17. Darragh
Chapter 17
Darragh
I t takes about two seconds for me to ascertain that Valentina has pulled the alarm and there’s no real emergency. A few swipes on my phone turns off the alarm and the sprinklers, but by that time the place is soaked, I’m soaked, and so is she.
She stands there, haughty as a queen even though she’s in her bare fucking feet on the wet and filthy floor, her white dress so see-through and plastered to her body that she might as well be naked. I can see the outline of her panties against her hips, see the electrifying dip of her navel. She doesn’t have a bra on, and I bite my tongue so hard I taste blood when my gaze snags on the dark, taut points of her nipples. Her hair, which had been straight outside, hangs about her shoulders like tumbling strands of black seaweed, bits breaking off into individual curling clumps that I have a sudden and visceral desire to twirl in perfect loops around my fingers.
What the fuck is it about this woman when she’s wet? Makes me feel like I’m confronting some mythical creature. I want to know what water tastes like when it drips down the length of her throat. I want to know what it would feel like to back her up against that wall, hike up her soaking dress and-
“Mateo doesn’t matter. Really. You don’t have to do anything to him.”
My jaw screws shut. My tongue bleeds.
Damn this Titone. Coming into my property with another man’s name in her mouth.
And damn me twice for letting it get under my skin this way. For letting her get under my skin this way.
“You act like I was going to kill him,” I say lightly, closing the last distance between us. Wet hair falls over my forehead, dripping in dark red spikes as I look down at her. She tips her small chin up to maintain eye contact, then narrows her eyes. Slits of brown and gold.
“Weren’t you?”
I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t think I would have killed the idiotic fuck just for showing up with her tonight…
But as tension twists my spine, I have to admit that I might have. Might have put a gun in his mouth, just for the audacity of letting Valentina say his name.
I ignore her question and hammer back at her with one of my own.
“Are you fucking him?”
Her gaze goes wide. Her mouth falls open, revealing pink wetness that makes my cock stiffen against the soaked fabric of my jeans.
“What kind of a question is that?” she cries. She slams her purse and shoes down on a table glistening with moisture beside us then throws her hands onto her hips. “No, I’m not fucking him! Not that that’s any of your business!”
I don’t think she’s lying. There’s a toxic twitch of relief when I realize that I believe her. And I do not fucking like it.
“Everything about you is my business,” I remind her. The words come out like acid. They burn up my throat, make smoke of the air. “I decided as much the moment you put your life into my hands.”
“I didn’t put my life into your hands!”
“Of course you did,” I scoff. “You sank your claws into my flesh and you begged me. Begged me with those fucking eyes.”
Those fucking eyes that I feel like I could drown in. Burn in.
Choke on.
She shakes her head, her mouth pursed peevishly. But she doesn’t have a retort for me, because she knows I’m right. Whatever she remembers of that evening on the roof, she knows that she grabbed me first, not the other way around.
But why am I the one moving towards her now? I’m closer to her than I was just a moment ago. Her next shaky inhale makes her breasts brush my front. Hot tension knots in my groin.
“Mateo is a friend of the family,” she finally mutters. “You don’t have to do anything about him. He was our chaperone tonight. That’s it.” Her eyes search my face. I wonder what the hell she’s looking for.
Wonder what the hell she sees.
“You know my Papà,” she adds, voice rising. “You have to know that I’m not dating Mateo, let alone sleeping with him! God, I was engaged, and I’ve never even kissed someone!”
“That’s not true, now, is it?” I remind her viciously, loathing myself for apparently caring that she doesn’t remember. “You’ve kissed me.”
Technically, I kissed her, but her resulting shock is the same either way. It feels good, in a self-destructive sort of way, to watch her recoil from me in disbelief and maybe even disgust. But even as she backs away, there’s nowhere for her to go. Her back is fused to the wall.
“No,” she whispers. “I thought that was…”
“What?”
Her eyes are huge in her heart-shaped face.
“A dream.”
The world slants sideways. I steady it, steady myself, by burying my fingers in her wet hair.
“You’ve dreamed of kissing me, pet?”
“Nightmares,” she hisses. Rage and fear collide in her gaze.
Then, her cheeks hollow, her mouth puckers.
And she spits in my fucking face.
The warm fluid hits my left cheek and rapidly cools.
Valentina goes very still and stares at my cheek, as if only now realizing what she’s done. Her pulse is hummingbird-quick at the base of her throat.
With a precise sort of slowness solely meant to torture her, I raise my hand to my face and smear the saliva with the pad of my middle finger.
“Open your mouth.”
Her eyes dart around, seeking out escape. But I’m too big and there’s nowhere to go.
“No way,” she pants. “I don’t know where that hand has been.”
I let out a cruel bark of a laugh.
“Where my hand has been? What, you think your filthy Titone mouth is the cleanest place on that list?” I tighten my other hand’s grip in her hair. “Open your mouth or I will open it for you.”
Any other person on this earth would lose their tongue and then their life for what she just did. And she has the goddamn audacity to give me those mutinous, hate-fuck eyes as she finally opens her mouth in recompense.
But open it, she does. I slide my finger inside.
She maintains fierce eye contact with me as I swipe the pad of my finger across the molten silk surface of her tongue, too proud or too angry or both to look away.
I don’t typically have any patience for pride in other people. I strip it from men as easily as stripping skin from muscle, muscle from marrow. Seeing it in her should infuriate me.
And it does, sort of. It’s just that the fury seems to manifest solely in my dick. My shaft is tight and throbbing. Like my body thinks I can somehow fuck the ferocity right out of her.
Christ, maybe I can. And suddenly, it’s all I can think about. Valentina sopping wet and sobbing, submissive and shaking beneath me as her pussy swallows me to the hilt.
Virgin pussy, based on what she just said about her father and never even kissing someone before.
Fuck .
The shudder of need that goes through me is so sharp, so aching, that I have to hold myself back from grinding my dick on her belly like a pathetic teenager. Thirty-three years old and this is what this proud little Titone has reduced me to.
I want to hate her for it. For making me want her. For making me feel like I’m losing control.
For forgetting that I kissed her.
My fraying brain chooses that last point to focus on, and suddenly I’m convinced if I just kiss her again, punish her with my mouth so that she’ll never be able to say she doesn’t remember, then this will all go away. Like lifting a curse, simply by retracing my steps.
Escaping the siren by going back to the beginning of our story.
I wrench my finger from her mouth.
And then I crash my lips to hers.
Her head jerks forcefully back, skull slamming the wall. Her cry of pain and surprise allows my tongue entrance, and I seize the chance, because I’m Darragh fucking Gowan and I didn’t get where I am in this world by letting opportunities pass me by. I take ownership of her mouth with my tongue while my hands take ownership of her body. Hair. Waist. Breasts. My thumbs slide in demanding circles around her nipples, and before she can stop herself, she’s arching into my touch.
That one tiny, little movement. That wordless bend of her spine towards me.
And I feel like I’m coming undone.
Maybe she feels it, too. Maybe she’s afraid. Or maybe she’s suddenly remembering just who it is who’s kissing her, who’s touching her this way. Because a second later there’s a bright spark of pain along my lower lip, and I can’t taste that strange Titone sweetness anymore. It’s overwhelmed by the sharp tang of yet more of my own blood.
The little animal just bit me.
I pull back, breathing so hard it’s like I’ve just run here. Her pupils are blown, her lips swollen and wet, nipples hard.
I shove myself away from her.
“Get the fuck out of my building, Valentina.” I wipe blood from my mouth as she hastily grabs her shoes and purse from the table. “The next time you come here with another man, he’s leaving in a body bag.”