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SAOIRSE
“Well?” my father demands as he comes back into the room, Connor having just stormed off. “Did he agree?”
I sink down on the edge of the bed, rubbing one hand over my face. “He said he needed a night to think.”
“Cnag!”My father curses under his breath, his jaw clenching. “I wanted this settled tonight.”
I look at him from across the room, feeling more exhausted than I have in a long time. “I don’t think it was ever going to be settled tonight,” I tell him quietly. “We’re asking him to leave behind everything he’s built since Boston. An entire life—an entireidentitythat he’s made for himself.” I shake my head, watching him pace the room with frustration. “I’m glad you think so highly of my charms, but I don’t think I was going to lure him back just based on tonight. He’s going to need time.”
“We don’t have time.” My father looks more agitated than I’ve seen him in a long time, even when dealing with Liam. “It took long enough to find him. Meanwhile, Liam is still sitting at the head of that table, everyone waiting to find out what the next move is, and we’re twiddling our thumbs, waiting on Connor tothink. He’s had years to think.”
“And what he’s thought about is that he doesn’t want to go back.”
“Whose side are you on?” My father rounds on me, his green eyes glittering angrily, but I’m too tired to let it get to me.
Mine, I want to say, but I don’t. “Whatever side gets me to be able to go to sleep,” I say instead. “We’re not going to figure this out any further tonight. And I’m exhausted. Good night?” I suggest as tactfully as I can, and my father frowns.
“I suppose you’re right,” he finally relents. “We’ll revisit this in the morning.”
I’ve never been so grateful to be alone as when he finally leaves, and I’m the only one in the hotel room at last. I sink back against the closed door as I lock it, tilting my head against the cool wood as I breathe in the lavender scent of the air and let myself relax just a fraction.
A bath is the first thing I want. There’s a huge soaking tub in my room, and I strip down, tossing the clothes that now smell like cigar smoke and Connor’s cologne aside. I have a sudden, wild urge to press the shirt to my nose and breathe in the scent of him, but I force it down. I need to temper this strange, uncontrollable desire that seems to have come over me, not encourage it. It’s one thing to enjoy the thought of sleeping with my future husband—and I’m definitely grateful that I don’t find Connor repulsive—but this is something else. This intense, burning, all-consuming need that seems to overtake me whenever he’s near is dangerous, and it’s more likely to get me in trouble than anything else.
I need to keep whatever upper hand I can in this relationship.
As I take off the heavy eye makeup in the bathroom, I let out a sigh of relief, starting to feel like myself again. The face in the mirror is one that I recognize again. I’m glad to leave that pretense behind as I toss the cotton balls covered in eyeliner in the trash and turn on the taps for the bath, pouring a little of the luxury bath oil the hotel provided into the steaming water before stepping into it.
I let out a groan as I sink into the bath, the silky water closing in over my skin and loosening every tense muscle. A hot bath is always my favorite form of self-care. I reach over to the dimmer switch to lower the lighting in the room, closing my eyes as I tilt my head back against the edge of the tub and let the heat wash over me.
The same kind of heat I felt when Connor made me come in the elevator.
Oh, god. I feel my face flush for reasons that have nothing to do with the steamy room as the memory comes flooding back in. I can’t believe I allowed that. It seems incredible that I did, now, after making sure for so long that I was the only one who ever got to touch between my thighs—or anywhere else, for that matter.
Uptight. That’s what Connor called me, but I was anything but in the elevator.What on earth came over me?
It had all happened so quickly. He’d caught me so off guard in the warehouse, rougher around the edges than I remembered him. The young man who had left Boston had been polished and arrogant, almost princely, but he’s so different now. Not just older, but different clothes, a different look, different transportation. I wouldn’t have imagined Connor in leather and biker boots, covered in tattoos with a motorcycle instead of a Towncar and a driver, but that’s the man I’d encountered tonight. It had thrown me off so completely that I can’t help but blame everything else that came after on that.
He excites me more than he should, but he frightens me too. Somehow those two things have blended together into the most delicious kind of sexual arousal that I never knew existed, andthat’s what led to him with my jeans undone and his hand inside my panties in the elevator, stroking me to the most mind-blowing orgasm of my life.
My hand slips down my thigh towards the smooth flesh of my pussy, and my clit throbs a little just remembering it. I’m aching to recreate it in my mind, touch myself to another mind-blowing climax while I think about Connor and all the ways he turned me on, but I hesitate.
The way he makes me feel scares me. I’d been attracted to Liam. I’d looked forward to marrying him, to our wedding night, but he’d never made me feel likethis. He’d never made me crave his touch, never left me thinking about it for hours afterward—largely because he’d hardly touched me at all, even politely. He hadn’t wanted me.
There it is.
Connorwantsme. He might not know if he wants to marry me or if he wants what comes with marrying me—the Kings and the responsibilities and the life he’d be required to carry on, but hedesiresme. I felt it in him tonight, saw it, and the passion with which he touched me burned through me like a wildfire.
It almost makes me wish I could be someone else, too. That I didn’t have to be Saoirse O’Sullivan, Irish princess, and carrot to dangle in front of heirs to the Kings. It makes me jealous of how Connor remade himself. For the first time in my life, I wish I could go to Connor just as my innermost self, shed every layer of duty and responsibility, and lose myself in him.
That we could be William Davies and—someone else.
It makes me hate Liam a little, too, because he’d done just that. He’d rejected all of the expectations placed on him and married who he wanted.
Of course, the consequences for him are likely to be just as grave as they would be for me.
I pull my hand back, forcing myself to ignore the pulse between my thighs, the ache to touch myself, to slide my fingers inside of me the way I’d stopped Connor from doing and imagine that it’s him. To remember how he made my body feel without ever being inside of it.
I need sleep.I linger in the bath just a little longer before getting out, slipping into a cotton tank and pajama shorts and between the cool white sheets of the hotel bed. It’s soft and comfortable, the pillows downy underneath my head, but it still takes me far too long to fall asleep.
