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And a part of me thinks Connor deserves it.
So I let Niall kiss me. I let my lips part, let his tongue slide over them, into my mouth, taste the smokiness of him as he groans. I feel him harden, thick and straining in his jeans as his hands rove down to grip my ass, as his hips lean into mine and he raises one hand to grip the back of my neck, deepening the kiss to something hot, fierce and passionate.
“There’s more where that came from, lass,” he murmurs when he finally breaks it. “More, and more of everything else for you too, if you want it.” He doesn’t move to adjust himself or draw attention to his erection, but I can see it, thick and ridged where his dark jeans are molded against it.
He’ll touch it tonight, thinking of me. He’ll wrap that rough palm around himself and stroke, moaning my name, imagining all the things he wants to do to me until he comes.My pussy aches at the thought, my clit pulsing, my panties clinging wetly to me as I imagine dropping to my knees here and now, undoing his jeans and taking all of that hot, hard flesh into my mouth so that he can come down my throat instead of in his fist.
But I don’t. My heart is hammering and I’m more aroused than I’ve been in days, but I’m a little sad, too. Because as much as I want Niall—I also wish it was Connor, turning me on like this, saying these things to me, like he did in London and Dublin.
“I should go,” I whisper. By now my parents will probably be asleep, and I can slip upstairs before they can see my stained dress or flushed cheeks or kiss-reddened lips, any of the things that might give away that I was meeting someone out here that I shouldn’t, instead of going directly back to my cold, chaste bed.
“I won’t stop you.” Niall steps back, letting me slip past him and towards the back gate. In the last second, though, he grabs my wrist, looking at me with those heated blue eyes as I turn back to him. “I’ll be thinking about you tonight, lass.”
Desire floods through me at his words, confirming what I’ve already imagined, but I don’t dare say anything else. If I don’t leave now, I don’t know what I’ll do next—and I have the presence of mind to know that fleeing from the arousing danger that Niall presents is better than allowing myself to succumb to it, and possibly fucking everything up in the ninth hour.
“Goodnight,” I whisper instead, pulling my hand out of his grasp, and he lets me go. I don’t look back as I hurry through the gate, up the cobblestone path to the back door and through the sunroom, to the stairs that will take me up to my room. The house is mercifully dark and still and quiet, and I fling myself into my room, closing the door quickly behind me as I try to catch my breath.
My entire body is alive, pulsing, throbbing with a heat that feels as if it could consume me. I want so badly to find out what the culmination of all this need is, to finally find out what it’s like to be laid back in a crisp bed and feel a thick cock pushed into me, satisfying the hollow ache, theneedthat seems to always be there now.
Leaning back against the door, I yank up the silk skirt of my dress before I realize what I’m doing, my other hand feverishly in the lace panties beneath it, my fingers seeking out my clit. There’s no teasing, no drawing it out, just the fierce hot need as my fingers slip in the slick arousal that Niall roused in me, sliding over my clit, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing—
I tilt my head back, gasping, my toes curling against the floor as a flood of images run through my head—Connor doing just this in the elevator, his hands on me as he cuffed me to the bench, his fingers on my clit again, in my ass, spanking me, fingering me, giving me pleasure I never imagined. Niall is there too, his mouth and hands and all the things I can imagine him doing to me, and the thoughts flicker in my mind’s eye over and over as in a matter of seconds, I feel my entire body clench as a powerful orgasm tears through me. My clit throbs against my fingers, my thighs trembling, and I rock against the hand pressed between my legs, my nails snagging the skirt of my ruined dress as I clench it in my fist, my teeth gritted against my moans so that no one can hear.
Connor, Niall, god I just want someone tofuckme!I buck against my hand as the last ripples of pleasure weaken my knees, making me sink to the floor as I lean my head back against the door. My clothes are a mess.I’ma mess, and all I can hope for is that Connor was right.
Once we’re married, once he’s taken my virginity and fucked me the handful of times it will take to get me pregnant, we’ll both be satisfied. The lust will pass, and I’ll be able to think clearly again. I’ll give him an heir, and then I can choose where to bestow my desire after that. Maybe Niall, maybe not—but I’ll be able tothink, goddamn it, instead of feeling like a ticking time bomb of lust, ready to explode, straining with need every time one of the two men who know how to play me like a violin touches me.
I look down at my left hand as I let go of my skirt, at the glittering diamond, and let out a rueful sigh.
I can only hope.
5
CONNOR
Ihadn’t known, at first, when I would want to visit my father’s grave. My feelings about it are complicated at best, but within a few days of arriving in Boston, I feel the urge to go. To look at the final resting place of the man who betrayed everything I thought we stood for, and decide what comes next.
Part of me wonders if I might run into Liam there. I don’t know if he visits the grave, if he cares, how he feels about it. I know very little about my brother these days, actually—and I know that’s my fault.
So much feels as if it’s my fault.
He’s buried at the cemetery at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where Saoirse and I will be married only a few weeks from now. From what I’ve heard, he was buried at St. Patrick’s in Manhattan at first, quickly, after his execution. Liam had him reinterred here, in Boston where he belongs, and I am grateful for that—even if I feel Liam should have done more to keep him from being killed in the first place.
Some of the ways of the Kings are archaic, and I intend to change that. I don’t shy away from violence, but some of the punishments of the Kings are positively medieval, and death is a very final thing. I hesitate to mete it out, when there are other options.
The graveyard is still and quiet when I visit it, the earth soft from a recent rain, the grass between the graves flourishing in the early summer. Soon enough it’ll turn brown from the heat, but for now it still has the beauty of late spring, and I find Conor McGregor Sr.’s grave soon enough, near the church wall.
It’s hard for me to remember, now, the time before my father and I were at odds. I can’t remember a time at all when he was anything but a taskmaster, pushing me to excel, to be the best, the smartest, the most ambitious and driven. With Liam he was cruel, but with me he was exacting. My summers were spent hobnobbing with the families who could one day be allies, not playing catch or roaming Boston with my friends. I didn’thavefriends, not in the sense that a boy should. I had future allies, future partnerships, the wheels of my father’s power-hungry brain always turning, always wanting more.
And when I wasn’t willing to go after everything he thought he could take, he found someone who would. Someone whose bastard blood meant he craved all the things he was denied, hated everyone who had more than him, what he thought he deserved. Power that would have been his, if his mother had been married to my father instead of just a quick fuck while he was passing through Manhattan.
Franco Bianchi.That’s a grave I’ll never visit. Since I’ve been home and filled in on the events that have transpired while I was gone, I’ve heard more about my late half-brother—that his friendship with Luca very nearly got him the power he craved anyway through his marriage to Caterina Rossi, that if my father hadn’t known just how to stoke his greed and need for more, he might never have ended up dead at Sofia Romano’s hand.
I know, too, what he did to Anastasia. And I feel sorry for it. I can even understand what part of my brother’s heart that might have touched—he always had a soft spot for anyone who was hurt, abused, or ignored. But that doesn’t change the fact that his duty lay elsewhere.
Just as the fact that I couldn’t abide my father’s plans doesn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t left, so much of this would never have happened.
I look down at the grave pensively, at the grass grown over it, some weeds sprouting near the headstone, carved just with a name and date. NoBeloved Husband of,orBeloved Father of, no kind words about the deceased. No flowers left here, no careful tending of the grave.
