Chapter 43
FINALLY FREE
Caitríona
Our newest motel is the kind that pretends hard to be a hotel but doesn’t quite make the cut.
But it’s a step up at least. The floral bedspread barely hides the tattered edges, and the thinning carpet hardly provides any cushion underfoot.
But it’s quiet, peaceful and remote, and for tonight, it’s ours.
Rain scrapes the window, steady as a clock.
Matteo leans against the dresser, arms folded, watching me like he’s trying to read me.
“We could be across the Channel by morning,” he says softly. “We don’t have to go to Manhattan. We could try France or Spain… hell, we could chase the sun until we forget what clouds are.”
I sink onto the edge of the bed and stare at my hands. My knuckles are still scuffed. “You always did love a dramatic exit.”
“It’s not an exit if we keep going.” He pauses for a beat, worry in that jeweled gaze. “Talk to me, Kitty Cat.”
I could lie. I could give him another excuse. Instead, I swallow the thing that’s been a stone in my mouth since we returned to Belfast and opt for one of the truths.
“I have to see him.”
His jaw tightens, one clean line of worry. “Tiernan is dead. There’s no one left to—”
“Not Tiernan.” I force my eyes to his. “My father.”
The word lands, and we both listen to the echo.
Matteo pushes off the dresser, slowly, like he’s checking the floor for traps. “Caitríona…”
“I need a clean break from him, from my whole family.” The words bubble out before he can talk me out of it.
“No ghosts, no favors, no debts pressed into my palm the next time someone wants to pull my strings. I have to look him in the eye and say I’m done with him, with this life.
” I make my voice flat so it doesn’t shake.
“Otherwise, this follows me. Follows us, forever.”
He hears the plural, and I see it hit. His gaze flicks to my throat, to the spot his mouth knows, then back to my face. “There’s more though, isn’t there?” he asks gently. “You’re holding back something else.”
I look away. The rain worries the glass harder. My fingers drift like a traitor toward the blossom under my shirt and stop short. “I’m not ready.”
His breath leaves on a quiet curse that isn’t for me. He drags a hand through his hair, then nods. “Fine. Keep it until you are.” His eyes harden just a hair. “But if you’re going to your father, I’m going with you.”
“Matteo—”
“I don’t trust him.” His head whips back and forth. “And I trust Donal even less. I won’t let you walk into a room with either of them without me in it.”
Something in my chest loosens and stings at the same time. “You don’t get to decide—”
“I’m not deciding for you.” He takes a step closer, palms open like he’s leaving the choice in my hands and means it. “I’m deciding what I can live with. And what I can’t…”
The stupid part of me that wants to keep him safe rears up. The smarter part counts the bodies behind us and admits there’s no version of this that doesn’t involve risk. I let out a breath that tastes like surrender and steel.
“Okay,” I whisper. “You can come.”
He searches my face, like he still doesn’t trust the words. Then a nod, small and wrecked with relief. “We do it on our terms. I pick the time, place, and exit routes.”
“I’m assuming Leo will come along too?”
“Leo will have a coronary.” His mouth twitches. “He’ll stay close.”
I should let the plan build between us, brick by brick, until it’s solid enough to stand on.
Instead, something else rises. It’s the thing that’s been living under my sternum since he came back from the mill, since the hangar, since the rain on the Jersey porch.
The thing that almost made me turn, almost made me run.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and it’s not for agreeing. It’s for all of it. The ugly parts too.
He takes another step, the space between us gone thin. “Don’t thank me yet.”
I tilt my chin. “Bossy.”
“You like me bossy,” he murmurs, and the way he’s looking at me is a crime I want to confess to.
“Sometimes,” I allow, mouth curving despite myself.
His hand lifts, slow enough to be refused, and tucks a damp strand of hair behind my ear. His knuckles graze my jaw, and my resolve goes soft at the edges. He’s closer now, and the lemon and cedar of him is a familiar room I don’t know how to leave.
The first kiss is careful, like he’s testing the ice he already knows will hold. I meet him there, a press, a breath, a yes. He deepens it by degrees, waiting me out, coaxing instead of conquering until something inside me sighs finally and opens to him.
Heat spills through me so fast my fingers fist in his shirt to keep from falling.
He folds me in, one hand sliding to the small of my back, the other cupping the nape of my neck like a promise.
We’ve kissed a hundred ways—angry, greedy, drowning—but this one is a map: here we were, here we are, and here we could be.
I break just long enough to look at him. His pupils are blown, his mouth a little broken, his breath a prayer. “Matteo…”
“Say my name again,” he murmurs against my lips, like it’s the only thing he’s ever asked for.
“Matteo.” It comes out on a tremor that turns his jaw to stone.
He kisses me harder, urging me back until the back of my knees hit the bed.
I sit, drag him with me, and he follows, bracing a hand by my hip, the other splayed under my shirt where the skin is hot and unforgiving.
He’s careful around the place I protect, like he’s learned the boundaries of a secret he hasn’t earned yet.
“Look at me,” he says against my mouth, rough with need and something gentler. “I need you to look at me. To know it’s me. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
I do. I let him see the fear, the fury and the want and the part of me that already picked him, years ago, without knowing the cost. Tears slick my lashes before I can stop them. He kisses one, then another, then the corner of my smile like he can salt the ache and make it sweet.
The words I swore I’d never give him again rise anyway, small and shaking. “I love you,” I whisper into his mouth. It’s a secret and a surrender in the same breath.
He stills, breath catching, and when I don’t take it back, his forehead rests against mine. “Thank Dio,” he murmurs, a smile curling the corner of his lips and lighting up his eyes. “I thought you were going to make me wait forever.”
I swat at him, but he catches my wrist and drops kisses on my palm.
Then his eyes find mine, a swell of emotions brewing beneath the emerald surface. “Say it again.”
Emotion tightens my throat, but I force it out all the same. It’s been trapped for far too long. “I love you, Matteo Rossi.”
He smiles again, and God, it’s beautiful.
Clothes become obstacles we solve together.
Urgently. His jacket goes first, then my boots, then his shirt is shoved up so I can taste the heat of his skin, the line of the new bruises over old ones.
My hands glide up the sharp ridges and valleys of his torso.
God, he still feels the same as he did four years ago.
He groans when my teeth find his shoulder, a sound that lives somewhere between relief and ruin.
He slows when his fingers find the hem of my shirt, asking with his eyes. I nod, my throat tight. He pushes it up just enough to bare my stomach and I arch into his palm, into the way his touch says you’re here, you’re real, and you’re mine if you want to be.
And damn it, I want to be.
“Tomorrow,” he breathes, mouth at my jaw. “We face your father together. Tonight—”
“Tonight,” I echo, pulling him closer until there’s no space left to doubt.
We move like we’re both trying to memorize the other before the sun can change its mind.
Urgent, yes, but threaded with the kind of tenderness that terrifies me more than bullets.
His hands learn me again, and my hands relearn him without the fear of Tiernan’s blade hovered over us.
Each kiss writes over something old that hurt and leaves the truth softer underneath.
When his cock finally sinks into me, I bite back a cry and catch it in his mouth. He shudders like he’s been lit, forehead dropping to mine, breath broken. “Jesus, Cat. You feel so fucking good.”
“Don’t you dare ask me if I want you to stop,” I whisper, nails digging crescents into his shoulders. “Not tonight. Never again. I’m tired of stopping.”
So, he doesn’t. He gives me slow at first, like he’s afraid I’ll break, then harder when I beg. “Matteo, please…”
A feral grin teases at his lips as he thrusts deeper.
Then he slows again, his eyes fixed to mine because he knows I’m close and he wants to watch me come apart. He murmurs my name like it’s the safest word he knows, and for a moment, it is.
Before long, the building fire reaches a burning crescendo. “I’m going to come,” I breathe against his mouth.
“Good girl, Kitty Cat.” He drives faster, teasing me as I teeter on the edge. “Come for me, baby. Only for me.” His hand slides between our bodies, thumb finding the pulsing bundle of nerves.
And I do, with his name on my lips.
He follows me over the edge moments later, my name followed by a sexy string of Italian curses. His cock twitches inside me, spilling warmth that reaches all the way to the hollow of my bones.
The rain keeps time on the window. The world contracts to heat and breath and the way this man knows how to break me without leaving me ruined.
Once our ragged breaths have settled, we lie tangled in cheap sheets and expensive silence. My ear is pressed to his heart, his palm smoothing slow circles at my spine as if he can erase the part that always stays braced for impact.
“You still want to see him?” he asks eventually, voice rough.
“Yes.” I swallow. “With you.”
“Then we will.” His mouth finds my hair. “And then we’ll walk out together. Free.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and allow myself the sin of believing him for one stolen night.
In the morning, I’ll pick up the blade of my resolve again.
Because a part of me fears I’ll never truly be free, not from the Quinlans or the McKennas.
For now, I let my hand rest over the blossom beneath my shirt and feel his heartbeat knock softly against my other palm, an answer my body understands before my mouth does.