Chapter 6
SIX
Orla
Iput the box down in the drawer as fast as I could and grabbed his gun. If it was Bear, he would have called out to me. Panic rose in my chest as I waited to hear someone call out or make a noise.
Something.
Moving down the hall, I heard someone in the kitchen.
Oh god.
Slowly, I moved that way, to corner whoever it was with the gun and get them to leave. Taking a few deep breaths, I raised the gun and turned the corner to the kitchen and aimed right at a familiar face.
Her face was frozen in fear for a brief moment before she looked at me, and I knew instantly I’d made a mistake. It had been years since I saw her last, but she was unmistakable.
I was facing off, gun trained on, Bear’s mother, Louise.
“Care to put the gun down, dear?” she asked, her annoyance registering on her face. She’d never liked me, she’d always looked down on me since I was a teenager and even over the last couple of decades living here in town, anytime she saw me, she swiftly moved away from me like I had a disease.
I lowered the gun, only just realising it was still aimed at her.
“Alex didn’t tell me anyone was coming,” I said, keeping the gun at my side.
“He didn’t tell me he’d holed you up in here either, dear,” she said.
“What are you doing here? Do you live here with him?”
Louise turned back to me, her eyes taking me in. “No, I do not. I come by and clean for him sometimes, not that he needs it. He’s rarely here.”
“I didn’t even know he had a place,” I said. “Until he locked me in here.”
Her eyebrows rose for a moment before she continued putting food in the pantry. “You must have annoyed him if he doesn’t want you at the clubhouse with him. Have you been slutting around with other members?”
I ground my teeth at the remark. She knew of my reputation, as I did of hers.
She’d been no different, getting pregnant to a club member when he was married with children.
Alex was the illegitimate child of Peter O’Leary, one of the former enforcers under Donald’s reign as Prez.
He’d never been treated well, until he befriended Cooper and Casey.
The three of them had been inseparable, and when Sheridan and I joined their group at school, it was the five of us getting into all sorts of shit.
That’s how I’d fallen in love with Alex, even at that tender age.
“No, he just…thinks he’s doing me a favour, I guess.”
“When it comes to you, Orla, that boy is blind.”
I know she didn’t mean for it to be a compliment, but it did funny things to my insides to hear that.
“He’s just helping me,” I offered, trying to convince myself of that very same thing. “I got into some trouble overseas.”
Louise let out a half chuckle, half breath of something else I couldn’t figure out. What I did know was she was pissed off that I was here. “Of course you did and he came running to rescue you, as he always did, no matter the cost to himself.”
I wish I could say she was wrong, but she wasn’t.
“What you would do if you loved him would be to let him go. You’re no good for him, you never were.
You broke his heart because you wanted someone with more money, who was more popular.
He left Kilkenny because of you, and I never got to see my boy.
Now he’s settled again and here you are, throwing your skanky ass around again, pulling him back down. ”
My chest felt like I had an elephant sitting on it.
“You won’t though, will you?” Louise continued. “You’ll flash that trashy body around him-”
Alex appeared in the doorway, his anger evident on his face. “Get out.”
Louise backed up, surprised by his arrival. “Alex…”
“I said, get out. I didn’t tell you to come here and do this. I told you I would come by tomorrow, and yet here you are, insulting my guest.”
“Alex…I didn’t-”
“I won’t ask again, Louise. Remove yourself from my home.”
Her eyes were on me then, and I saw the fury there before she trudged toward him to leave.
“You may want to let your guest know that aiming a gun at your mother isn’t exactly the way to win your heart.”
Bear’s eyes moved down to the gun in my hand, but he didn’t say a word as we waited for the door to be closed behind her.
“I’m sorry,” I offered to him, putting the gun on the bench. “I heard the door open and no one called out. I knew it wasn’t you.”
“You don’t have to say sorry for defending yourself, Or. She had no right to come here unannounced, nor did she have any right to say those things about you.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”
I made a move to leave, but his hand caught my arm and he pulled me back to stand in front of him.
“She was wrong,” he said, his finger under my chin holding my gaze with his own. “She always has been wrong about you.”
I wanted so desperately to reach out and kiss him, to have his lips on mine, crushing them with his own. His hands roaming down to my ass to squeeze it.
I wanted to be wrapped up in Alex O’Leary for hours in that big bed as he made me feel human again. But if I did that, I’d fall irrevocably back in love with him again and I couldn’t do it to myself. I’d only just recovered last time.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, shrugging it off. “Can I go?”
“No,” he said. “You have to stay here for a bit.”
“Why?” I groaned in frustration. “I have a job, Alex. He would know I'm back by now, and he would expect me to work.”
“It’s taken care of,” he simply said.
“You can’t just roll in and take care of it. I like working, Alex. I want to work.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” he replied.
“What?”
He pulled me out to the foyer where I saw my luggage bag, which I could only assume was filled with clothing from my apartment and a bag from the tattoo shop.
“Your set-up is in there,” he said. “You’ll tattoo me, and I’ll pay you.”
“Alex, you don’t have an inch on your body that isn’t tatted up.”
“Actually, I do,” he said. “My legs don’t have many.”
I knew he was doing this for me and although it made my heart seize, I couldn’t stay inside all this time, I’d lose it.
“Why?” I asked him. “Why are you doing this?”
“I need to keep you safe and away from anyone’s sight for a little bit,” he said, moving a strand of hair that had fallen in my face behind my ear.
“Why?”
I knew I wasn’t going to like where this was going but I needed to know why now? Why did he need to do this now?
“Matteo Barone isn’t dead,” he said, the words hitting me like a bullet. “He survived and he’s here.”
“For me?”
He didn’t nod, nor did he say anything. He didn’t need to. My chest squeezed painfully as I struggled to breathe. Tears ran down my cheeks silently as I felt his arms come around me in a hug that pushed forth the scream lodged in my throat.
Bear
Hearing the scream destroyed me.
I held her against me as she tried to fight, unable to stop the terror from taking over. She was safe, but I didn’t know how to help her to see that.
Pulling her back around to face me, I held onto the sides of her face and kissed her. She stopped fighting, her body slowing down as she moved against me. I felt her boobs under my chest as she moaned into my mouth.
She was calm. I could pull away now but the way she was groping me, there was no way in hell I would be able to do that.
I picked her up, her legs wrapping around my waist as I carried her down the hall, her mouth on mine, her arms wrapping around my neck.
I threw her down on the bed, removing my clothes as she did the same to hers.
Her beautiful inked skin laying against my blue sheets had my cock hardening immediately.
I joined her on the bed as her hand gripped my length.
I hissed out a breath, watching her grind against me while her fingers squeezed my cock.
“Fuck,” I ground out, my hips bucking against her hand.
I knelt over her chest as she pumped my cock, her mouth taking the tip of my cock.
I moved my hand down between her legs behind me, my fingers gliding over the slickness of her arousal.
Sliding a finger over her clit, I watched as her mouth opened wider in surprise, and I plunged my cock deeper down her throat, making her gag a little bit before she adjusted.
Her moan reverberated around my cock and I felt my balls pulling, threatening to unleash too soon.
I dipped my fingers into her pussy, two fingers, then three, her body primed and ready for me.
Selfishly, I moved down to glide in between her legs before I slammed into her. All the frustration and anger at Matteo thinking he could hurt Orla hurtled out of me with one pound. I thrust into her with fury and passion, never wanting to be apart from her.
She was the only one.
The only one who has ever held a piece of my heart, no matter how many years passed, no matter what had happened in between, I’d always known.
Orla gripped onto my shoulders as I fucked her as unceremoniously as I could, her pussy tightening around my cock. I slid a finger down to her clit and moved it in the same rhythm as my pounding. Her screams told me she was close, her legs tightening around my waist as I ploughed into her.
Mine.
The possessive thought radiated through my mind as I watched her fall apart around me.
Her eyes were wide, those big brown eyes staring into my soul as her body tightened.
I palmed her tits, loving how full they were in my hands, squeezing her nipples.
She responded with a groan, her head tipping back into the mattress, her back arching off the bed.
I lowered my mouth to her tit, sucking on her nipple, grazing my teeth over it before I moved over to the other one and gave it the same attention.
She pushed up into my mouth harder, her hands making their way into my hair, pulling the strands.
Pain ricocheted through my scalp as I thrust into her again, and again, harder each time.