"Ow."
I laughed again, raising a brow. "And what did you say back?"
"I wholeheartedly agreed with your assessment of my penis."
I continued to laugh, even though I suspected he was lying because the name he called me—the word that sounded like mo chree—princess, had been on the end of his statement. I brought my lips to his, kissing him as he smiled against my mouth. "Someday I'll learn Gaelic, and then I'll know all your secrets," I whispered before licking along the seam of his mouth. He moaned and opened to me.
We played in the water for a little while longer until I was squirming again and Brogan was hard. He got out and toweled himself off, his erection jutting out in front of him. He helped me out, drying me thoroughly and applying a new Band-Aid before lifting me and carrying me back to the bed as I laughed.
"I can walk, you know."
He placed me on the bed, following me down, rubbing his hard cock on my thigh. "Not after tonight," he said darkly, nipping at my neck as I laughed and squealed for mercy. He kissed me thoroughly then and the mood changed. He made love to me slowly and sweetly this time and I fell asleep in his arms, not waking until the sun was lighting the room in a soft, golden glow, welcoming us to a brand new day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Brogan
The next few weeks went by simultaneously in a haze of bliss and a blur of regret.
Lydia came to work with me every day, exerting her feminine charm in situations I would have handled completely differently, and astounding me with the ease in which she achieved the positive results that likely would have taken Fionn or me weeks or months. She was that bright hummingbird I remembered—flitting everywhere, coloring my days with spirit and vibrancy, completely in her element.
And the nights . . . the nights were filled with bliss beyond my wildest imagination. Lydia learned what I liked as if my body was the subject and she was the most committed student who ever lived. I began to trust her in a way I didn't think was possible to trust a woman, which in turn allowed me to relax and enjoy the sensations she aroused in me. She always seemed to know when something was bordering on too much or when there was room to push me to greater heights, and I in turn, learned my own limits through my surrender to her. She had never been with anyone else, but in some ways, neither had I. In bed, I had never known true surrender, I had never known joy.
I felt hunger in the way I'd known hunger before, only this time I was even more insatiable. I knew I'd never be satisfied, never have enough, never be filled no matter how much I partook. She was a buffet of the finest delicacies life had to offer me, and I wanted to binge and devour every luscious morsel. I wanted to be sure that what I needed and wanted so desperately would always be available to me—I didn't want to feel this faint panic after every time we made love, the way I'd felt before when I’d had to scrounge for every small meal.
But that was the way of hunger, wasn't it? Even as it was being satisfied, there laid the knowledge it would need to be satisfied again . . . and again.
So I studied her body, too, worshipping every inch of her skin night after glorious night, learning the scents and textures of every part of her, not satisfied until she had an orgasm so intense she screamed my name. And then we'd sleep wrapped in each other's arms through the night.
And I knew I loved her. Deeply. Intensely. I had always loved her, even when I hadn't wanted to. But now it was different. I had wanted to give her the world when I was seventeen, and now I could. I had wanted to give her my heart, and now I could. I would. Every part of my heart.
And yet . . . I was still in the midst of cleaning up the mess I myself had created. I had Fionn take Lydia to dinner under the guise I had more work to do while I repaid her brother's debt to the mob in the form of illegal number crunching.
I hated it—it made me feel owned and powerless, and yet it was the price I had to pay to make up for the situation we were in. I just didn't want Lydia to know. I didn't want her to be burdened with the information, I didn't want the knowledge of illegal activity to put her in any more potential danger, and truthfully, I didn't want her to feel less about me. I was not the stand-up businessman she thought. And when we worked together at my office, solving a problem for a family who had no one else to turn to, she looked at me as if I were some sort of hero. I didn't want to tell her I wasn't. I was just a man who was still scrabbling and cheating and trying to justify the means to an end I was dreaming about so hard it felt like an obsession.
I wanted Lydia. I wanted her forever. And I ached for her to want me back. I wanted her to admire me, to respect me. I wanted her to love me. Me. She had loved me. Would she now? And sometimes, as I gazed at her in the moonlight of my bedroom, our limbs tangled together, our bodies intimately connected, I dared to hope she might.
I knew that once I finished this final job, Lydia wouldn’t be in danger, and realistically, she could safely move back to her own apartment. Yet, I wanted her with me. She didn't seem in any hurry to leave, which gave me further hope she didn't want our time living together to end either.
We had both been distracted by everything going on and hadn't remembered to send someone to get more clothes for her, and so after work one day, I accompanied her to her place so she could pack a few more things.
I'd seen her apartment from the outside, a modest brick building in Brooklyn, but the inside was even more modest than the outside. When I saw the difference between where Stuart and Lydia lived, I wanted to beat Stuart De Havilland's arse even more than I had before.