Whatever we had, it was screwed-up and poisonous and destructive, but it was there, and it was ours. It had a pulse and a breath and a soul.
We couldn’t walk away from it, and it was too late to pretend as if nothing happened, but at the same time, we both had no clue where to go to from here.
“You’re going to fall,” he whispered, his hot breath wafting over the column of my throat, causing goose bumps to rise on my skin. On instinct, I wrapped my legs around his waist, my limbs everywhere, folding myself around him like I wanted to swallow him whole.
My mouth found his ear. “So are you. I’ll be taking you with me, Monster.”
“I’m not afraid of falling, Nix.” His teeth dragged along my neck, nibbling at the sensitive hollow along my shoulder blade.
“Yes, you are. That’s why you’re torturing me. That’s why you’re here.”
Suddenly, his mouth was on mine, hot and hungry and demanding, and he pulled us backward, stumbling unevenly as he pried my mouth with his tongue, thrusting it inside harshly. I kissed him back, deep and raw, his scent dripping into my body. Cigarettes and man and expensive clothes. Not a trace of Becca in his system. My mouth was full of his kiss, and my bones felt brittle and hot as I murmured, “Next time you pull a Becca stunt on me, I will cut your balls off.”
“I’d like to see you try.” His fingers dug into my ass roughly, and I moaned, desperately rubbing against his erection. “Fuck,” he growled. “Why can’t I stay away from you?”
I licked a path down his throat, and he yanked my head back by my hair, peppering the edge of my cleavage with intoxicating kisses.
“You really need to quit smoking. You smell horrible,” I taunted.
“Never heard any complaints before.”
“They were all scared of you.” I sucked on his throat while he mauled the edge of my breasts. I was desperate to leave a love bite. To make him think of me tomorrow morning. And the mornings after that.
Because who knew when would be the next time we’d see each other? A week? Two weeks? A month? For all I knew, Sam could die in one of his street fights tomorrow. This could be the last time I saw him, touched him, felt him.
It was true for any person you were in love with, but especially for Sam, which made him even more precious to me. I was always on the verge of losing him, and sometimes at night, when I thought about what kind of dangers he was exposed to out there, I could barely breathe.
“No one wants to put a mirror to your face because they know you won’t like what you see there. Everyone is afraid of your wrath,” I continued.
“And you?” He pulled his lips from my breasts, glaring at me intensely. We were hidden by the wall next to the glass door, but I knew we needed to stop this sooner rather than later before anyone saw us. “Are you scared of me?”
“I was never truly scared of you.” I rolled my thumb along his jaw, feeling blush creeping to my cheeks. “Not when I was seventeen and not a decade later. To me you’ll always be beautifully misunderstood. And maybe I’m an idiot to care, Sam. In fact, I probably am, but I still want you to quit smoking because I want you to grow old and gray and be healthy. Even if I can never have you.”
His eyes narrowed and something passed between us. I shuddered uncontrollably in his arms, like he’d managed to put something inside me with this one look.
“Aisling, I—” Sam started.
A blood-chilling shriek pierced through the ballroom just then, making him stop midsentence, followed by a commotion, the sound of breaking glass, and hysterical crying.
“Someone call 9-1-1!”
“We need an ambulance!”
“Oh, dear God! What’s happening?”
I broke free from Sam’s arms. We both rushed into the ballroom.
I stopped dead when I realized what the spectacle was all about.
In the middle of the room was my father, Gerald Fitzpatrick, dressed in his flannel pajamas and a house robe, looking like a homeless person with his hair wild and his eyes bloodshot. He held my mother by the throat, shaking her, looking drunk and out of focus, in front of an audience consisting of the cleaning crew, waitresses, and a few odd guests who still hadn’t left.
“The family heirloom!” he raged. “Where is it, Jane? Tell me now. I know that it’s you who stole it. You who sent those threatening letters.”
My mother fainted in his arms, just as my brothers jumped in to pry him away from her.
Cillian dragged a kicking and screaming Gerald off of Jane while Hunter scooped his limp mother in his arms, shouldering past people as he rushed her out of the limelight.