“Can they do this?” he asks as he slides another finger in, rubbing his thumb over my swollen, sensitive pearl.
I keen, causing my voice to break. My cheeks get hot and a fine sheen of sweat covers the canvas of my flesh. “No. Only you,” I moan.
“They can’t do this either, can they?” he continues, pressing a soft kiss against me, speeding up his thrusts as he finger-fucks me.
“No,” I moan, almost unable to kiss him back.
“This is going to be quick,” he says, unzipping his pants. The foil of the condom wrapper sounds, and he grunts when it snaps around the base. “I want us to get tested soon. I want to take ye bare. I need to feel ye against me. I want all of ye,” Reilly declares.
“You have all of me.”
“I want more,” he says as he places his hand on my heart, telling me silently what he wants. I wrap my legs around him, flipping him onto his back.
I grab my breasts, so they won’t bounce everywhere. I don’t know about other women, but for me, it hurts when they do that. I take the base of his cock, holding it straight. I lock eyes with him and sink down his impressive root until I feel his balls cradle my ass. His mouth drops open and his eyes roll to the back of his head. His large hands engulf my hips, clutching them with force. I know I’ll have bruises tomorrow, but I don’t care. I hope they will be there. I want to see where he had been.
“They can’t do that,” I say, telling him that no one would be able to be inside me like he was at that moment. I don’t want anyone else ever again. I only want Reilly. I’ve only ever wanted him.
The words are there on the tip of my tongue again. The three little words that have haunted me for the better part of a decade. I want to tell him so bad, but again, a rejected heart is something I’m not ready for. I’ve made the decision to get addicted to Reilly, and there is no turning back.
I need him like I need food, water, or air. He has become an essential aspect of life for me. My palms land on his chest and my hair creates a curtain of privacy, cocooning us in the moment.
I decide in that moment to not say the three words until he does. I rock my hips, crying out as the helmet of his cock drags over the spot no other man had been able to reach. His pelvis snags my clit every time I swivel my hips. Suddenly my toes curl, my abdomen clenches, and my orgasm boils beneath my skin. He was right. This is going to be quick. I slap my hands on his chest, gripping the muscles as I ride him, chasing the fireworks. “Reilly!” I moan in ecstasy.
“That’s it, love. Take me. I’m yours. Use me.” He helps me by rocking my hips faster and I cry out, feeling my insides clench and soak him, massaging his hard muscle. It flexes inside me as Reilly shouts his release too.
My hair is sticking to my body from the sweat, so I move it off my back, letting the fan cool my back. “They wouldn’t be able to do that either,” I laugh. There would be no way another man could ever get me to orgasm the way Reilly did.
He wraps his arms around me, holding me to his chest. He kisses my forehead and I wiggle down until I can lay my head on his chest. He and I are still connected in the most intimate way. The steady drum of his heart makes me smile. I rub my hand over his chest, happy that he has the strength and health that allows him to lay under me and stand beside me.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, running his fingers through my hair which made my eyes droop.
“Thinking about how my boss won’t let me work and I need money,” I tease, poking him in his sides.
He barks a laugh, jolting from me. His cock slips out and situates between us until we are looking at one another. “I’m sorry. Someone has been keeping me busy, and I would have forgot if Brock didn’t remind me.”
“I can, not, keep you busy, if you prefer,” I say wickedly.
“Don’t speak that evil to me.” This time he tickles me, and I kick, shouting as I laugh.
“I love that sound,” Reilly admits.
I love you.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Reilly
I stare out the shattered window of my pub with my hands on my hips, watching the cops leave for the second time in less than twelve hours. The fight had gotten a little too rowdy last night. Grant and another regular, Hank, got into a fist fight over the beer I had put down at the bar, and it wasn't even for either one of them. It had been for Mike, one of the few firefighters we have in this town, and Grant had taken it upon himself to steal it.
Hank wanted it for himself.
That explains why my window is gone. It isn’t a little window either, the kind that can open and allow a breeze to come in. Nope, it nearly takes up the entire wall.
Grant and Hank were arrested and are currently spending their day hungover in jail. I sigh, I can’t let Gwen work in a place like this. Danger lurks in every inch of this pub. Men would paw at her and I don’t want to see her get assaulted like that every day. She deserves more than this.
A house.
A car.
A billion fucking dollars.
It doesn’t matter.
Not if it all means staying in this damn town, slinging drinks at the damned pub, leaving her stuck with me and feeling trapped. She would stay out of obligation because that’s who she is, but Anthony is right.
She needs more, and money can’t buy it.
I kick the glass, screaming out my frustration and hitting my fist against the wall. She deserves more than what I can give her, which as of right now is a rundown mansion and a minimum wage job. Christ, I must be a damn joke. I have all this money and no idea what to do with it. She isn’t the kind that wants diamonds, houses, cars, fancy clothes, or any of that fake nonsense. She wants love, a home, affection, and trust.
All things money can’t buy.
I sigh, spinning around and pouring myself a pickleback. I think it may be my favorite drink now. “What am I going to do?” I ask to nobody in particular.
“Well, we are going to need to call your insurance company, so they can replace it,” Anthony answers as his shoes crunch against the broken glass.
Of course he’s here. He’s always here. He deserves a better friend too. I know what I have to do, and I don’t like it.
“Aye. I already called them.” I sound tired and completely uncaring. This has tipped me over the edge. Everything I’ve been feeling lately, I had tied up in a nice, neat ball and set it to the side. But this has kicked it, making the ball explode.
Confusion grabs ahold of me and I get lost in my own mind. Like it morphed from a brain to a maze. No matter how hard I try, the right direction never comes.
“Good. You want to press charges against them? That’s Grant’s third offense,” Anthony says, sitting in the stool next to me.
“I want to threaten them with an ultimatum. Either go to rehab, or I will press charges. I’ll pay for the rehab,” I add. “I have all this money. Might as well do some good with it.”
“You’re a good man. That’s a great idea,” he replies.
“What are ye doing here, Anthony?”
“Wanted to check in on my best friend. I haven’t seen you around much. It’s funny. I haven’t seen much of Gwen either. It’s like both of you get in the same town and boom, you’re ghosts. I don’t get it.”
Shite, not this. Not right now.
“I don’t know. She moved, right? She’s probably at home. She hasn’t been back that long. It’s not like she and I would see each other every day,” I say. Except we have.
“You haven’t seen her? Like hung out with her?” he presses.
Is he fishing for information? Does he know? He can’t.
I shake my head, taking a swig of water. “No, sorry.” I glance at my watch, feeling more like an ass than I did five minutes ago. Fuck, I’m a liar. I’m a fucking liar. I can’t keep doing it. “Want to come with me to meet the contractor for the house? I’m supposed to be meeting him in twenty.” I steer the conversation away from Gwen and me.
“Can’t. I wish I could. I have a
meeting with a client. Tell me how it goes, okay? And oh, you should take Gwen. She loves that old, Amityville Horror House type stuff. I never understood why. The place gives me the creeps,” he shivers.
“It isn’t haunted,” I retort, rolling my eyes. “It’s just old. I was there the other night. No weird noises or any of that. It’s a historical landmark.”
“If you call old man Gredence disappearing through the trees, never to be seen again, a historical landmark instead of a mystery.”
“Ye sound like Camilla thinking their apartment is haunted. You watch too much TV. Gredence died in his sleep a few years back. He didn’t even live there. Ye believe everything ye hear from the kids these days?” I fire at him.
“They make it sound so believable. Okay,” he agrees as he pats me on the back. “I need to go. Call me later and tell me how it goes. I’ll keep you updated on Grant,” he shouts, getting into his car and pulling away.
I hit my head on the bar, cursing myself. I had the perfect opportunity to be honest. I had the chance to come clean and bare it all to my best lad. I have lost too many people in my life, and I think that’s the root of the problem. Fear keeps me bound in secrets, but the same fear is going to hurt someone in the end, whether it be Anthony or Gwen. Or me.
How hard is it to say, “Hey Anthony, I’m in love with ye sister. I’ve been seeing her, and I hope yer okay with it.” I say it out loud so I could hear the words for myself. Damn, that sounds good.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gwendolyn
I check myself out in the mirror, turning left and right to make sure my ass still looks as good as it did when I bought these pants. The light green shirt he gave me that says Lucky’s over the left breast makes my blue eyes pop. Using my looks to get him to talk to me might be a silly thing but considering he has been acting weird since he got to the pub, I figure I’ll pull out all the stops.
I try not to let negative thoughts get the best of me, but when Grayson cheated on me, I’d known. I had pretended not to know. I ignored my gut, and I had ended up crying for days on my bed as Mills comforted me. While my gut doesn’t say Reilly is cheating, it knows something is definitely going on.
In my mother’s words, “A woman always knows.”
I understand now, but tonight would be my first night of training and with everything that happened last night with the broken window, maybe he’s just busy, and I’m being insecure. I notice I feel that way a lot, but this feels different. He is pulling away, I feel it in my heart.
I check the time, and realize I need to leave soon, or I’ll be late for my first shift. Lucky’s is walking distance, so I decide instead of using gas to crank the car, I’ll just use the legs I was born with. I sigh, feeling something other than nerves.
Dread.
I grab my car keys and purse and head out the door. Mills hasn’t moved in completely yet, not until the end of the month, so I don’t have to worry about saying bye to her. The door slams, making me jump as the sound echoes down the hallway. My nerves are all over the place. I want this night to be over. I slide the key in, turning it until the deadbolt slides into place, and run down the steps and out the side door of the theatre.
Warm air hits my face even though the sun has started to set. Spring is finally upon us, and I couldn’t be more excited. I love seeing the flowers starting to bloom and the grass turning green. Everything comes to life after being in a dead sleep for so long, it rejuvenates me. I long for the hot summer days, tank tops, and flip flops again. That is the one thing I miss about the west coast; the days were always so beautiful.
My stomach knots as I take another step, getting closer to Lucky’s pub. I put my hair up, throwing it on top of my head in a messy bun. The green Lucky’s sign, with a four-leaf clover as the apostrophe, comes into view after a few more steps. The pub is next to an old strip that had been abandoned a few years back. People tend to get a little rowdier because nothing is next to the pub, so things can get loud sometimes.
When I step into the parking lot, the pebbles crunch under my shoes, filling the silence as I walk toward doomsday. I won’t ignore my gut. Not this time. A blue tarp over the shattered window billows, crinkling as it sways in the wind. I try to open the door, but it’s locked. I send a few heavy knocks into it. Heavy footsteps pound on the other side and the lock slides, revealing an exhausted Reilly.
“Hey, you,” I smile sweetly.
“Hey,” he replies back quickly.
Ouch. No kiss. No hug. No nothing. Cold shoulder. That’s alright. I can work with that. “How was your morning?” I follow him to the back.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he points to the office on the right as he walks back behind the bar. “Ye can put your things in there. I don’t really know what I’m going to have for ye today. I’m not putting ye behind the bar, and the kitchen is still a work in progress. I’m just going to have ye running drinks. So, if ye want, ye can go home.” He never once looks up from the paperwork he’s staring at. He flips through the pages, licking his thumb as he does so.
My blood starts to boil. “What the hell do you mean ‘you don’t have anything’ for me? And I can just go home? Are you kidding me? What’s your deal, Reilly?” I ask him angrily.
He groans, leaning against the bar and rubbing his face with his hands. “Nothing, alright? I have a lot on my mind.” “Enough for you to treat me like you don’t even know me? Are we back to that?” I fire as I put my hands on my hips, walking behind the bar.
He holds up his hand and I stop in my tracks. “Don’t. Ye can’t be behind the bar.”
“Why the hell not? What is going on with you?” I ask impatiently.
“You’re Anthony’s sister. Ye can’t sling drinks. He would kill me.”
“I’m a grown woman. I can decide what I can and cannot do with my life,” I retort, getting angrier by the minute.
“Ye know it isn’t as easy for me as it is for you to say, ‘fuck it’ to the man,” Reilly quietly replies.
My jaw drops. I can’t believe he just said that. I’m baffled. He has never spoken to me like that before—granted, we have never talked so much before, so maybe I don’t really know Reilly O’Hara like I thought I did. “What’s changed? I don’t understand. Everything was fine. We had talked about our lives together. We wanted that. What about Gredence Place? What about everything you said?”
I knew it. I kept one foot out the door for a reason. I hated that I did that, but now I know. My gut told me to be careful. My gut told me to not give all of my heart to him, and while I kept one foot out the door, I had given all of my heart to him.
Like a damn idiot.
“I’ve had a lot happen over the last twenty-four hours if ye haven’t noticed.” He points to the tarp. “Ye brother came by—”
“So that is what this is about? My brother? Wait, it’s always been about him, hasn’t it? To think I was going to talk to you the other day about it. I wanted to tell him,” I speak quickly to cut him off.
“Are ye crazy? We couldn’t tell him! He just told me how much he appreciated that I wasn’t the friend to go after his sister. He hated that Grayson did that to you. He is always there for me, Gwenie,” Reilly says despairingly.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your ‘Gwenie’ if this is how this ends,” I snap.
“I don’t want it to end.”
“No, you just want to let my brother control every aspect of our lives. You know, you didn’t seem to mind that I was Anthony’s sister this morning. Do you remember?” I take a step back, suddenly feeling a bit dirty. I feel used.
“That…”
My heart drops when he starts his sentence. The blood leaves my face and the hope in my heart shatters, leaving me breathless and dizziness. “Go ahead. Finish it. Finish your thought.”
He sighs, straightening his back and coming around the tail-end of the bar. He reaches for me. “Gwen—”
I stumble back, trying to get out of his reach. “No.” I blink
away the tears. “You don’t get to touch me. Finish what you were going to say.”
“Gwen—”
“Finish it!” I shout, my voice echoing off the bottles that line the wall.
“It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have given it. We shouldn’t have happened,” Reilly admits.
The breath whooshes from my lungs. He had told me we weren’t a mistake. He had reassured me.
“You have lied to me this entire time?” My voice cracks and a tear breaks free, sliding down my face.
“Of course not. How I feel about ye is real, but I can’t lose Anthony. I can’t do that to him after everything he has done for me,” Reilly solemnly responds.
I nod, wiping my cheek with my hand. “And what about me? What about Gredence Place? What about our plans? I don’t want us to give up on this. This is real, Reilly,” I plead as I motion my hands between us.
His eyes are red, like he actually has a heart and sadness encompasses him. “I know.” He clears his throat. “I know what we have is real. It’s the most beautiful emotion I’ve ever felt, loving ye.”
I double over, clutching my stomach from his words. The ones I had been pining over. The ones I had wanted to tell him so many times after making love. He says them as he is cutting this off?
“Don’t you dare say you love me when you won’t do something as simple as confronting my brother. You’re a coward,” I snarl. My hands flatten on his chest as I push him. He tumbles a bit.
He grips my wrists but adds no pressure. “I’m not a coward. I’m trying to save a relationship with my best friend. I don’t want to come between ye and yer brother,” he says.
“How do you know it will come to that? Mills is right, we are living off assumptions, but we don’t have an actual answer. Don’t do this. You can’t expect things to change if we keep living in the shadows.”
He leans his forehead against mine, pressing our hands to his chest. “Don’t you see? You aren’t my shadow. You’re my light, but I darken ye,” he says, his voice full of sadness. I shake my head, cupping his face with my hands. “No. No. You don’t. You remind me what it’s like to be happy. I’ve wanted you for so long. I’ve had you, and you expect us to walk about for the sake of everyone else? What’s life if you’re living for other people?”
Unexpected Daddies Page 16
