Chapter 25 #2
I don’t want to stop. I want to keep going, to keep fucking her until I’m hard again. I rock my hips against hers, my mouth still brushing against her lips as I fight to keep from going soft.
“Tell me to fuck you again,” I groan against her mouth. “Do you want that, milséan? Do you want me to keep fucking you until I don’t have another drop of cum to give you?”
She moans, a soft, needy sound that instantly makes me start to stiffen inside of her again. “Yes,” she breathes. “What’s gotten into you? What—”
Another sound of pleasure falls from her lips as I shift my hips, pushing my cock deeper into her.
I’m not surprised at her confusion—four days ago, I stopped us before doing exactly this.
But I’m already inside of her, and the moment we stop, the moment we come back to reality, I’m going to have to face all of the decisions we need to make and the consequences of forgetting to have a fucking condom on our wedding night.
As long as I’m inside of her, I can keep feeling like this. Wanted. Desired. Enough for this woman, who has every reason to despise me and doesn’t. Who is moving beneath me as if all she wants in this world is for me to keep sinking my cock into her until we both come again.
I can’t stop. And I don’t. I kiss her again and again, hands sliding over her body as I grow hard enough to start thrusting again, and then I fuck her more slowly this time, drawing it out until I wring another shuddering orgasm from her, and then I let go for the second time, filling her with my cum as I groan her name.
I roll to one side, chest heaving, and I see Leila next to me struggling to catch her breath.
She looks beautiful like this, naked from the hips down, one strap of her tank top sliding down her shoulder, her hair tangled around her face, and her milk-pale skin flushed from her forehead to her thighs.
We lay there in the silence for a long moment, and then she rolled toward me, her eyes fixed on my face.
"What are you thinking?" she asks quietly.
“Everything.” I look up at the ceiling, wondering what I should tell her and what to keep to myself.
I’m thinking that I already want to fuck her again, that if I keep her in this bed all day, we can pretend that we don’t know what’s coming for us, all of the decisions that need to be made.
I’m thinking that my father will kill me—possibly literally—if he finds out about this.
That Rocco will come after Leila with everything he has if he thinks he could take her and our child away from me in one fell swoop.
I’m thinking about all the mistakes I made with Siobhan, and how I make sure that Leila gets out of this safely, with or without me.
"Tell me one thing," Leila says. Her voice is quiet and patient, and it makes me want to pull her into my arms again. But I resist the urge. I can’t get attached to her, not any more than I already am. All that will cause is heartbreak, and I’ve already let the intimacy between us grow too quickly in the last several days.
"I'm trying to figure out what comes next."
She's quiet for a long moment. "What do you want to come next?"
The question cuts straight to the heart of everything I'm avoiding.
What I want is simple, I realize in a sudden rush of clarity—I want her to stay with me.
I want to raise this child together, want to build something real out of the arrangement that brought us together.
But wanting something and being able to have it safely are two different things entirely.
"I want you to be safe," I say finally. "Both of you. If you want the baby."
Her lips press together. "That's not what I asked."
"It's the only answer that matters." I look away from her, forcing myself to shut the conversation down. “I don’t care about mafia politics, Leila. You’re carrying my heir, but that doesn’t matter to me. Not as much as you and your safety do. If you want this baby, I won’t put demands on you.
If you don’t, I won’t force you to have it.
And my promises to you as to what happens when we divorce stay the same. ”
“But we’re still divorcing.” Her voice is low and quiet, and I search for disappointment in it, or relief. But she’s keeping her feelings carefully guarded, as much so as I am.
“This was an accident. Nothing has changed.”
Leila sits up abruptly. “You can’t actually think that’s true.”
“What I know is true is that you’re in more danger than ever.
That being with me will always bring danger, for you and any child we have.
You didn’t sign up for that life permanently.
You signed up for it just long enough for me to get you out of what’s happening now. And I won’t ask for more, Leila.”
She looks at me as if she wants to say something, but she just shakes her head, pushing the covers back as she pulls her tank top off and pads naked to the bathroom. A few minutes later, I hear the shower turn on, and I have to fight the urge to go and join her.
Fuck, I want her. I want her to stay. I want to find out what it would be like to have a wife who trusts me, who wants me, who looks at me the way she does. But all I can see is history repeating itself—but this time, Leila instead of Siobhan dead on the floor, our baby dying inside of her.
If not Rocco, there will always be someone else. She will always be in danger because of the life that I live.
I can bring a woman into that who knows the stakes. Who was raised with them. But Leila wasn’t. And it’s not fair to ask her to put herself in that position.
Over the next two days, we find a rhythm that feels dangerously close to a domesticity that I enjoy more than I should.
For the first day, I avoid the topic of the pregnancy when Leila and I cross paths for meals and in the shared spaces, especially because her mother is often there as well, and Leila warned me that she hasn’t said anything yet.
With her mother’s condition being what it is—still sick but thriving here—I agree with her that it’s best not to say anything yet, especially since Leila hasn’t said for sure that she wants to keep the baby.
The thought of her doing anything else makes something cramp in my chest, the desire to keep both of them here almost painful when I let myself think about it for too long.
But I force myself to ignore the feeling, and I don’t say anything else to her about it until the second day, when we’re eating dinner alone in the smaller dining room, and Leila finally speaks up.
“What color would you paint a nursery?” she asks out of the blue, and I nearly drop my fork, staring at her for a full thirty seconds as I swallow my bite of lamb.
“I’ve never thought about it,” I tell her honestly. The question once again starkly brings up the difference in the lives we’ve lived. In my world, something like that isn’t a concern for a man like me.
She looks at me curiously. "Why not? You were supposed to have a child in your first marriage, right? You said you tried, before…" She breaks off, clearly worried that she’s brought up something too painful.
“That’s not something Siobhan would have asked me about,” I say finally. “She’d have figured it out herself. Or more likely, hired an interior designer who would have made all of the choices.”
“Oh.” Leila bites her lip. “Well, what about names? I think—”
“Leila.” I cut her off, feeling my chest tighten. “We don’t need to talk about this right now. You haven’t made a decision about the baby, and our arrangement is still—”
“I’m not making a decision without your input.” She sets her fork down, too. “And we need to talk about this, Ronan. Right now is as good a time as any, while my mom isn’t here for dinner and it’s just the two of us.”
I let out a heavy breath. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want to know if you want to be a father. If you want to be part of this child's life."
Of course, I want to say. Of course, I want that. “We made an agreement, Leila. This wasn’t intentional. There’s no reason to think this changes anything.”’
She stares at me. “I know you don’t really think that. How can it not change things? Ronan—”
“Because I can’t change the life I live, Leila. And you ended up here in the first place because of the danger you were in from a mafia boss. There will always be danger. I can’t ask you to agree to live a life like that. That’s not the life you’re supposed to live.”
Her lips tighten. “I can decide what life I want to live, Ronan. And why can’t you change it, anyway? Why couldn’t you just… I don’t know, let your father have it all back and leave? I don’t think it makes you all that happy.”
The way she says it almost makes me wish that were possible. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” she challenges. “You have your own money, right? I’m sure you have businesses that are legitimate, things in your name that your father can’t take away. Why not leave and do something else?”
She doesn’t say with me, but I can hear it in her voice, and it hurts.
"Because I can't." The words come out sharper than I intended. "Because I'm the heir, Leila. This isn't a job I can quit."
"Says who?" She shrugs. “Why can’t you choose your own life, Ronan?”
My jaw tightens. "Says three generations of O'Malley men who built this empire. Says my father, who's counting on me to carry it forward. Says—" I stop, breathing slowly to calm myself. “There’s a lot of weight on my shoulders, Leila. I have a responsibility to not let all of that die with me. To keep it going, better than it was before, if I can. My father is an arsehole, yes, but he’s sacrificed and bled like the rest of the men in this family to make the O’Malley name what it is. That’s not something I can walk away from, and still be who I am, deep down.”
She swallows hard. "What about your brother? Tristan?"