“Dat could be argued…” he grumbled as he sat up next to me.
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Ye’d radder ye felt guilty for days because ye knew ye’d made me angry?”
“Of course not. But what about you? Do I get to spank you when you do something wrong?” The words sounded ridiculous as they came out of my mouth, which irritated me even further because it hadn’t sounded ridiculous when he’d threatened the same thing. Overbearing and controlling, yes, but not ridiculous.
“Darlin’, I have no doubt dat ye’ll belt me upside de head more den a few times in de course of our marriage,” he said with a smile. “And I’ll let ye, because guilt’ll be eatin’ me alive.”
“Do you plan on fucking up a lot?”
“I’ll try me best, but I’m a man, yeah? I’m sure I’ll do somet’in’.”
He was wearing the charming grin that I had such a hard time resisting, and after a moment I was grinning right back. He was so…ugh, I didn’t even have words for the way he made me feel.
He filled me to bursting with every emotion, and it was a novelty that I couldn’t get enough of. I’d been floating along for what felt like my entire life—never belonging anywhere or to anyone, and within just months, Peg and Patrick had completely changed everything.
“Ye look tired, love,” he said gently, pulling me out of my musings. “I’ll go to de couch so ye can get some rest.”
He leaned down to press a soft kiss on my lips, but the moment his lips touched mine, the urgency that had been missing while we discussed our future came back in a flood of sensation.
“Don’t go yet,” I whispered against his lips, “You’re leaving in the morning. Don’t go yet.”
“Amy,” he said in warning, groaning as I stood from the bed and immediately climbed onto his lap. “Dis is not a good idea.”
“We’re getting married,” I reminded him, kissing across his jaw. “And you’re leaving me tomorrow. Tonight we should celebrate.”
“Do ye have any idea how hard it is not to push dose shorts to de side and sink into ye? Yer playin’ wit’ fire, engagement or not.”
“You only said we couldn’t have sex…”
“Yes,” he hissed out the word as I made my way to the lobe of his ear. “What exactly do ye t’ink yer gonna get tonight?”
The question stumped me. What was I looking for? I wasn’t sure, but I knew I wanted more. Even if he couldn’t give me everything, I wanted something.
And frankly, I was getting tired of always being the aggressor.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, leaning back so I could meet his eyes. “You’re the experienced one.”
“Oh, so it’s me decision den?”
“Well…”
“Dat’s what ye said.”
“Goddamn it, Patrick,” I sighed, “If I left it up to you—” My words were cut short as I was flicked right in the center of my forehead. It completely stunned me for a moment; we’d been having what I thought was a serious and heated conversation and he flicked me in the forehead?
I must have looked as shocked as I felt because Patrick began laughing hysterically at whatever he saw on my face.
“What the hell?” I screeched after a moment of complete silence, throwing my body weight against him until his back hit the bed. I scrambled to hold him down as he continued to laugh beneath me, ineffectively trying to fight me off as I flicked at his head.
“Ye shouldn’t take de Lord’s name in vain, Amy,” he tried to scold through his laughter, “I’ll not have any wife of mine bein’ blasphemous.”
“Ha, ha. You’re so funny,” I said back through heavy breaths as we wrestled across the bed. “Can’t say goddamn it, but I can say—” I paused, before moaning breathlessly, “Fuck me now, Patrick.”
He froze beneath me, exactly like I knew he would, and I crowed in delight as my finger met the middle of his forehead with a hard thump. Ha! A little distraction and victory was mine.
He didn’t even flinch as I flicked him, but the moment I put my arms over my head in a modified victory dance, he was rolling me underneath him.
“Say it again,” he ordered seriously, pinning my arms above my head.
“What?”
“Say, ‘Fuck me Patrick’,” he ordered, shifting my hands into in one fist. “Say it.”
His free hand slid down my leg to catch underneath my knee, and before I knew it he was pulling it up to hug his side and arching his body into mine. Our breaths were still labored from the wrestling match, and my chest felt tight as I tried to acclimate myself to the change in mood and the feel of him against me.
“Say it,” he whispered, rubbing his lips over mine then pulling away as I tried to deepen the kiss.
“Fuck me now, Patrick,” I whispered back, the words sounding so much more obscene when I wasn’t joking.
“Ye need it, darlin’?” he asked as his hand slid under my tank top and curled around my breast. “I haven’t been takin’ care of ye. I was bein’ careful.” He rolled his hips against mine and a thousand pinpricks of sensation seemed to flare through the lower half of my body. “I don’t have to be so careful anymore,” he said with another roll of his hips. “I can give ye a little, now dat I know dat pretty soon I’ll be so deep, ye’ll feel me for days. I’ll take de edge off a bit, yeah?” Another roll. “What have ye been doin’ wit’out me? Ye take care of yerself in me bed?” Another roll. “Slip dose little shorts off and roll around in me sheets?”
If he hadn’t been hitting me in exactly the right spot to make my mind go fuzzy, I probably would have cared that his words were making my cheeks heat in embarrassment.
“I have not!” I argued, lifting my hips to meet his. My hands were still pinned above me even though I pulled at them, and his fingers began to pluck at my nipple over and over, the sensation adding to what he was doing below. “I don’t do that.”
“Ye don’t use yer fingers to get yerself off?” he asked dubiously.
“Not here! Your mom’s here!”
“Me mum’s here now, and I don’t hear ye tryin’ to stop me.” I whimpered as he leaned back to his heels and lifted his hands from my body, but I wasn’t disappointed for long. He was only leaning back so he could grasp the tank top at my waist and rip it over my head in one smooth movement. “Ye goin’ to stop me?”
I shook my head silently as he tossed the shirt off the side of the bed, but when he leaned down toward me again I found my voice. It was hoarse, as if I’d been yelling and sounded almost scratchy to my ears. “Yours, too,” I ordered.
His dimple showed as he smiled at me in approval, then with little fanfare he grasped the t-shirt behind his head and tore it off, sending it flying to the floor. His skin was smooth, with just a smattering of hair in the middle of his chest, and I ran my fingers through it for a moment before he took hold of my hands, trapping them above my head again.
“Hands to yerself, yeah?” he said. “I’ll stop, but—” He didn’t finish whatever he was about to say, instead lunging toward my chest with a groan and pulling my nipple into his mouth.
He sucked hard then softly in a confusing rhythm that I couldn’t follow, then bit down tightly before soothing my skin with his tongue. My hips instinctively moved upward seeking his, and he met me with a hard thrust.
“Keep dem dere,” he ordered, pushing down on my hands so I’d understand what he was telling me. “Christ, ye feel good.”
“Watch your mouth,” I chastised breathlessly as he moved to my other breast, giving it the same attention as the first. His hand slid down to my thigh, rubbing down to my knee and then back up slowly.
“Make me,” he challenged, moving up to press his mouth to mine. His chest rubbed against mine as we writhed on the bed, and my breasts, still wet from his suckling met little resistance as they slid up and down with the force of his thrusts. My breath began to hitch in my throat as the pressure on my clit intensified, but before I could hit the peak I was reaching for
, he pulled away, leaving me frustrated beyond belief.
If he left me then, I might have killed him.
“Shhh,” he murmured into my mouth. “I need to feel ye.”
His hand slipped up the side of my shorts, making me freeze in both anticipation and nervousness. Things were venturing into the unknown, and even though I wanted him, I was still a little… apprehensive.
When his fingers reached the gusset of my underwear at the juncture of my thighs, I held my breath.
“Not inside. Not dis time, alright? We’ll save dat,” he said tenderly, leaning down on his forearm to cup my face.
I jumped as his fingers finally slid over my skin slowly, but his eyes held mine as he explored, and soon I was relaxing into the bed. His calloused fingertips on my flesh felt a thousand times better than what I’d been getting through our clothes and I was at the edge again only a few minutes later.
“Ah, darlin’,” Patrick said, his voice breaking a little before he cleared his throat. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Yer so swollen and wet. Almost dere, yeah?”
I nodded once before sliding into oblivion, my arms wrapping around his neck without thought as I rode the waves. They seemed to go on and on, magnified as he moved his mouth back to my breast, and tugged each nipple. The feeling lasted much longer and was much stronger than when I’d attempted to do the same thing on my own, and as soon as I was finished, I was anxious to do it again.
“Whoa. Too much, Patrick,” I warned starting to pull away from his touch when the pressure intensified.
“I know,” he assured me, laying his hand completely over me in a firm grip. “After a while it hurts a bit, eh?”
“Yeah. Holy crap.” I pulled his mouth to mine, licking into his mouth, until eventually he slid his hand completely out of my shorts. I could feel him moving it around above me, but I didn’t understand what he was doing until he pulled his lips away and looked down.
I followed his gaze to see him sliding his fingers against each other, and rubbing his thumb up and down the digits that were completely lubricated from my body. It was slightly mortifying at first, but the longer he stared at his hand, the less I felt that way. He was literally rubbing me into his skin, and I had a feeling that if he hadn’t been braced above me with one arm, he would have been rubbing his hands together as if he was applying lotion.
“That’s kind of gross,” I muttered, not bothering to move away.
“It’s not gross. It’s lovely.”
“Lovely?”
“Look at dat,” he said, raising his hand until it was closer to our faces and I could barely catch the scent of myself. “Smell it.”
“Dat’s what yer body made to prepare for me. Dat’s de reason ye’ll take me easily, wit’ no pain. It’ll smooth me way, tell me when yer turned on, tell me when yer ready to take me. It not only prepares ye, but de scent of it—de feel of it—will prepare me, as well. One look, one sniff, one small touch, and I’ll be stiff as a pike.” He glanced up at me as I stared at him wide eyed. “Lovely.”
“Lovely,” I whispered back.
I knew then why he’d forced me to wait, why he’d gone to such lengths to keep our hands above our clothing and our kisses chaste. Because as he spoke, I wanted nothing more than to take him into my body.
“I love you,” I told him.
“I know.”
Chapter 18
Patrick
I left my mum’s after an hour of goodbyes with Amy. It seemed as if the moment I stood to walk out the door, I just needed one more kiss—or she did—and the cycle started all over again. After I’d had my hands all over her body the night before, it was almost impossible to keep them off her that morning.
I knew the scent of her, the way she felt on my hands, the way she went silent and still just before she came, shuddering helplessly. I’d shown incredible restraint in not taking what I’d wanted so badly, but with the end of our abstinence in sight, I refused to give in.
She’d been everything I could have imagined the night before, a touch hesitant here and there, but otherwise almost aggressive in the way she’d moved against me. There were many things I loved about her, but I knew that if we didn’t spark sexually it would be a miserable marriage for us both. I’d never doubted our chemistry from the first, but chemistry and willingness to reach for what you wanted in bed were absolutely not the same thing. Thankfully, it seemed with Amy that I’d gotten both.
By the time I got back to my flat that afternoon, any gratitude that I wouldn’t be torturing myself by living chastely with Amy was long gone. I missed her already. I missed the warmth of my mum’s house, the sound of her instructing Amy on how to prepare different dishes, the way my woman would brush innocently against me as if she needed just a small touch to ground her. I missed it all, and the flat that had once been if not comforting, at least comfortable, felt anything but.
I dropped my duffel near the door, grabbing a beer out of the fridge. I started classes again the next day, followed by my shift at the garage, but that night I had absolutely nothing to do. I made my way to my messy bed and sat my beer on the bedside table that was covered in water rings from the many beers that had gone before. I would lie in bed and read, I decided, striding to my bookshelf for a tattered copy of Robert Frost’s greatest works. It was the only thing that might be able to take my mind off Amy and allow me to relax.
But as I pulled back the sheets in one hand and fell into the bed, a vaguely familiar scent met my nostrils. I jumped back up, my stomach roiling as I knocked over my beer in an attempt to get away from the bed.
I’d forgotten.
How had I forgotten?
That blonde girl. Moira.
Mother of God, what had I done?
I swallowed hard, staring at the bed in horror before losing it completely and ripping the offending sheets onto the floor. I didn’t want them anywhere near me. I forced myself not to panic as I checked the wastebasket, finding used rubbers and their wrappers littering the inside. The sight made me literally sick, until my mouth was watering so badly that I had to swallow over and over again until the nausea dissipated.
I had to get rid of it all. I had to wipe it away as if it had never happened, I thought, as I tried to stuff the sheets into the small bin. I’d only once thought of my poor decisions while in Ballyshannon, during the argument with Amy in the alleyway, but at that time I hadn’t been aware of just how much I may have fucked up.
We were engaged now—set to be married quickly, and planning our lives. If Amy knew that I’d fucked a woman just hours before I’d gone to her, she’d be completely devastated. She’d never want to see me again. I could argue that we weren’t yet together, but I knew that was shit. There were expectations there, long before I’d brought Moira back to my flat. The excuse that I hadn’t made any promises was despicable; it would be using semantics to try to justify my behavior, taking no account of Amy’s feelings, or my own.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at nothing, but it eventually grew dark before I moved again. I slid my feet back into my boots and threw on my coat before grabbing the bin full of bad decisions and taking it out to the dumpster that sat outside my building. I tossed it in with a curse, knowing that it wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of the guilt that seemed to be burning like flames inside my chest. How could I have done such a thing?
I wasn’t paying attention as I walked up the stairs to my apartment, so I didn’t notice the two men outside my door until I was almost on top of them. I shuffled to a stop in surprise when they blocked my way, and as I looked up, my surprise turned into dread.
“Malcolm,” I greeted with a nod.
“Trick,” he answered, his expression not giving anything away.
“Can I help ye wit’ somet’in’?” I looked between Kevie’s older brother and his companion.
“Lookin’ for yer Da,” Malcolm informed me. “As a courtesy, we came here first.”
The underlying threat was not as subtle a
s he’d like to believe. If I couldn’t help him, he’d be on his way to my mum’s.
“I just came from home tonight,” I answered, “I’ve not seen me da in weeks. He know yer lookin’?”
“He does.”
“If I see him, I’ll let him know.”
“Do dat.”
I nodded again, then waited silently as they watched me for any sign I was lying. After years of listening to the other children snickering about the way my mum had ‘run my da out of town’, I’d learned to hide my feelings quite well. They’d not get one twitch from me.
“Good to see ye, Trick.” Malcolm said after he’d decided to believe me, clapping me on the shoulder as if we were old friends.
“Ye, too,” I replied.
I watched them walk confidently down the hall and into the stairwell before unlocking my front door and pushing inside. Jesus. I was having a hell of a night.
I strode to my phone, and as I gripped the receiver, I noticed that my hands were shaking with restrained nerves. I opened them wide and clenched them again and again before picking up the receiver once more and calling my mum.
Amy answered the phone.
“Hello?”
Her voice was like a punch to the solar plexus.
“Hello, me love.”
“Patrick! I didn’t think you’d call so soon!”
“I miss ye.” I had to clear my throat twice before I could get the words out.
“I miss you too, baby.”
“Baby?”
“Was that weird? I thought I’d try it out.”
She was such a goofball. So completely unassuming. For the first time in a long time, I felt a lump in the back of my throat as if I was about to cry.
“No.” I cleared my throat again. “No, I like it.”
“Okay. Yeah, me, too.”
“What are ye doin’?”
“Getting ready to watch a little TV with your mom while she tries in vain to teach me how to knit. What are you doing?”
I glanced at the bare bed and swallowed hard. “Just havin’ a beer and gettin’ ready to read for a while before bed.”