Was he kidding? She’d never felt more primed in her life. But when he nudged the broad head of his cock against her opening, she felt a twinge of panic. He was a lot bigger than she’d realized.
“Take it slow,” she whispered.
He gritted his teeth but nodded, and they both began to sweat as he started the slow, torturous process of sliding inside of her.
“Relax, sugar. This is going to feel good.” Ash braced an elbow next to her cheek and slipped his hand under her head, enough to raise it so he could plunder her mouth. His kiss was urgent, but somehow tender. A marked difference from the rough but thrilling way he’d handled her before. It was as if now that she was under him, he was allowing himself to slow down.
Had he worried she’d turn him away? After all those times she’d offered herself up to him and he’d rejected her? She was the one who should be worried. She was the one—
“Hey there, where’d you go?” He stroked her cheek. “You still with me?”
Her eyes flipped open to find a sea of dark green filling her vision. Even if she’d wanted to wrap a cloak of indifference around herself, she wouldn’t have been able to.
“I’m with you,” she assured him.
His eyes grew heavy-lidded. “Remember that,” he said fiercely, and in one powerful movement he closed the distance, driving his hips forward until he was seated all the way to the hilt. “You’re with me now.”
She gasped and arched into him as he palmed her ass and held her in place while he hammered into her, making good on his promise to leave a mark. There wasn’t a cell in her body that wasn’t affected by him. The hand under her head had moved to her neck, one thumb pressing heavily against her pulse point. Each deep thrust brought her closer and closer to the brink, need coiling tighter and tighter inside her until she was shaking wildly beneath him.
“You need to come, don’t you?” he rasped against her ear.
Yes. Right now would be nice. Right now would be glorious. But she wasn’t able to voice the words. All she could manage was a helpless moan.
He responded by slipping his hand between them and pinching her clit, and the bright burst of pain against the drenched backdrop of pleasure brought her off the bed with a wild cry.
She climaxed in waves, the orgasm rolling through her body, over and over and over until she sagged, limp and wrung out, to the mattress.
Ash rose on his knees, lifting her bottom up without losing their connection, without halting his relentless assault. He draped her legs over his shoulders and took her in punishing strokes until the hunger rose in her again. She met him thrust for thrust, clutching every hard, furious inch of him until she was lost again. And this time she took him with her. He groaned his release and a flood of heat filled her core as he spilled himself inside of her.
With shaky arms, he set her legs back on the mattress and withdrew, and they both moaned at the loss. Cate registered the wetness on her thighs. There was something vaguely wrong with that but she didn’t want to focus on it. She wanted to hold this moment of bliss tight against her heart.
Still breathing hard, Ash settled on his side next to her. The bed was barely big enough for her, let alone the both of them, but they made it work. Their bodies were pressed together as he stroked a palm over her sweaty forehead.
“I didn’t use a condom.”
Oh crap. That explained that sense of wrong she’d felt. “I’m on birth control,” she replied. “And I had a physical before I came to Guatana. I, ah, had all the regular STD tests done.”
“Me too.” His tone was slightly awkward. “I can show you my results. They’re on my phone.”
Cate nodded, although she trusted him when he said he was clean.
“I’ll use one next time,” he promised.
“Next time? I don’t think I can handle a next time,” Cate murmured. She was so worn out she could hardly move.
“Next time,” he reiterated, nudging her earlobe with his lips. “I’ll give you a thirty-minute nap and then we’re going again.”
She was laughing even as her eyelids fluttered shut. Drowsiness crept over her and she fell asleep with the imprint of a hardening erection at her side.
Next time.
That sounded way too good to be true.
* * *
After grabbing a late-night bite at the mess hall, Sullivan returned to the barracks and entered his room to find Liam pacing the floor like a madman. The man had a cell phone pressed to his ear, his handsome face creased in frustration.
“This isn’t a fuckin’ joke, Kev,” Liam was snapping. “I need you to get everyone out of town. Ma, Dad, Denny, the girls, the kids. Fuckin’ everyone.”
Sully eased inside and closed the door. Kevin was one of Liam’s brothers, and the fact that Liam was pacing even faster now suggested that he didn’t like what the guy was saying.
“Jesus!” Liam burst out. “I’m not telling you to leave the country, just to get out of town for a few days, a week tops. Move the family to a safe house while I take care of this cartel mess. I have two locations you guys can use—one in Connecticut and one in upstate New York. You just can’t stay in Southie.”
There was another long pause. Liam’s fingers tightened over the phone.
“You of all people should appreciate the importance of security! I’m not messing around here . . . no, I’m not back with the agency . . . this is a private matter . . . no . . . my former company. The mission went south and now we’ve got a fuckin’ cartel after us.” Liam listened, then cursed angrily. “People are dying, Kev. You need to leave the state. You can’t—damn it!”
Sully flinched when Liam whipped the phone on the bed. “Did he hang up on you?” he asked.
“No, he’s going to talk it over with Denny and call me back.” Liam shook his head. “But I know my brothers. They’re not going to skip town.”
“Did you tell them about the rookie’s grandmother? Izzy’s dad? About the bullets they put in Morgan’s back?”
“Yeah. I told them everything.”
Liam collapsed on the edge of the bed. Sully joined him, but kept a foot of distance between them.
“You don’t know the Macgregors, man. The whole family is a bunch of stubborn Irish fucks. They don’t run. I called my dad first and that’s what he said—Macgregors don’t run. They fight.”
“You gotta admire that,” Sully said carefully.
That earned him a scathing look. “Admire it? People are getting killed. My brothers and sisters have kids. Little kids. And they’re willing to risk all their lives just to abide by some family motto? That’s fuckin’ bullshit.”
Liam looked so frazzled that Sully couldn’t help himself—he reached for the guy’s hand. Then he took a breath and squeezed Liam’s knuckles, half expecting his teammate to recoil in horror. But Liam surprised him by lacing their fingers together.
Discomfort soared up his throat. Were they seriously sitting here holding hands?
Bloody hell. Sucking each other off was one thing, but this was a level of intimacy that made the back of his neck itch.
And yet he didn’t pull his hand away.
“My family is a goddamn pain in the ass.”
Sully swallowed. “I hate to play the orphan card here, mate, but at least you have a family.”
Liam’s expression instantly sobered. “I know. And I love them, I really do. I just wish they had more sense. I wish they took this warning seriously.” He sighed. “I wish they took me seriously.”
“They do.”
“No, they don’t. I’m the family fuckup, the one who didn’t follow in Dad’s footsteps and join the force. The one who didn’t get married and knock up his wife. The one who took off and left them all behind.” Bitterness colored his voice. “The one who likes to fuck men.”
Sully froze. “Do they . . . know about that
? You told them that you were . . . ?”
“Bisexual?” Liam supplied. “Nah, they have no clue. Well, my sister Becca suspects. She’s been texting me for days demanding answers.”
“Answers about what?”
“Before I left . . .” Those long fingers tightened in Sully’s. “I told you about the chick I was dating?”
He nodded.
“She ended it after she found out I was bi,” Liam mumbled. “It disgusted her. And, ah, she called me a fag in front of my sister.”
“You shitting me?”
“Nope. I guess it was too much to hope for tolerance and understanding from the woman I was with for a year.”
“Guess so,” Sullivan said wryly.
“But yeah, Becca keeps asking what Penny meant by that.”
“What have you told her?”
“Nothing. Said it was just a misunderstanding.”
Of course Liam would say that to his sister. As much as the man griped about his family, Sully knew that their opinion meant the world to him. Liam hated the thought of them finding him lacking or being disappointed in his life choices. They wanted him to wind up with a nice Catholic girl and pop out the requisite number of rugrats. Anything less than that was unacceptable to the Macgregor clan.
So yeah, no surprise that Liam was still keeping his family in the dark. But what did amaze Sully was that his friend no longer seemed conflicted. Liam had referred to himself as bisexual. He’d insinuated that he’d experimented with men. And fine, as jealous as that made him, Sully also felt deep pride.
Liam had faced his confusion head-on. He’d worked through it and reached acceptance about who he was and what he wanted. So it didn’t matter if the Macgregors disapproved. Sully was simply glad that Liam was no longer fighting himself.
“I’m going to tell her, though. Probably when I get back to Boston.”
“You are?” Sully said in surprise.
Liam nodded. “Of all my siblings, I’m closest with Becca. She’s the only one who’s not married—yet, anyway. She’s got a serious boyfriend and I’m sure he’s going to pop the question any day now. But she’s thirty-three. The rest of them all got married in their early twenties, so she and I were kind of the rebels for a while there.”
Liam began rubbing the pad of his thumb on the center of Sully’s palm. Sully didn’t think the other man was even aware of it, but the featherlight caresses sent a wave of sensation through him. Heat, and the strangest rush of tranquility. He didn’t look down at their hands because he was afraid it would alert Liam to what that thumb was doing.
“I’ve always been able to tell Becca everything. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t know the meaning of judgment, you know? Like, I could tell her I want to take up figure skating and she wouldn’t even blink. She’d just ask me when we’re going shopping for skates and glitter.”
Sullivan chuckled. “So why didn’t you tell her the truth when she asked?”
“Because I was on my way here. It’s not the kind of bomb you can just drop and then waltz off to board a plane. I’d rather do it in person, have time to talk it through.”
“Would she tell the rest of your family?”
“Not if I ask her not to. But I figure if there’s anyone in the family to confide in, it’s her. And then, based on her reaction . . . I don’t know.” Liam let out a heavy breath. “Then maybe I’ll have the balls to tell the rest of them. They’ll . . . be okay with it.” He went quiet for a beat, as if he was inwardly trying to convince himself of that. “Or at least Becca will be. She’s always accepted me for exactly who I am.”
Sully was startled when his teammate suddenly pinned him down with serious blue eyes.
“You ever had that before?” Liam asked.
His brow creased. “Had what?”
“Someone who accepted you unconditionally, completely. Someone you could talk to about anything and know that you were, I don’t know, safe, I guess? Have you ever had that?”
A lump rose in his throat. “Yeah . . . With you.”
Liam’s lips parted slightly. “Just me? Nobody else?”
His throat was almost completely clogged now. No air seemed to be getting in. “There was someone else,” he admitted.
“Who?”
“Evangeline.”
“Your boat?” Liam said with a snort. “I know you’ve got her name tattooed on two different parts of your body, but that doesn’t count, bro.”
“No, not the boat.” Sully slowly disentangled their fingers and reached around to pat between his shoulder blades. “The tat back here? That one’s for the boat. This one . . .” He turned his forearm and traced his fingers over the black script inked on the inside of his wrist to his elbow. “This Evangeline was real. A living, breathing woman. Well, a girl.”
“Who was she?”
“Someone I loved.”
“Someone you . . . loved.”
Sully smiled at the confusion he saw on his friend’s face. He’d expected it. Every time they’d spoken about love in the past, he’d always maintained that it was overrated, that he had no interest in it. So he knew his words were coming as a complete one-eighty.
“I just turned seventeen when I met her. I was living on the streets, dealing drugs, taking drugs. And this one night, I snorted some bad coke and wound up in the hospital because of some fucked-up reaction.” He breathed deeply as memories he normally kept locked up spiraled to the surface. “Evie was a nursing student, two years older than me. Her class was at the hospital that night doing rounds with the other nurses. She was in my room when I woke up.”
His chest ached as he pictured Evangeline’s big green eyes sparkling with life. The light brown hair that she’d worn long, with messy bangs that constantly fell into her eyes. He’d loved sweeping that soft hair off her forehead. Stroking her impossibly smooth cheek as he leaned in to kiss her.
Fuck, he hadn’t deserved her.
“We started talking. She made me laugh. And the next day she helped me get into rehab. When I got out two months later, she was waiting for me.” A self-deprecating smile touched his lips. “I have no idea what the hell she was doing with me. I was a street thug. No place to live, no money, no prospects. She could’ve had anybody she wanted, but she chose my punk ass.” He shrugged. “Maybe she just wanted my dick.”
Liam laughed. “I doubt that. You need to give yourself more credit, man.”
“Hey, I’m awesome, no doubt. But . . . you didn’t know this girl, Boston. She was kind. Drop-dead gorgeous. And smart, so fucking smart. She had her entire life in front of her. I truly don’t know why she was wasting her time on me.”
“What happened to her?”
“She got sick. At first, it was complaining she was tired or that she couldn’t breathe. She’d bump into a chair and get a nasty bruise. It worried me, but I didn’t push her to see a doctor until she collapsed one night.”
His windpipe tightened to the point of suffocation, the mental picture of Evangeline’s rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes slowly dissolving into images of a gray complexion, deadened eyes.
“She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. There were too many white blood cells in her bones and it spread so bloody fast.” He shook his head in dismay. “The doctors couldn’t keep up with it. It’s not one of those cancers you can cut out. It was everywhere, in every bone marrow sample they took, in every test they ran.”
“Shit.” This time it was Liam who reached for Sully’s hand. He cupped it between both of his, infusing his warmth into Sully’s cold flesh.
“The chemo did shit. So did the radiation. They gave her three months to live. There was this other treatment they could’ve tried, but she was so weak by then and she refused to try it. And, I don’t know, she wasn’t herself anymore. She shut down, not just physically but emotionally. Mentally. She moved back in wit
h her mother and wouldn’t leave her room. Wouldn’t get out of bed, refused to eat. I could feel her slipping away and there was nothing I could do about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Liam said quietly.
“But yeah . . .” He cleared his throat. “She was one of those people you mentioned. Someone who would never judge you. She knew I dealt drugs and didn’t condemn me for it. She tried to help me instead. Helped me get my GED. She was the most beautiful person in this whole world. Inside and out.”
“They gave her three months . . .” Liam hesitated. “Did she last that long?”
Agony rushed up his throat. “No. She . . .”
“It’s fine, you don’t have to tell me.”
He jerked when his friend leaned over and cupped his chin. A callous thumb swept over the line of Sully’s jaw.
“No, it’s okay. Might as well finish this sob story, huh?” He choked down the pain and released a short breath. “After she got sick, I moved into their place to help take care of her. Her mom didn’t like me at first, but she warmed up after she realized how much I loved Evie. She said we were soul mates, and yeah, I know we were young, but I think she was right. Evie was my entire world.” His chin sagged into Liam’s hand. “So I was staying there and, well, those treatments were expensive, so I started dealing in scrips. Bigger amounts, harder shit. Every cent I made, I handed over to Evie’s mom to use to pay for her medical bills.”
“She must have appreciated that.”
“She did. And I think that’s why she didn’t object to me living there. But the thing is, I couldn’t exactly stash huge amounts of product like that on the street. So all the pills I was dealing, the oxy, painkillers, all that shit . . . I kept it in the house, in Evie’s room.”
A warning note entered Liam’s voice. “Sully, you don’t have to tell me the rest.”
“She was in so much pain and she’d given up. She didn’t want to lie in bed for another two months and just wait to die, so she took matters into her own hands. She got into my stash, took whatever she could swallow, and OD’d. I got home from my deliveries that night and she was already gone.”