulnerable and raw for me. I loved her little breathy gasps, her cries, her moans. I loved every fucking bit of it because I fucking loved her.

  Now, all the pleasure I’d felt, all the incredible sensations of touching her, pleasing her, watching her come over and over again…it was all gone. Decimated.

  I stared out into the quiet street without really seeing any of it. It didn’t seem possible that only a few hours earlier we were all piling out from the car in that spot on the curb and heading up the stairs to Aubrey’s place.

  The car was gone now, but I expected that. The plan, after all, had been for my brothers to leave me with Aubrey and just go. No doubt they’d gone to a bar to celebrate a job well done and the victory that we could actually pay for Ma’s surgery. I could imagine them all clapping each other on the back, downing pints and shouting their victory yells. The thought of joining them wasn’t appealing. I didn’t feel like celebrating. I sure
as hell didn’t want to explain why I wasn’t spending the night with Aubrey as we’d planned. That plan had gone to hell.

  Fuck, I felt like such an asshole. Even now, the images stuck circling my brain were all of her. The glitter of tears clinging to her lashes. That hunched set to her shoulders like I’d fucking broken her. The way she’d recoiled from my touch, hiding underneath blankets like she couldn’t even bear to let me see her naked. The look of agony in her eyes as she refused to even look at me.

  Every single image ate away at me.

  I wanted to turn back round, walk right back up those damn steps to her place. I wanted to open her door, walk through her apartment and gather her up into my arms. I wanted to hold her until she stopped hitting me and fighting me, until she just melted into me and cried out all her fury and frustrations so we could talk this shite out. I wanted to fix it. I wanted to make it right.

  I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I was sorry for hurting her. I was wrong that I thought what I had been doing was for the best.

  But I wasn’t sorry for the passion we’d shared. I wasn’t sorry for bringing her pleasure. I wasn’t sorry for making love to her, because that’s what I had done.

  She needed to know it was the best damned night of my life.

  I spun on my heels and stared at her front door, closed and silent like it was mocking me. I lifted my hand to press her buzzer and froze—

  The venom in her voice as she told me to get out burned at the back of my throat. She’d never spoken that way to me before. But then again, I’d never tricked her into sleeping with me before. I winced. That wasn’t what it was. But that’s what it must have looked like to her. My stomach churned and I thought I might be sick right there on her doorstep.

  Maybe she was angry now but…she’d forgive me, right? I mean, she was my best friend.

  I just needed a sign. A sign that we’d get through this. We’d be okay, right?

  I tilted my head back to look up to the windows of her apartment. I don’t know what I was expecting. That she’d be standing at the window looking down at me, wishing that I would come back. That her light would be on, a sign that there was still hope.