I’m not sure why I’m being honest with Roisin.
Well, actually, I do know why. I’m generally honest. I don’t tell lies to people.
But sometimes, I hold the truth very close to my chest.
The fact that I’m not doing that now, that I’m being open with her about why I’m being so damn nice to her, is unusual.
But it feels right.
Maybe it’s the fact that drinking champagne at high altitude hits me a little faster than it should. Maybe it’s the heat of the spring, or the way Roisin’s body looks, slick and glistening, in the water.
Maybe it’s the fact that I think I might be losing a grasp on everything that I thought was important to me.
But I literally drove hours to this spring, just to make Roisin smile. I’ll be damned if I don’t accomplish that.
She studies me, her green eyes darker, reflecting the gathering dusk and the heaviness of the clouds overhead.
God damn it. All I want is to kiss her.
Somehow, I can’t stay away from this woman. I want to touch her constantly. I want to make her smile. The little wrinkle between her eyebrows when she’s sad makes me feel like I want to fight someone. She’s been lying in her room, alone, for days.
If I thought it would help, I’d kill her father all over again.
I toyed with the thought of kidnapping her mother and bringing her, just to tell her to fix it, to fix my Roisin, but ultimately I’m not sure that it would be effective. Roisin doesn’t seem to want to talk to her mother, not after all the information she dropped, anyway.
So instead, I looked up a hot spring. And I planned a fucking picnic. And we’re staying at a little cabin tonight that’s nearby, and I packed her a goddamn bag full of clothes that aren’t even remotely sexy, but they’re comfortable and soft.
And every second of that process, I couldn’t fucking believe myself.
Because every time I did something to take care of Roisin, the chaos inside me settled slightly.
Watching her in her room, I felt completely powerless. Feeling powerless makes me…
It makes me feel like I have some kind of buzzing under my skin. Like I can’t settle down until I figure out whatever’s bothering her.
I don’t like to feel powerless.
After Dino was born, my mother didn’t leave her room for almost half a year. I was the one who stepped in to hold my crying brother. Who tried to get my mom to pay attention to us.
I was four.
Four, holding my infant brother, who screamed like a motherfucker.
So seeing Roisin, day after day, refuse to get up, it fucking hurt.
That’s why. The childhood trauma. No other reason.
The water in the spring sloshes slightly, bringing me back to reality. Roisin nods. “Well, I guess I can accept that.”
“You don’t have an option,” I growl. “I wanted you to feel better. So feel better.”
“You do know that you don’t have the ability to control my feelings, right?”
I snort. “I can’t control them, but I can be the reason they change.”
“That sounds manipulative, Marco.”
I pause. “What?”
Roisin sighs. She sips the champagne. “Do you want my feelings to change because you’re worried about me, or because me having feelings makes you feel uncomfortable?”
I genuinely do not know how to answer that question.
Roisin nods. “That’s what I thought. Because if you care about me, and you are trying to cheer me up because you do, it’s sweet. But if you’re trying to make me feel better because you can’t handle someone else’s feelings, and it makes you feel out of control, that’s enmeshment and you should probably see someone for it.”
“Enmeshment?”
She nods. “Poor emotional boundaries. Someone who was brought up to take care of theirs, their parents, might be enmeshed. Families that lacked distinctions between parents and children. That kind of thing.”
“How do you know this, Dr. Phil?”
She laughs. “I went to therapy, dummy. For years. Because I lived with Kieran MacAntyre, and I fucking needed therapy to get past that.”
I don’t have a response to that.
She sighs. “You know, Kieran told me that he knew where my mom was. And that he’d kill her if I tried to leave to find her.”
The water makes a slight noise as I shuffle around. “What?”
“My dad didn’t know where my mom was. Probably because he didn’t think that far in the future. I think it bothered him. He’d made this bargain with her, she dropped me off with him, collected her payday, and was gone. Kieran told me that if I left to try and find her, he’d kill her.”
“Do you think he knew?”
She barks out a laugh. “No. I think Kieran was just cruel. I think he liked holding his new little sister in some kind of hold. I think he wanted to torture me.”
I growl, thinking of how terrible Kieran was to her. I’d kill that fucker again, if I could.
Then, I tilt my head and study her. “How did you come to live with your father and Kieran?”
She sighs. “When I was about ten, my mum told me it was time to finally meet my dad. I was thrilled. We lived in Dublin, so heading out to the manor house was basically the longest trip I’d ever taken. When we got there, my dad just… nodded. Like I was acceptable. He and my mum went to talk, and Kieran appeared. He was nice, I guess, at first. He’s so much older than me, he seemed like a god. He gave me candy and kept me in the kitchen. My mum and I slept in what would become my room. When I woke up, she was gone. And I stayed there.”
Jesus. “That’s awful, Roisin.”
She shakes her head. Little drops of water cascade out from her hair, and I watch them splatter into the water around us. “I mean it makes a whole lot of sense now. I really thought that when my mum left, she’d run away. That somehow she’d escaped, or she was just going to come back for me later. When I got older, I wondered if Kieran or my dad had killed her that night. But this was the whole reason I became an Interpol officer. I thought that maybe she’d made it to safety. That she was trying to find me too, and she was just in hiding somewhere. Biding her time until it was time for her to find me. So I thought I’d make it easier, and join the police, so that I could find her first,” Roisin murmurs.
“No wonder you’re so fucked up over this.”
She nods. “This isn’t just some news, Marco. It’s not something that’s like… disappointing, but not a big deal, to learn. I built my entire life around the assumption that my mum was out there, in hiding. That my father, or Kieran, had done something awful to her to separate us. I became a police officer, I sold information to Liam, all so that I could find her,” she says.
Her voice is desperate. It cracks, like something inside of her is fracturing.
I didn’t, however, miss that she said I sold information to Liam.
“She wasn’t forced away from me. She wasn’t hurt, or captured, or anything like that. She chose to walk away. Because she sold me. I wasn’t some kind of… product of love or anything like that. My mother made a deal with my father, and she sold me as part of it,” she spits out bitterly.
I shake my head. “It’s all fucked up.”
“That’s it?”
Looking at Roisin, I shrug. ‘What else do you want?”
Her mouth opens, then closes. “I don’t know. Maybe for you to be mad? Or just… I don’t know,” she admits.
“There are times when things happen to us and we can’t do anything about them. You were a kid. You had absolutely no influence in your mother’s decision. You didn’t choose to be conceived under a contract, you didn’t choose to be brought up the way you were. There’s nothing you can do about that. There never was,” I rumble.
Roisin rolls her eyes. “Look who’s doing therapy now.”
“All I’m saying is that life is fucking short and you only have so much time and energy. Don’t spend it looking at everything that could have happened. Don’t waste it on people who did what they did, if you don’t want to. You’re a grown-ass adult. If you want to keep talking to your mother, and feel that same shame or anger or whatever it is you’re feeling, do it. If you want to cut her out, do it. Either way, you get to choose.”
“Is that what you’d do?” she retorts. Her cheeks are flushed, and I can see her lips pressed together in anger.
Roisin narrows her eyes at me. “You’d just cut someone out?”
“Yes,” I nod.
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I’ve seen the lengths you’ll go to for your family.”
“As would you,” I snap.
Roisin freezes, the cup halfway to her lips. “What?”
“You, apparently, would do things for family too. You just said that you sold information to Liam. What information, Roisin?” I rasp.
My own anger is building. If she sold me out, if that was the reason for that day in the cottage…
“Oh shut the fuck up,” she barks at me. “I was feeding Liam information from my job so that he would help me keep looking for my mum. God damn it Marco, not everything is about you!” she shouts.
She punctuates her shout with a champagne glass, tossed directly at my head. I duck, and it descends into the spring. Roisin makes an angry little noise, then turns on her heel, stomping up and out of the stone steps, toward the Range Rover.
I watch her go, noting how the water slides down off of her perfect ass.
Fuck, she didn’t even stop to get a towel or the sandals I’d brought to cover her feet. With the near inch of snow on the ground, she’s going to freeze.
Goddamn it.
“Don’t run away from me like that, Roisin!” I bellow. I slosh up and out of the spring, grabbing the bag of towels as I go. “You don’t get to run away from me!”
“I do whatever I want!” she tosses over her shoulder. “You’re not my keeper, Marco DeLuca!”
“Like hell I’m not!” I growl.
Roisin might be athletic, but she’s short. Without breaking into a somewhat undignified run, she’ll never escape my longer legs.
I use that to my full advantage. I grab one of the towels out of the bag, then get it in both of my hands. I come up behind her and bundle her in the towel, wrapping it around her arms and torso.
She kicks and hisses like an angry cat, but I just wrap the towel tighter. I scoop Roisin up, tossing her over my shoulder while I stalk up to the Range Rover.
Unlocking the door, I gently set her on the seat. Her limbs are still covered by the towel, and she looks at me like she’d bite me, if she could.
I blink at her. “You were going to sit on the seat dripping wet. It ruins the leather.”
“I fucking hope so!” she shrieks at me.
I shut the door, then go to retrieve our bag.
A smile tugs at the edges of my mouth.
Roisin is pissed. Genuinely raging angry.
And it’s so much better than her being locked away behind bars of sadness and fear.
By the time I pick everything up and we’re on the way again, Roisin has calmed somewhat. She refuses to speak to me, which I find I’m also annoyed by. It makes me want to reach out and hold her. Ask if she’s okay.
Do anything except sit and be surrounded by her stony silence.
She does notice, however, when we don’t continue on the road back to the lake house.
“If you’re taking me somewhere to kill me, De Luca, you should know I won’t go down easy.”
I can’t help it. I laugh. “If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it in a million different ways by now, Rosin.”
She snorts. “You’d wait until it was perfectly to your advantage.”
My heart twists a little, but not because she’s wrong.
“I’m not used to being so predictable,” I murmur.
“Well. I guess not everyone would notice,” Roisin responds.
But she does notice.
The mountain road gets steeper, and I’m grateful for the SUV’s off-road capabilities. At this point, we’re practically plowing through snow, and when we finally roll up to the little cabin I found, the snow is coming down thick and heavy.
Roisin peers around, her face pinched in worry. “Okay seriously, Marco. I will haunt you forever if you kill me.”
“It’s a long way back to the lake house,” I explain. “I didn’t want to drive in the weather, and I wasn’t sure how long we’d be at the spring, so I rented this.”
Her eyebrow rises, and before she can say it, I cut her off.
“I used one of my aliases, and it’s rented in cash. Honestly, Roisin. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Not the word I’d use, but the sentiment is true,” she mutters.
I chuckle, then step out of the Range Rover. “Stay here until I come get you,” I say to Roisin.
“I’m perfectly capable—”
“The snow is almost a foot deep. I’ll carry you in, unless you want your feet to freeze?” I eye her naked toes meaningfully.
She wrinkles her nose. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
Shutting the door to the Rover, I trudge through the shin-high snow and punch in the key to the little rental. The cabin opens, and I quickly set the heat on. It’s not a huge space. The main room flows into a kitchen, and just beyond I can see the door that leads to the bedroom and bathroom. The furniture is well-worn, but clean; a leather couch, thick rugs marking the space. It looks like the kitchen has been stocked too, which was one of the conditions of the rental.
Good.
There’s a wood fireplace as well, but I’ll have to mess with that later. I want Roisin in here and out of the cold before it gets too bad.
I retrieve her from the car, tucking her into my arms. She shivers, and I pull her closer. When we get into the cabin, I set her gently on the leather couch and wrap one of the blankets around her.
“I hope there’s a shower. I smell like hot spring,” Roisin murmurs.
“There’s a shower, but I can’t guarantee the water is hot.”
She shrugs. “I’ll see about that.”
Roisin stands, and I wince as her perfect feet touch the cold wood floor. I want to sweep her up in my arms again so she doesn’t have to walk across the cabin, but she’s gone before I get the chance. I hear the shower start to run, and I return to the Range Rover for the rest of our supplies.
By the time I’m done, Roisin steps out from the shower, a luxurious looking towel wrapped around her body. Whoever put this place together did it with a kind of quiet luxury in mind, and it makes me feel a little settled.
If it had been a dump, I would have taken Roisin back to the lake house, weather be damned.
“I’d like some clothes, De Luca,” she says.
I don’t miss the breathiness in her voice, however.
My eyes follow the path of a water drop as it rolls down her neck, stopping right at the space of the hollow of her throat. She’s so fucking pretty. The water drop stops right next to the little freckle that I’ve licked before.
I want to lick it again.
The taste of her skin…
“Marco. Clothes,” she holds out one of her hands.
Robotically, I grab her bag and put it into her hands.
Roisin spins on her heel, heading back into the bathroom.
Leaving me, staring.
Wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
Eventually, Roisin comes out, fully dressed in so much clothing that I’m surprised she’s not roasting hot.
Well. She is hot.
But I don’t think she’s going to admit that, and I don’t mean it in terms of her temperature.
“Your turn,” she waves at the shower.
I don’t need to be reminded. However, instead of lingering like Roisin, I quickly move through and wash up, then exit to find her in the kitchen.
Something smells good.
“I hope you know I can’t cook for shit,” she mutters.
I smile. “I remember that.”
Her green eyes flick to mine, then she looks down. “It’s nothing special. You’re stocked with sausages and the stuff for colcannon, so that’s what I’m making.”
“The cabin came with food,” I say.
She stops chopping, looking down at the food with suspicion. “Just randomly? So how do you know it’s not poisoned—”
I lean in, quickly sampling each one of the ingredients. Raw potatoes taste like shit, and the sausage is mostly cooked, but hot.
Roisin’s jaw drops. “Marco! What if that had been poisoned!”
“Then the right person ate it,” I say.
I mean it, too. I would fucking throw myself in front of a bus to save Roisin.
And I hope she knows it.
Since when?
Emotions scrape at the inside of my chest, and I turn, leaving the kitchen to sit on one of the rustic looking chairs balanced at the edge of the counter.
Having her here, her hair still damp, her skin fresh from the shower, her eyes furrowed in concentration, is too much like our time in her little seaside cottage.
And if I remember that time, the only word I have to describe it is…
Happy.
That was the last time that I truly was happy.
Not with my family. Not living under the thumb of my parents legacy.
In a seaside cottage, practically a prisoner.
With her.
“I don’t want you doing stupid shit like that, Marco,” she chides. “I think we both need to be a little more careful—”
Fuck it.
It takes me two seconds to cross the kitchen.
One to put my hands on either side of her, trapping her against the counter.
A half second to meet her eyes, to hover over her lips, to make sure that she’s not saying no.
When the plush pink of her lips parts, I take my chance.
I dive in, and I kiss Roisin with every fucking pent up emotion that is tearing my heart apart.
Happy.
I want to be happy. I want this, and I’m not fucking strong enough to fight it anymore.
Roisin makes me happy.
And fuck me.
I want to make her happy too.
ROISIN
Lord help me, I should fight this kiss.
But I don’t want to.
Marco might not want anything to do with me, but he brought me to a damn tiny crevice in the mountains to cheer me up. He carried me across the snow so that I didn’t have to touch it. He made sure that the food I’m eating isn’t poisoned, for Christ’s sakes.
Marco De Luca might not want me, but he also has shown me more kindness and love than I’ve felt in years.
And I’m just a girl. I can’t be expected to hold out under these conditions. On top of all of that, Marco walked out of the shower without a shirt on, and the curve of his muscles made me practically salivate with want.
I’m not strong enough to resist him. Complicated, messy, as awful as this is.
I want him. Pure, simple, and clean.
So I cave.
When his hand curls behind my neck, tugging my lips up to his, I moan and lean into it. The feeling of him pinning me to the counter should scare me. It should scare me a lot.
Except with Marco, I never feel trapped.
And while I’ve been scared plenty, he doesn’t scare me.
I’m so tired of fighting this. Marco is like a drug, I know I’m an addict, and right now, I’m not strong enough to say no.
I kiss him with everything I’ve got.
It’s not just a kiss. It’s consuming. Marco’s body is everywhere. The kitchen is small, absolutely, but it gets smaller by the second as his lips skate over my neck.
He smells good. Comforting.
Sexy.
I gasp when his hands scoop underneath my legs and lift me up onto the counter. I’m wearing some soft lounge pants and a tank top with a sweater over it, all selected from the bag that he packed for me.
Leaning back on the countertop, I shiver as Marco’s hand finds its way under my shirt, tracing up the line of my stomach toward my breasts.
He moans when he finds out my choice (or lack thereof) in underwear.
“Jesus, Roisin. If I’d known…”
“You knew,” I murmur. “You didn’t pack me a comfy bra, so I had to make do.”
Marco’s eyes shoot up to mine, and I can tell that he’s genuinely worried for a second. I lean forward and press a kiss between his eyebrows.
“I’m teasing you,’ I whisper.
The brown of his eyes flashes. “If that’s the decision you made, I’m throwing out every fucking bra I can find,” he growls.
I laugh, but before I’m even really aware of it he has my shirt tugged up and over my head.
I shiver, but not because the air in the cabin is cold.
Marco’s looking at me like he wants to devour me. Like I’m some kind of feast, spread out for him.
I tilt back, leaning on my elbows on the countertop.
“You,” Marco growls, the sound of his voice a low and tantalizing rumble, “are the most beautiful fucking woman I’ve ever seen.”
I turn my head, feeling a blush creep up my cheeks. “I bet you say that to all the half-naked girls you see.”
“No,” he rasps, his lips an inch from one of my nipples. “I don’t.”
When his mouth closes around me there, I arch, gasping like I’ve been struck by a live wire.
The thing is, normally I’d assume that men would say anything to me in this position. That they’d lie to get what they wanted.
Marco doesn’t lie.
Oh sure, he withholds information. He uses his considerable intellect to his advantage.
But I’ve never heard him tell an outright lie…
Not like I did.
I shake off the thought. I didn’t lie to Marco; I didn’t tell him who I was. It wasn’t relevant until it was.
His teeth bite lightly on the underside of my breast, shocking me back into the moment. I moan, my fingers scraping along the back of his neck and his well-trimmed hair.
“The things you do to me,” he rumbles.
He has absolutely no idea.
“I want more. Please,” I whisper. I don’t even care that I’m begging.
It feels safe to beg him because I know he’ll give me exactly what I want.
Marco grunts, picking me up again, spinning me over to the worn leather couch. It’s warm now, from the fire that he lit before he went to shower. My back sticks slightly to the leather, but Marco’s hands on my hips distract me. He tugs my pants down, leaving me bare to the fire.
And to him.
It’s so much like that time at the cottage…
The night that he found out about me.
I shudder. I don’t want history to repeat itself, but I’m not sure at this point what Marco knows and doesn’t know about me.
And I don’t want to ruin this moment. Not when I want it so badly.
Not when I need him like I need my next breath.
Marco’s eyes are so dark, they look black. I can see the fire reflected there, and when he looks at me, with the flickering light caressing his skin, he looks like some kind of primal god.
Like something from a fairy tale.
“I’m going to taste you,” he rumbles. One of his big hands slides up my leg, pushing it to the side, opening me to him.
I throw my head back, arching my chest up. He groans, and one hand presses against my hip, pinning me to the couch.
I’m halfway to telling him that he’s being bossy and arrogant and that I need him to hurry up when he takes one long lick at my center.
All the words fly from my mind after that.
There’s nothing left to do except feel. Every sensation feels like a revelation. I somehow notice everything… the way Marco plays with the center of my pleasure. The grip of his hands on my thighs. The way one of his hands slowly escapes and moves up to grab my breast, as though it has a mind of its own.
The way his tongue spears inside me, then retreats.
The way he consumes me like a starving man, and I can do nothing but hold on.
“God, Roisin. Your taste. It’s everything I’ve ever fucking wanted,” he groans.
I should probably warn him that I’ve never actually come before like this. I’d also like the chance to taste him as well, while we’re on the subject…
I wiggle a little, trying to escape his grasp, but his hands push down on me hard enough that I crack an eye open to look at him.
The look he gives me is wicked. There’s no other word to describe it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he growls.
“I…well, you see, I’ve just never… this is not going to um… work,” I say, well aware of how lame my words sound. I don’t want to tell him that I haven’t had a partner before. I have no idea if he can make me come like this, but I definitely don’t want to give the impression that I don’t know what he’s doing.
That he’s the only one to touch me like this.
Marco pulls back. His lips shine with my moisture, and the sight makes me blush.
“You’ve never come like this, right?”
I shake my head from side to side, embarrassment choking any chance of words off.
“And you think that’s going to stop me from trying?”
My jaw works, opening and shutting. How do I tell him that I’m nervous? That I don’t want him to feel like a failure? That I don’t want to disappoint him when he can’t make me finish this way?
Marco chuckles, the sound vibrating the whole way up into my center. “Oh Roisin. Have you ever seen me turn down a challenge before?”
“Wait…” I protest weakly.
But it’s too late.
His lips return, his tongue working me with a kind of intensity and precision that makes me jackknife up off the couch. I wriggle again, but he tugs me closer.
Marco looks up at me, the challenge clear in his gaze.
When he presses one thick finger inside me, I lean back, gasping at the pressure.
He laughs. “Oh I think you can do better than that, Roisin.”
Another finger joins the first.
The pressure is intense. It’s exquisite. Somehow he works a spot deep inside my body that makes me feel like I’m about to fall apart at the seams. When a third finger is added, I writhe, part in pleasure, part in pain.
But not bad pain. The type of pain that seems to scrape each of my nerves, one by one, until I’m just putty in Marco’s hands.
It’s somewhere in this boneless state that I notice something building at the base of my awareness, at the edge of my spine. I’ve had orgasms before; I’m not unfamiliar with the sensation.
But the way this one feels is entirely different.
“I can feel you, Roisin,” Marco grunts from between my legs. “I need you to come for me, baby.”
“Marco…”
“Come for me,” he commands.
God help me.
His words push me over the edge.
I scream, my hands scrambling for purchase on the couch, tugging at his hair as I try to get away from him, try to get closer to him. I’m not sure where I need to go, because the orgasm that’s ripping through me robs me of all my senses.
“Good girl,” he rasps.
I shudder, the words somehow sinking an extra little punch into the waves of desire already racking my body. I don’t know where I end, or where Marco begins.
I don’t even know if I’m fully in control of myself, or if he’s the only one in charge.
Eventually, the buzzing in my head settles down. My breath rasps in and out of my lungs, and I’m aware of the loud noise it makes in the otherwise quiet cabin.
Marco waits, patiently, at the edge of the couch.
I prop myself up on my elbows, blinking down at him.
It’s a good thing that his lips turn up into a smile, because I’ve no idea what to say.
“No one else has made you come like that?” he growls.
Numb, I nod.
“Good. Because what I want to do to you Roisin, no one will ever do. Do you hear me? The way I’m going to fuck you, there will be no other man who can do that like I can.”
I want to roll my eyes, but I’m struck with another one of those stray thoughts.
Marco doesn’t lie.
I gulp. Does he mean right now? As in, we’re going to do this at the moment? Here? On the couch, this very second?
His eyes flash. “Do you want that?”
Of course I do. I nod.
His grin is sinful. “Good. But first, I think something is burning.”
I finally notice the scent that I thought was just my own post-orgasm haze. Scrambling up, I look at the stove, and shriek. “Help me get these out!” I say.
Marco laughs, coming up to cover me with a blanket. “There’s more food, love. We’ll figure it out.”
He moves into the kitchen, but one word rings through my mind like a bell.
Love.
