by A. Zavarelli
We?
I don’t argue. I’m not sure how far I can push the boundaries with him yet, and the most important thing is that I see Archer. Relief blooms inside of me as I offer him a small smile. “Thank you. I guess I’ll be going to bed then.”
He sinks down onto the sofa, kicking off his boots. “Goodnight, wifey.”
The word catches me off guard, and I stare at him for a full minute longer than I should. When he looks up at me and our eyes lock, there’s a moment between us when everything else ceases to exist. His gaze moves to my lips, and my body shudders when I remember what it was like to kiss him.
I want that again. I want it so much I must be losing my mind. I barely know him. He’s mafia. A killer. I couldn’t pick a worse guy for me out of a lineup. But I can’t deny that the longer I’m around him, the more he draws me into his orbit. It’s an impossible want. The moon might as well be chasing the sun.
I can’t let Conor know how tormented I’m feeling by this arrangement already. He already did me a favor by saving my life. He owes me nothing else. And at the end of the day, why would he want me?
I swallow down the harshness of my existence in this world where I don’t belong. “Goodnight, Conor.”
A shadowed face blocks my exit, and an arctic chill unfurls inside of me. The alley is empty, and I’m more alone than I’ve ever been. Muerto’s piercing laughter echoes off the city walls and the knife in his fist gleams under the moonlight. Tonight, that blade will bite into my flesh and drain the life from me, just like he always threatened.
My heart beats a frantic tempo as I search for a weapon, but there’s nothing. Everything I own is gone and there are only two choices. Run, or let him come to me. Desperate to leave him and this nightmare behind, my feet lurch forward before I can think it through, but he tackles me to the ground. His weight is like a concrete block on my chest, suffocating me under his memory. He doesn’t speak. He just plunges his blade into my stomach, again and again and again. Blood pools around me and I can feel the light in my eyes slipping away. I think of Archer and how badly I’ve failed him.
He’ll never know how much I loved him.
I wake with a scream, thrashing against the blankets as I try to break free from my nightmare. A shadow passes over me and I scramble away, but his solid grip locks around my arm. The weight of the bed sinks beside me and tears streak down my face as I breathe him in.
“It’s okay, Twigs,” Conor whispers in the darkness. “I’m right here.”
Oxygen fills my lungs, and my racing heart slows when his hand finds my face, soothing me like I never knew I needed.
“It’s okay,” he whispers again. “It was just a dream.”
I’m a mess, and that’s the only explanation I have for clinging to Conor’s shirt, begging him with a desperation that defies logic. “Please don’t go.”
I feel silly and weak and vulnerable, but Conor doesn’t deny me. Not even for a second. Instead, he pulls back the blankets and helps me back to my spot before he climbs in next to me and drags me against his body, wrapping an arm around my waist to secure me.
His body dwarfs mine in a way that should terrify me, but it doesn’t. I know so little about this man, but in his arms, one thing is certain. I trust that he would never hurt me. He would never take something unless it was given freely.
I can’t help taking shelter in his strength, burrowing closer to his body. He is warm and muscular and… hard. I realize it when I bump up against his dick with my ass. He must realize it too, because he’s gone completely still. He’s wearing nothing but his briefs, and I’m in a tank top and underwear. His skin burns into mine, and a swarm of butterflies riots in my belly.
We’re breaching unfamiliar territory, and I know if we cross that line, we can’t come back from it. But when I squeeze my legs together to smother the want there, it only serves to remind me how empty I am. Because I do want him. I want him in primal ways. His powerful body moving over mine. His rigid flesh inside of me. His mouth on mine while I curl my fingers in his hair. I wonder if he’s thinking about it too, but I don’t have to wonder for long.
“Christ,” he groans. “I don’t know if I can do this, Ivy. I want to lay here with ye. I want ye to feel safe. It’s just—”
I turn to face him, and before I can talk myself out of it, my fingers find his cheek. I trace the lines of his angular jaw, but my eyes are on his lips. “I want you,” I murmur. “And if you want me too—”
Conor’s lips are on me then. Demanding and insatiable as he grips the back of my neck, holding me firmly in his grasp as he invades my mouth with an agony I can’t deny I feel too. I can’t breathe, and I don’t want to. I just want to taste him. I want his burning need to consume my flesh, wring me out, and bleed me dry.
His violent craving triggers something even more desperate in me. A reckless abandon I couldn’t tame if I threw myself off a cliff. I’m pawing at his body, fingers dragging down his chest while he worships me with his mouth. When I finally palm the huge bulge in his briefs, I shudder with equal parts want and terror. He’s so fucking huge, I don’t know how he’s not going to split me apart. I don’t know if I even still work. It’s been so long since I was with a man that I chose. Panic steals my breath when it occurs to me that I might be broken beyond repair. Even if I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, it might not work. My body might betray me, refusing to accept him. Refusing to get wet for him. But Conor plows through my ridiculous fears when he slides his fingers against my panties and grunts out his satisfaction.
“Christ, ye’re soaked for me.”
Relief floods my body, followed by a rush of urgency. I need him inside me before my fears overcome this high. “Please,” I beg.
He hums his approval as his lips blaze a hot trail over my jaw and down my throat. His hands are warm against my skin, arousing an outbreak of goosebumps all over. I can’t remember ever feeling so out of control, so desperate for more. I’m in a drunken haze, completely paralyzed by his eyes as they lay claim to my body.
His fingers are hard, but graceful as he draws the hem of my tank up to my shoulders and exposes the length of my body for his pleasure.
“God, ye have some beautiful tits.” He squeezes them in his palms and rubs his face against them.
His tongue lashes against my nipple, and it sends a jolt straight through my core. I arch up into him and reach for a handful of his hair as he does it again. Conor doesn’t ask what I like, but he knows. He touches me with just the right amount of pressure, teasing me with his lips and his tongue as he sucks my breast into his mouth.
I’m on the verge of coming from this alone, but then his hand slips down inside of my panties, and it renders me completely defenseless. His fingers dip inside of me, and his breathing intensifies as he drags them back up to my clit, working me over until my body is so strained I plead for him to fracture me.
“Conor...”
“Shhh,” he soothes me. “I know what ye need, baby. Just relax.”
I can’t relax because I’m afraid this feeling is going to disappear, and I’ll never have it again. It must be a fluke. A once in a lifetime kind of magic. It’s too good to be real.
But it is real, and Conor makes sure I know it when his hot mouth locks around my nipple, torturing me until I splinter apart into a million tiny convulsions. Wave after wave pulses through my body, milking out my release for longer than it’s ever gone on before.
I’m breathless and spent, but Conor is just getting started. His fingers glide down and slip inside of me, and he groans at what he’s done to me. He likes me this way. Open and raw and vulnerable to him. And it’s unnerving, but I don’t want it to end. I’m on the verge of telling him how much I want to feel him when he starts to finger fuck me.
“Holy shit.” My nails curl into his back, digging into his flesh. He buries his face in my throat, alternating between inhaling me and sucking at my tender skin. He tortures me for so long that I start to enter
tain thoughts I shouldn’t. He must do this sort of thing all the time. It’s the only logical explanation for how he could know my body so well.
I don’t want to imagine him with anyone else. In this moment, I don’t want to believe that anyone else ever existed before me. I’ve only been with a few men in my life, a serial monogamist to my core. But none of them knew how to please me. Not like Conor. Not like this.
“Oh, God,” I cry out.
The tension swells deep inside my core again. It’s so intense. I don’t think I can hold back, and that’s what I’m afraid of. My nails scrape up his neck and into his hair, tugging as I arch into him. The orgasm rips through me with all the force and delicacy of a bullet. I’m sore, breathless, and I feel like I just had an exorcism as I lay there panting, unable to move or speak.
Conor draws in a ragged breath and curses as he slides his palm through the sticky mess between my thighs. I watch with heavy eyes as he palms his dick and coats himself in my arousal. It’s the single most erotic thing I’ve ever witnessed, and I want to watch him do it again and again.
“Fucking hell,” he rasps. “I have to warn ye, this is probably going to be quick the first time. I haven’t felt a woman’s body in a few years.”
My eyes move over his face, looking for the lie, but it isn’t there. I don’t see it. All I can see is his drugged expression as he maneuvers his body between my thighs and grinds his cock against me.
How could that possibly be true? I saw the way the waitress at the diner threw herself at him. I saw women at the club checking him out. He’s without a doubt one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen, and he’s at a strip club practically every night. I still find it difficult to wrap my mind around what he’s telling me, but when he starts to push inside me and shudders with every inch, I know it’s real.
“Christ, ye’re tight.” He closes his eyes and releases a shaky breath. “Fuck. Am I hurting you?”
I’m fuller than I’ve ever been, but I wouldn’t let him stop now if he wanted to. “No.” I reach up and touch his face. “Give it all to me.”
“Goddamn, woman.” His hips jerk forward, and he eases himself all the way in, using his forearms to balance his body over mine. “I hope ye know what ye got yourself into. I could fecking live inside ye just like this.”
I wrap my arms around his back, and he starts to thrust. His eyes close and his head falls back, and the sounds that rip from his chest are the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. Like I’m torturing him. Like it’s pure torment to be inside of me because it feels so good.
Conor was right that he wouldn’t be able to hold back. Every muscle in his body is drawn tight when he curses again. “Fucks sake—”
The words get lost in a long, lamenting growl that vibrates from deep inside his chest. He’s balls deep inside of me, dick quivering as he floods my body with hot come. There isn’t anything between us. He fucked me raw, and I know when I look up at him, that was his intention.
I also know when he collapses beside me and tells me to give him a few minutes because he has every intention of doing it again… I’m in big trouble.
17
CONOR
I WAKE to a mess of blonde hair against my chest, and when I glance down, Ivy is still passed out on top of me. She looks peaceful curled against my side, her hand draped over my waist as she uses my bicep for her pillow.
My arm is still wrapped around her too, and it’s an odd feeling to have, being so comfortable with her already. I’ve made a habit of avoiding relationships and even sex since Sammy betrayed me. I’ve been content to keep myself busy with the brotherhood, and being the new guy, I was never short on shite to do.
Ivy is the first woman I’ve even wanted to feel wrapped around my dick since I climbed out of the dark hole Brady’s death left me in. But lying here with her now, I realize how fecking stupid that is. She isn’t here because she wants to be. She’s here because she has no other choice. I would do well to remember that before I go and get myself tangled up in her.
Ivy hasn’t accepted her fate without a fight. I’ve seen it in her eyes, the questions in the back of her mind. How long she can survive here until she leaves. There is still a part of her making contingency plans. She hasn’t yet figured out how this works, and when she runs, I will give chase. I will track her down and drag her back here, only to have her hate me in the end.
For a few hours, I allowed myself to buy into the fantasy of what Crow said. But this isn’t a ready-made family. We aren’t two people who met and came together because we wanted this. Our situation is forced, and we can’t transform that into something authentic. For Ivy, I will always be another captor.
When she opens her eyes and looks up at me with a sleepy, shy smile, I can’t deny that I want to change our fates. She could warm my bed every night, and I could fuck her until my dick gives out. But I need to be realistic. I need to establish boundaries. And I need to do it now.
“Last night was really grand.” I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. “I think we both needed that.”
Sensing where I’m going with this, she withdraws her hand and untangles herself from my body. I choke down the part of me that wants to tug her back into me.
“It’s probably best we don’t make a habit of it. I don’t want things to get complicated.” It’s as stupid of an explanation as it sounds like, and Ivy’s face falls the moment I say it.
“Right,” she mumbles. “It probably wasn’t the best idea. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s on me,” I say gruffly. “You did nothing wrong. I just don’t want the lines to get blurred.”
She gives me a stiff nod, and I don’t know why it feels like I’m digging a deeper hole. I don’t need to give her any further explanation, but I want to. Only, the words don’t come. So, we lay there in stilted silence, and slowly, she pulls further and further away, and I feel the loss of her all the way down to my dick that’s gone soft.
“I guess I should take a shower,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she agrees, her voice uneven. “No problem.”
It would be convincing if we both didn’t already know it was a big fucking problem.
I make some coffee and French toast while Ivy is in the shower, and then we eat our breakfast in silence. I stare at my phone, reading through my texts while she gazes out the window. It’s awkward, and I really just want to fucking bail and go to the gym or something, but I already told her she could go see Archer. I’m not about to let her make that trek by herself. Not when the Locos are still looking for her.
It reminds me that I still need to discuss that situation with Crow. Otherwise, he might be out of sorts when I tell him I murdered the whole lot of them meself.
“We’ll need to head out soon,” I tell Ivy. “I have work to do after.”
She doesn’t look at me. “Okay.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re in the car and on our way to New Hampshire. Ivy doesn’t say a bleeding word the whole way, and I wonder if this is one of those games women play to get you to feel like an arse. But when I glance at her across the seat, I know it isn’t.
This sort of despondency is something that’s been brewing for a long time. She had her life taken from her. Her freedom ripped away. Now it’s happening all over again, and I’m the one who’s doing that to her.
Christ.
This was not what I wanted. I shouldn’t care how she feels, but I don’t want to see her so miserable either. I’m half tempted to tell her to snap out of it, but that’s because I’m selfish and I don’t want to feel guilty.
Regardless, it makes little difference what I do. The second we pull up to her friend’s house and she sees Archer, the smile returns to her face.
18
IVY
“WHERE ARE WE GOING, MAMA?” Archer asks from the back seat of the car.
I crane my neck to look back at him. “I’m not sure yet.”
Conor loaded us into the car after just a few short minutes a
t Lacey’s. He looked about as comfortable being there as she felt having him in her house. I realize at some point I’ll have to explain things to her, but it won’t be today.
“Do ye fancy some ice cream?” Conor asks.
“Yes, please!” Archer shouts.
“Ice cream?” I frown. “But it’s cold outside.”
Conor shrugs. “It’s never too cold for ice cream.”
Five minutes later, he pulls into a Baskin Robbins and Archer piles out of the car before I can even unbuckle him. He runs straight to Conor, and it makes my heart race just a little too fast when he extends his small hand and reaches out for Conor’s larger one.
Conor doesn’t hesitate to take it, which surprises me for some reason, though I’m not sure why. He’s been nothing but nice to Archer, but I don’t want Archer getting attached to him. I can feel it already, and the idea of that terrifies me.
Archer hasn’t had a father figure in his life, so I can understand his need for Conor’s attention. Under any other circumstances, I would be thrilled that he found someone he feels so comfortable with. But after last night, I’m more certain than ever that I don’t plan on sticking around for long, and I don’t want Archer’s heart getting broken either.
Regardless, I swallow down my nerves as we walk up to the counter and Archer presses his face against the glass to examine the different ice cream flavors.
“What’ll it be?” Conor asks.
Archer looks up at him. “What are you getting?”
Conor’s lips tilt into an easy smile. “Oreo.”
“I’ll get that too,” Archer offers proudly.
Conor ruffles his hair and turns to me. “How about you, mama?”
My throat is so dry I can barely get the words out. It hits me then, how easy this is. That it could really be like this. We could be a family. Conor could be a part of our lives indefinitely. Except that I can’t forget his rejection this morning. He was right that what we did was crazy. Everything he said was true, but it still stung. We shouldn’t make this more complicated than it already is, and I don’t know why he’s being so nice now.
