9. Caroline
CAROLINE
It feels like a hush falls over the bar as I lean in for my drink, trying to keep the pressure of our connected arms steady.
I don’t want to move. I want another drink, something for confidence.
The second whiskey burns a warm trail down my throat, but it falls into my stomach softer than the first did, like it has a landing pad.
Or maybe it’s just Paul, the shimmering specks of green in his eyes, the way they light up when I laugh.
He watches me like he has all the time in the world, like I’m some old film he wants to study frame by frame.
It should feel invasive, but it doesn’t.
I can’t remember the last time I felt seen and it didn’t scare me.
“You’re really not what I expected,” I say before I think better of it.
His lips quirk. “Should I be offended?”
“No,” I say quickly, heat rising to my cheeks. “Just…you’re good at this. The whole dating thing.”
He lifts his glass, swirling the amber liquid inside like it’s something sacred. “Maybe I’m fooling you.”
I try to scoff, but it comes out too soft, caught in my chest with my heaving breaths. It comes out too close to something else, to an admission. I shift in my seat, suddenly aware of the slow ache building between my thighs. The part of me I wrote off a long time ago.
He leans closer, eyes scanning mine like they’re a puzzle he wants to solve. “Do you want to get out of here?”
My pulse spikes.
There it is. The proposition.
I shouldn’t even consider it. I barely know this man. But I feel like I do, and I feel like we’re going to be in each other’s lives for a long time.
I glance at my phone. No emergencies. Alaina told me the boys could stay over at her house, made me swear to have fun.
I’ve been making good on that promise. And now I could have even more fun.
My pussy clenches at the thought. It strikes through my brain, a zap of lust. Paul holding my wrists over my head, telling me to just lie still.
Paul touching me until I come undone from underneath him.
“Your place?” I ask, my voice lower than I expect.
“Only if you want to.”
I nod.
He pays the tab without a word, and we walk to his car in silence.
The night air is crisp, biting at my exposed arms, and he rubs my arm when he sees me holding them close to my chest. His button-up moves with him, and I can see muscles peeking through.
He opens the door for me. That part almost breaks me.
His car is fancy, and more than that, it’s clean. Not clean like he never uses it but clean like he thought I might care and wanted to make a good impression.
We drive in silence. The kind that crackles. He doesn’t touch me at all, and the careful restraint makes me want him more.
When we pull up, my stomach flips nervously. His house is sleek, perched on a hill overlooking the quiet. Too nice for someone in insurance. But then again, so is he.
He unlocks the door and lets me step in first.
The inside is just as composed as him. Minimal. Masculine. Like no one lives here, like a performance.
I stand awkwardly in the foyer until he says, “Tea? Wine? Something stronger?”
“Tea,” I answer, surprising myself.
He disappears into the kitchen. I take a slow walk around the living room. There are no family pictures. No clutter. Just smooth surfaces and shadows.
He returns with two mugs. Hands me one. The ceramic is warm against my palms.
We sit on the couch, a respectful distance apart.
“You can relax,” he says gently. “You’re safe here.”
I nod, not quite believing it. Not quite caring.
We sip in silence. Eventually, I say, “I don’t really do this.”
“Do what?”
I laugh slightly, like he doesn’t know he’s going to get some. “Aren’t you coy?” I say into my mug, letting the hot drink catch my words.
He sets his mug down. Turns to face me fully. And shifts closer. The heat of his body seeps into mine. His hand finds my knee, gentle and still. A question, not a demand.
When I don’t pull away, his thumb strokes once across my skin.
He leans in slowly, like he’s giving me time to change my mind.
I don’t.
His lips brush mine. Soft. Barely there. And then firmer.
My breath catches as I kiss him back. I pull away slightly, too caught up to remember the steps, the next motion. I cover my face and almost whimper, “I mean, I really don’t do this.”
His hands cover mine, pull them from my face, and cup my jaw. “You have before,” he says simply. “I’ll lead, and you follow.”
His hand slides up my arm, and I close my eyes, giving in. Following. His palm slides over my shoulder. His mouth finds my neck, kissing a line of fire along my skin.
When our mouths meet again, I gasp against his tongue and wrap my arms around the back of his neck, my fingers finding his hair.
His hands move underneath my thighs, and he lifts me like I’m nothing, standing up and bringing me with him, draped around his waist. Being held this way awakens a long-dormant animal in me, and I moan as my kiss becomes more fervent.
I grind against his hard cock, his bulge pressing against my wanton slit through two pairs of jeans.
Warm hands paw at my waist, needing to be against my skin, before he crashes through a door with me still around him, still kissing him.
He sets me down on the bed, and I have only a second to look around at the again astoundingly empty room before his hands are on my cheeks, swiping the hair from my face, and our eyes are looking back and forth, searching for answers.
I feel like I’m in a movie, like we’re the leads and us finding our way to each other is all that matters.
He reaches for the hem of my shirt and whispers, “Is this okay?” When I nod, he pulls it up over my head, and I reach for his belt buckle, tugging at it, the angst growing in me.
But Paul shakes his head with a sly smile, murmuring, “Dirty girl,” and sinking to his knees. He unbuttons my jeans, and the excitement slides down my stomach, locking into place when I feel the pressure of his hands so near where I want him.
He pulls my jeans down my legs, kissing my thighs as he does so, and one of his fingers slides down the center of my underwear.
He pushes just knuckle deep into my warm center from outside my panties, and I gasp, surprised by how much I like the small contact.
Automatically, my legs open for him, like muscle memory.
“You’re soaked already,” he groans, and he bends his head between my thighs, plunging his tongue into me, still from outside the thin cotton.
Even through it, the sensation of being filled is a bit of relief for the longing, and I wrap my legs around his shoulders.
He grips my ankles for a second before rubbing my legs as he starts to nibble on my clit.
Gasping, I beg him, “Paul, please, I want it.”
Leaning back on his heels, he looks at me and grins. “You what?”
I smack him with my shirt. “Quit.”
“No, say it again,” he says, but this time his voice is firmer. A jolt of electric excitement and a tinge of fear run through me.
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” he says as he yanks my underwear down and over my feet, throwing them to the side. He buries his tongue into me, spreading my legs apart, his fingers biting into my thighs in a familiar way.
Just for a second, I nudge him away, that’s how familiar it feels. My stomach lining thickens as I think of that night. The hands on me, the tongues on and in me, the kissing, the fingertips digging into my skin…
Shaking my head, I push the flashback away and pull Paul in closer. “Sorry,” I murmur.
“You sure? Are you okay?” he asks quietly, leaning his warm cheek against the inside of my leg. He teases my slit with his finger, running the tip up and down, until my face burns at the squelching sound it makes.
Silently, I nod, closing my eyes and breathing deep.
With one hand, I reach for one of my nipples, squeezing it, trying to get back into the headspace to be in the moment with Paul.
Paul with his big hands and secret muscles, Paul with his opening doors and yearning stares.
I’m here with Paul, not there with them.
Slowly, I ground myself back in the moment and feel sensation again, his tongue flat against the tender skin of my folds.
His fingers work into me at the same time that his tongue works outside of me.
The man over top of me, holding my legs open, pumping into me with two fingers while his brother ate me out…
Paul’s finger is gentle, only one digit deep, prodding, letting me miss it, letting me want more. His tongue covers all of me, flat, not teasing but giving.
Kellan sucking on my clit while another man sucks on my nipples…
Paul’s tongue sneaks inside me with his finger as his finger hooks into my tunnel, and his other hand slips up to the nipple I can’t touch. He’s mastered this technique. He almost feels like three men at once.
Three men at once, tying me down, asking me if I’m sure but promising to worship me until I am…
The relentless pounding of the masked man’s two fingers, his other hand clinging to my thigh, the way the heel of his hand hit me over and over as he reached the end of his finger, as there was no more to get inside me without fucking me…
Paul’s tongue is so far inside me that with the memory of a cock so far away, it feels like one.
I gasp as he reaches spots I’ve needed reached for so long, spots I thought were gone to me forever.
Heat rises in my chest, and sweat pricks at my breasts.
He doesn’t stop twirling my nipple, the pressure so light between his two fingers, and all the while his tongue and his fingers prod at my G-spot until I feel my climax building far earlier than I expected.
My thighs start to squeeze at that mounting relief, the slow tick up a roller coaster, the air in my lungs that I need to let go of, and right before my pussy lets go, the rest of the memory hits me over the head.
Pulling the knife across the man’s throat, looking back at me with blue eyes flecked with green as the other man’s eyes go blank…
An orgasm tears through me as my walls tighten around his tongue and fingers so hard that I worry he won’t be able to pull them out of me.
I grip the back of his head and pull him against me, riding his face from the edge of the bed, grinding against his chin, his nose, I don’t care as long as I can keep this wave alive.
My juices pour into his mouth, an orgasm plucked from my G-spot, and I cry out in agony and relief—it’s hard to tell which is which as heat courses through me. His tongue laps eagerly, treating himself to all of it, until he feels me calm beneath him.
Excitedly, Paul rips his shirt off over his head and steps out of his pants. He pushes me onto my back and mounts me, and his erection drags against the slick patch of pre cum between my legs. I’m so ready that I start to squirm.
Paul sits up and settles his cock at my slick entrance, pushing the thick head into me. I gasp, my hands trailing up his stomach, fingertips brushing over warm, taut muscle. I meet his eyes, those oceans of blue with green freckles .
A realization starts to flicker in me as he pushes deeper. My hands squeeze his shoulders instinctively. My pussy clenches, and I whimper.
Mumbled voices carry through the hallway outside the room.
I glance at Paul for an answer, but his expression is too content.
Too satisfied. Then it shifts, just slightly and just for a moment, into something else.
Not the pleasure of a man getting what he wants, but the dark, coiled delight of someone who’s earned this moment. Planned it even.
My hands drag to his chest, my eyes follow, and I freeze. A tattoo of a four-leaf clover with a dagger through it looks back at me from his glistening pec. No .
But that symbol was on someone whose face I saw , someone I would recognize , a man with colder eyes and darker hair, a sharper face.
The voices outside the room—they’re muffled. But familiar. Then loud and clear. Irish. One shouts, “Rian!” The name lands like a bullet between my ribs. I don’t know it.
But Paul glances at the door when he hears it.
Pieces of reality start to click, sickeningly, into place, even as Paul’s dick thrusts inside me. His tattoo, his silence.
My breath stutters. My vision tunnels. My lungs squeeze smaller and smaller with every passing second. I stare up at him and whisper, “Who are you?” But I already know the answer.
Paul lowers himself onto me fully, his weight on top of me, smothering and warm. He murmurs into my ear. Gravelly, low, and unmistakably Irish where it used to be a West Coast accent.
“I told you that you know who I am,” he says, kissing my neck. “I’ve been looking for you for so long, kitten.”
There was only one man that night who never spoke. One man who never showed his face. The man who held my legs open for his brother. Who fucked me with his fingers one second, and killed a man in front of me the next.
And now he’s inside me.
Moving like he belongs there, like he never left, like he’s always known me and my body.
My breath stalls in my throat as my swollen clit drags along his shaft with every pull and every thrust. My body betrays me, clinging to the illusion even as the truth tears it to shreds. I can’t scream, can’t say anything, can only listen as Rian says, “And I’ve finally found you.”