Irish princess, p.11
Irish Princess, page 11
I give myself a second to come down from it, to float in the hazy, warm afterglow of my orgasm, before I text back.
I came too, just now. And it felt incredible. I won’t regret it. But I should probably get some sleep.
It feels cold, to cut him off like that, but I’m suddenly gripped with a post-orgasmic fear of what else he might say, of what late-night feelings might slip out, technological pillow talk brought on by satisfaction and alcohol. I’m really tired, I add.
That’s alright, lass. I have a long day too tomorrow.
For a moment, three dots hover on my screen, then disappear, then hover, then disappear, as if Niall is typing and retyping words he’s not sure he should say. I’m both afraid to know what they are and devastatingly curious, but when his last text comes through, it’s only Goodnight, Saoirse.
Goodnight, I type back, feeling an odd kind of disappointment.
I set the phone down, caught between the thrill of what I just did for the first time, and a lingering guilt and strange melancholy. Niall can never mean to me what I know he wants to. He can never be the love of my life. No one can, because Connor refuses to fill that spot, and so long as I’m married to him, my loyalty will always have to be first and foremost to him despite that. Whoever else comes into my life, they will always be second to Connor. Always a lover in the shadows, hidden and secret, always an afterthought.
I know that’s not what Niall wants. I also know he’s preparing himself to be just that, telling himself he’d rather wait for me and have some part of me than nothing at all.
After Connor and I sleep together, will I still ache every time I remember that he’s not the one who wants me this way?
It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. I was only able to imagine Niall coming for me because I’ve seen Connor do it, because he taught me about the way a man looks when he’s hard, the way he reacts, the groans and twitches and taste and scents, all the sensory experiences of arousing a man.
But this wasn’t with Connor. Because I’d been sure enough that he wouldn’t care that he hadn’t been the one I sent the messages to.
I want to talk to him. Still dizzy and tipsy, I clutch my phone to my chest, the hazy satisfaction of my orgasm blurring away in the sudden ache of wanting the man I’m supposed to be marrying very soon.
There’s absolutely no reason why I should call him. He’s at his bachelor party tonight, and if I didn’t think he wanted a sexy photo of me, I’m even more sure he doesn’t want to talk to me. But the hastily drank champagne is taking effect, and I find myself blearily hitting his name in my contacts, holding the phone up to my ear.
“Saoirse?” He answers after the second ring, his voice hoarse and just a bit drunk too, and my heart leaps at the sound of it.
“Connor.”
“Why are you calling me? Aren’t you supposed to be eating dick lollipops or something with your friends?” His voice is faintly teasing and the slightest bit slurred, and it gives me a courage I didn’t have before.
It almost makes me wish I had sent him the picture.
“They were penis cupcakes,” I tell him firmly. “And they’ve all been eaten. Everyone else is asleep.”
“But you’re still awake?”
“There was champagne to drink still.” I hiccup a little, and I hear a small chuckle on the other end of the line.
“Princess, I think you’re drunk.”
“Maybe.” I hiccup again. “I think I like it when you call me princess, actually.”
“Now I know you’re drunk.”
“Probably,” I agree. “The cupcakes were much smaller than your dick.”
“I’m pleased to hear you remember it was bigger,” Connor says dryly. “Although right now it’s not in the state you remember.”
“Well, in about a week, we’ll change that.”
“Oh?” I hear an odd note in his voice.
“Our wedding night,” I remind him.
“Oh.” He repeats the word, but differently. “You’re right. One week.”
“You sound like you’re not looking forward to it.” I can’t keep a note of disappointment out of my voice.
“Oh I am, princess. But I was about to fall asleep before you called, and if I think too much about it, I’ll have to jerk off again.”
Again? I swallow hard. The conversation is taking a turn I hadn’t expected, and I know it’s because he’s drunk. “And you don’t want to?”
“I can only enjoy my own hand so many times before it gets old.”
“What if I did it with you?” The words come out before I can stop them. “We could both—”
“Where are you, princess?” There’s an edge to his voice that wasn’t there before. “In bed?”
“I’m—” For some reason, I tell him the truth. “I’m sitting on the bathroom floor, drinking champagne. Well, the champagne is gone now. But I was.”
“And the door is locked?”
“Yes.” My voice catches. “Are you going to—”
“Tell you what to do? I certainly am, princess. It sounds like you’ve been a bad girl, drinking champagne alone in the bathroom and thinking about me until you’re so drunk and wet that you called me in the middle of the night. That’s not a very virginal thing to do, now is it?”
“You’ve made me do a lot of things that weren’t very virginal,” I retort, my words slurring the tiniest bit.
“That’s absolutely right, princess. Now slide your hand into your panties, and tell me how wet you are.”
“I’m soaked,” I whisper. “Are you hard, too?”
“I’m getting there,” he assures me, and I want desperately to ask him to send me a picture, but I don’t dare. He’d probably laugh at me, or come to my senses, and I don’t want that to happen. I’m turned on all over again, aching to experience this with him, and I lick my lips nervously as I wait for his next words to float to me.
“Ah,” he groans. “There, I’m rock hard now.” I hear the rustling of blankets, and the sound of flesh on flesh. “Mm, it is better, knowing you’re doing it too. Are you rubbing your clit, Saoirse?”
“Yes,” I whisper, my fingers starting to move of their own accord as I do exactly that.
“Good girl. You can’t come until I tell you. I don’t want you orgasming until I’m ready to come for you, too.” His voice is thick, hot, and I can tell that he’s very drunk—as drunk as I am, probably.
I wonder if he’ll remember this in the morning. I wonder if he’ll regret it.
I don’t know if I want him to remember or not.
“Slide two fingers inside for me, princess. Are you doing it now?”
I reach down, slipping two fingers inside my pussy as I rub the heel of my hand against my clit, feeling the pulse of it, the way I tighten. “Yes.”
“That’ll be my cock very soon,” Connor groans, and I hear the sound of him stroking faster now. “But I’ll fill you up so much more. It’ll feel so good for you, I promise. I’ll make it good for you—” he moans, and I gasp, biting my lip hard against my own whimpers as I thrust my fingers inside, imagining it’s him.
“Go back to rubbing your clit for me, princess. Tell me how it feels.”
“Wet—and hot—and good—” Words are starting to escape me, my arousal flooding out and coating my fingers, my muscles tightening as I get closer to an orgasm. “I want to come, Connor, please—I’m close—”
“Not yet,” he bites out. “God, I want your mouth right now, Saoirse. I want you to swallow my cum, fuck—”
“Please,” I whimper into the phone, keeping my voice to a hushed whisper. “Please let me come.”
“When I do. Fuck, I’m close too, hold on just a second, princess and we’ll come together—”
I used to hate him calling me that, but in my drunken haze, overwhelmed with need and hearing him rasp it between the fleshy strokes of his hand on his cock, it sounds hotter than I could have ever imagined. “Please come for me, Connor, please,” I moan, arching my back as I keep rubbing lightly, trying not to go over the edge. “Please, I need it—”
“Yes! Fuck, Saoirse—” he growls out my name. “Now! Come for me now, I’m coming—”
I hear him grunt on the other end of the phone, hear the moan as he starts to come, and I throw my head back, arching against the wall as I squirm with my hand tight between my thighs, rubbing and grinding as I come for the second time, my hand and thighs and panties soaked with my arousal as I hear the sounds of Connor orgasming too.
He’s breathless as I hear the rustling of the bed, his soft groans as the orgasm tapers off, and I feel the last shudders going through me too. “Connor?” I whisper softly.
“That’s enough, Saoirse,” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice that wasn’t there before. “Get some sleep. You shouldn’t still be up.”
“Are you giving me a bedtime?” There’s an acid touch to my tone too that wasn’t there before.
“Be careful that I don’t. Goodnight, Saoirse.” There’s still the drunken slur, but a crispness too, the blunt Connor that I’m more used to.
It hurts, because I know it’s the clarity that follows climax, and that he’s wishing he hadn’t let it go that far.
Niall was worried I’d regret our conversation, and Connor is already regretting this one.
Fuck.
“Goodnight,” I mumble into the phone, but it’s already clicked off.
I fight back hot, drunken tears as I fix my clothing, leaving the champagne bottle and glass on the table as I make my way back to my bed. I don’t bother stripping out of my clothes, pulling the throw blanket over me as I curl atop the duvet, letting out small hiccupping sobs as I let exhaustion overtake me.
I don’t remember falling asleep. When I wake up, the entire night comes back to me in stark clarity, along with a raging headache. I reach for my phone, my heart beating fast as I wonder if I dreamed it, but when I look at my texts from Niall, it’s very clear that I didn’t.
There on my phone, along with all the dirty messages, is the picture of his cock, his hand streaked with his cum.
Quickly, I delete all the photos and the message thread. I hit the call button, perched on the edge of the bed as the phone rings, feeling a little crazed as I wait for him to answer.
His voice is sleepy when he does. “It’s barely five in the morning, lass,” he groans. “Not that I’m not happy to hear from you any time of day or night. But if you want an encore, you’ll have to let me wake up a bit more, if you take my meaning.”
“You need to delete those pictures,” I say, my voice a desperate whisper. “I shouldn’t have—I can’t believe I—”
There’s silence on the other end for a moment. “Ah, Saoirse,” he says finally. “I worried you might have regrets. I should have stopped you last night, not egged you on. I—”
He doesn’t have to say more, we both know what the unspoken words are. As the sober one, he should have stopped it, but he wanted it too badly to do so. Just like I did.
“I already deleted them,” he says a moment later. “I had a feeling you’d ask that of me, and besides, it’s not wise to have pictures like that of you on my phone, no matter how much I’d like to look at them again.”
I go very quiet. I don’t know what to say to that—that he was gentlemanly enough to wipe away the evidence without my even having had to ask, despite the fact that I know he didn’t want to. “Thank you,” I whisper finally.
“It’s nothing,” Niall says. “Don’t worry, I committed them to memory first,” he adds with a chuckle. “I’ll never forget last night.” His voice is more serious now. “Whatever else happens between us, lass, that was something I’ll remember often.”
“Niall—”
He cuts me off. “There’s something you should know, Saoirse,” he says quietly, and I wonder if he’s about to tell me he’s met someone else, or that he thinks we should stop altogether.
“What?” I whisper, and there’s quiet for a second.
“Connor found out that Max married Liam and Ana,” Niall says slowly. “A defrocked priest marrying them might still be legal in the eyes of the state with the right ordaining, which Max surely has, but not in the eyes of the Kings. He told Viktor to relay that information back to them. The Kings, that is.”
I feel slightly dizzy, clutching the phone tighter. “What—what are you saying?” He can’t mean what I think he does.
“He’s offered you back to Liam, if he admits that the marriage was done improperly, sets Ana aside, and follows through on his original promise to marry you. Then Liam keeps the seat, his heirs are pleasing to the Kings, and Connor goes back to London.”
I actually feel as if I’m about to pass out. “He can’t—do that. Can he? And if I went back to Liam—you—”
“That would be the end of any chance for anything between you and I, lass, that’s true.” There’s a rough, painful note to Niall’s voice as he says it that hurts to hear. “I can’t touch you if you’re Liam’s. But I think that’s not what you’re most upset about right now.”
The way he cuts to the very heart of it, no matter how much that truth must hurt him, feels like a knife to my chest—because it’s true. It’s not the idea of losing my chance at enjoying pleasure with Niall, though I feel a wash of disappointment at that thought, but the idea that Connor could barter me back so easily, as if I didn’t mean anything to him. As if he’d just as soon go back to London as marry me, and hand me back to his brother. As if the idea of Liam being the one to claim my virginity after all, instead of him, means nothing.
I remember the strange tone of his voice last night when I’d mentioned our wedding night, and it suddenly makes sense.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” I whisper. “Liam won’t do it.”
“No, he won’t,” Niall agrees. “And Connor’s plan means nothing anyway, because Liam had the marriage blessed by the priest at St. Paul’s while you and your father were in London. He wanted to wait for Father Donahue to do it, but since it seemed expedient and he was already working with the priest to have his father re-interred in the cemetery, he thought to kill two birds with one stone, as it were. So Connor’s discovery isn’t the big wrench in the plans that he thinks it is.”
I feel faint all over again, but for a different reason—relief mixed with the lingering hurt that regardless of whether it worked, Connor still was willing to barter me like a prize heifer. “So why did you tell me?” I snap, my voice slightly accusatory. “To scare me?”
“No, lass,” Niall says gently. “Because I thought you should know what Connor was willing to do, to have his old life back. Because I know no matter how you fight it, and no matter what there might be between us, you have feelings for him. You should know the truth of the man you’re about to marry, all of it.”
I let myself sit with that for just a moment. “You’re right,” I murmur finally. “I’m glad you told me. Even if—it does hurt to know.”
“I hope you’re not angry with me, lass.”
I shake my head, even though I know he can’t see it. “No, I’m not angry with you.”
“Good. Now lass, I need sleep. You wore me out last night.” There’s a teasing note in his voice, trying to lighten the mood, but I feel as if there’s a weight on my chest.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Bye, Niall.”
“I’ll talk to you later, lass.”
I set the phone down, all too aware of how careful he was not to say the word goodbye. I’ve noticed that words seem to mean something to Niall, more than to most. He’s careful to try to say the right thing, to not speak out of turn, to consider his words. It’s a rare trait for a man so steeped in violence, who’s job is to do the bloody work Liam doesn’t wish to do, to protect Liam and fight with him or even for him if need be.
I lay back in bed, tossing my phone aside as tears well in my eyes. I’d known that Connor wasn’t going to love me. I’d known that any hopes I had for passion or romance in my marriage were not going to be fulfilled in him. I’d accepted that as part of our bargain, even if I wished sometimes it could be otherwise.
But this feels like a new, deeper blow.
I won’t see him until our wedding day. I wonder if the pain will ease before then, or if I’ll look at him through my veil and hate him for being willing to throw me back so easily. I wonder how those feelings will change over the coming days and weeks and months, if it will drive a wedge between us that can’t be pulled free.
I wonder if he even cares.
11
CONNOR
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Unfortunately not.” Viktor raises one shoulder as he looks at me from across the table at the back of the small café. There’s an untouched coffee in front of me, nothing in front of Viktor. “It seems Liam was a step ahead of us in this. Smart of him.”
“So it was a waste of time.” I run my hand through my hair, frustration, anger, and relief flooding me all at once—and anger over the relief, too.
I’m frustrated at how difficult this is proving, even now that I’m back. I’m angry that Liam has outsmarted me, even though once upon a time I would have been proud of him. And I’m relieved, because this means I won’t lose Saoirse. I’ll marry her after all, in a week’s time, and then I’ll take the pleasure I’ve waited this long to claim.
I’m angry that I’m relieved, because I don’t want her to have that much power over me and my emotions.
I haven’t gotten the memory of our drunken phone sex out of my head. I can’t. I’d come again to the memory of it, just this morning. Her sweet, slurring voice, thick with need, teasing me back to an erection and then begging me to let her come—it’s a sound I could hear over and over. And the bite to her voice later—the Saoirse I know well, still there underneath it.
No matter how much I fight it, she’s a good match for me, in temperament as well as values and pedigree. And our chemistry—
I’m deeply, viscerally glad that I won’t be handing her back to Liam. That I won’t return to London with the bitter knowledge that my brother is taking what should be mine to claim.
