“You’re like a fucking peach, ye know that? Dripping with sweetness. Mine for the taking.”

Holy crap.

With what he says and the way he’s staring at me, I think he might eat my pussy until there’s nothing left.

He brings his gaze up to me, looking at me through dark lashes as he slowly runs a finger over my clit and then slides it inside me. My back arches at the intrusion and I clench around his finger, gasping lightly.

“I love watching your pretty face,” he says thickly, “just as I stroke your sweet little cunt. I like to see how I make ye feel. You know what ye look like right now?” he asks as he slides in another finger, achingly slow. “You look like heaven, darlin’. Pure heaven.”

He lowers his face and starts eating at me like a man starved. I begin to tremble, digging my nails into the muscles of his bunched arms as his tongue assaults me, rough and wet and hot, and I’m so turned on that if he keeps this going I’m going to come. I have to. There’s nowhere else for me to go.

“I want ye wild,” he says, pulling back just before I almost come, his beautiful mouth wet with me. “I want ye unhinged.”

I’m panting now because I’m that turned on. “I am fucking unhinged!” I cry out, my heart galloping inside my throat. I clench my thighs together, trying to relieve the pressure.

He puts his knee between them and pries them open with his hand. “I’ll give ye sweet relief soon enough,” he says. With his other hand he grabs his cock. I raise my head and stare down at it, precum glistening on the fat tip. I don’t mind condoms but there is something amazing about the sight of his bare cock and the fact that he’s going to fuck me with it.

“This look on your face,” he says to me, positioning his cock at my entrance. “I won’t forget it. Just how damn greedy and wild and mine ye are. You are mine, aren’t ye?”

“Yes, I’m all yours. Now hurry up. I need to come.”

He lets out a rough laugh and then his gaze becomes sharp and determined. He grabs my thighs and pulls them up so that my knees are bent, spreading my legs wide. The sight of his hands against my scars sends a thrill through me that I never knew existed. I’m not even ashamed of them right now. It looks sexy.

Impatient, I roll my hips so that the rigid length of his cock slips along my slick folds. With a moan he pushes himself into me and—

Fuck.

All the air leaves my lungs and he’s in so deep, I don’t think there’s any more room for him. I have to try and breathe around him, this pleasure bordering on pain, the way he makes me feel so full.

“You’re so tight and wet and sweet,” he says through a groan as he slowly pulls out. There’s a second of lightness where my body feels suspended and then he rams back into me, stealing my breath again. There isn’t a fraction of space left between us, he’s in that deep, and I can’t even control my thoughts.

He begins to pump into me, faster, harder, staring down at my breasts as they jiggle and bounce with each thrust, gawking at his cock where it slides inside me. I can feel his heavy balls swinging against my skin, adding to the carnality of our fucking.

“How good do I feel?” he grunts, sweat beginning to bead on his forehead. Every muscle in his shoulders and arms and abs are straining and rippling with undiluted strength.

“All I feel is you,” I tell him, breathless and breaking off into a moan as I reach down and start to play with myself. His cock is magnificent, but damn it, I need to get off.

His eyes widen with lust at the sight.

“Fuck me,” he says through a harsh, serrated growl, and with a swooping motion, he reaches down and grabs my wrists, pinning them up above my head.

With his free hand he starts slapping my tits before his head dives down and he takes a nipple between his teeth, pinching hard until I cry out, and then quickly soothing them with his tongue.

“You make me into an animal,” he says, alternating between the sharp pain of his bite and the kind of relief that’s turning me into hot liquid. He brings his massive body up over mine and I can feel the white-hot heat radiating off of him, how damn alive he seems. Capturing my mouth with a rough and searing kiss, he continues to pump into me, his rhythm gaining speed until he’s slamming into me, making me beg and writhe for more.

Oh god.

Oh god.

I come so hard, so fast, that I’m shot into brutal oblivion. The waves of pleasure spike with pain and delirium, and I’m clenching and pulsing around his cock so hard that I’m afraid I might break him.

“Holy FUCK!” I cry out, not caring that the whole hotel can probably hear me. My hands grip the covers until they are frozen in place while my body continues to jerk and convulse, violent and reckless. I feel like I’m split open in the most wonderful, terrifying way, like whatever shields and blinders I’ve been trying to put around my heart are blasted away and he can see me.

He can see me, all of me. The scars on my body, the scars on my soul.

Many scars.

He sees them as I’m coming, mouth open, world exploding.

I meet his eyes as he continues to thrust into me, his grip on my thighs so hard that it hurts. It’s almost visceral, the intensity of his gaze and the way he looks right into me, the determination on his brow as he pumps harder and harder, to the hilt and back again.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhaustively fucked like this.

Not by Padraig, not by anyone.

Tonight, he’s giving me all he has, and I know, I know deep down that it means more than before. It means something that I’m too afraid to examine but I know I feel it too.

With a low growl, he pistons again, the bed slamming back so hard that something falls over in the bathroom, and this time he comes. He grits his teeth and lets out a guttural moan that I feel deep in my bones, and I watch, fascinated, as the orgasm overtakes him. He pumps into me, raw, hot, becoming this vision of masculine beauty, as his body begins to shudder, the cords of his neck straining as he’s overcome with pleasure.

“Fuck, Valerie,” he manages to gasp out, his voice broken as his grip on my thighs starts to loosen and his thrusting slows.

“Fuck is right,” I say, my voice garbled from the emotions that are still running through me, the flames calming only a little.

He’s never been so beautiful.

He stares down at me, heavy-lidded, mouth wet and open. The blistering heat of his gaze is tempering off into something easy and soft. Sweat rolls down his tattooed chest and the tight ridges of his six-pack abs, and he wipes his damp forehead with the back of his arm.

“Mo chuisle mo chroi,” he says in a thick, throaty voice.

“What?”

With a shaking breath, he pulls out of me slowly, and I feel how wet my thighs are. Then he lies down beside me on his side, propping his head up on his elbow, staring at me intently. “Mo chuisle mo chroi. It’s Gaelic. It means, my pulse of my heart.”

He reaches over and traces his fingers over my heart, his eyes burning with emotions I’m too afraid to read into because I know what I want to see and then I’ll see it everywhere.

I’m just stunned by how romantic that sounds.

By what he’s so close to saying.

I am the pulse of his heart.

“Mo chuisle mo chroi,” I say back to him, giving him a shy smile.

He grins at me, enough to make that dimple appear, then he leans in and kisses me on the forehead. “I’m getting us room service. And a lot of beer,” he says, getting off the bed. I watch as he walks over to the desk and pulls out the menu, admiring his tight, bouncing ass every step of the way.

“You checkin’ out me arse?” he asks, exaggerating his accent as he glances at me over his shoulder.

“Just wanted to see the engine behind those thrusts of yours,” I tell him. “I swear you could use your cock as a jackhammer.”

He laughs. “Well there’s a compliment if I ever heard one.”

I get up to go pee and clean up the mess on the covers as he orders us burgers and beers from the restaurant, and we spend the night sitting around and eating, naked. We do everything naked, including a few more rounds in the bed. I’ve never done this by myself before, let alone with anyone, but somehow he just makes my body feel like it needs to be displayed and worshipped, if only just for him.

That night we settle in for sleep curled in each other’s arms.

I might be hanging on to him like I’ll never let go.

“Valerie?” he whispers into the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“I…” I hear him wetting his lips. “I’m scared.”

I feel a pinch in my heart. “It’s okay to be scared.”

“I don’t want to go through this alone,” he whispers as he kisses the top of my head.

“You won’t go through this alone,” I tell him, holding him tighter. “I’m here.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, and the silence says everything that he can’t.

The silence says, you’re only here for now.

16

Valerie

“So, you want to tell your dear old mother about him?” my mother asks over the phone, her voice dripping with sweetness that I know can turn bitter in an instant.

“I’ve told you all there is to know,” I explain.

I didn’t call my mother this afternoon. She called me. And I think she’s had more than a few glasses of wine because she has this bite to her voice that only comes out when she’s drinking.

It’s been five days since the doctor’s appointment in Dublin. After that, pictures of Padraig and I were floated all over the Irish newspapers and tabloids, talking about his newest mystery woman and how it looked “serious,” I guess, because I’m not the normal model type he’s usually seen with. Average girl equals serious, right? At least they didn’t assume I’m a relative or something.

They didn’t know my name at all, which was good, but apparently Sandra, of all people, sent one of the articles to my mom. The minute I get off the phone with my mom, I’m texting up a storm to my sister because she knows better than to show off something that’s not even real anyway. I mean, I get why she did it, my mom was probably berating me for being in Ireland and doing nothing, and Sandra was probably standing up for me, but still.