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“Let me warm you up, aingeal dian.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die, when I first saw you in that parking lot, I knew your blood type was gold. I think we’ll be a good lesson for each other, Sailor. You don’t know how to live, and I don’t know how to do anything but live hedonistically.”
“What are you doing?” “Looking at you.”
“You’ve already seen me naked.”
“Not willingly.” “What’s the difference?” “Then, you were a bomb waiting to be diffused. Now you’re an offering.”
“Am I good enough for you?” “No,” he said evenly. “You’re better than me.”
“Permission to wreck your uterus?”
“Because I’m your favorite villain,” he whispered.
Most of all, I loved that Hunter Fitzpatrick was crazy enough to screw someone behind his father’s back and risk losing his inheritance. Brave enough to fuck the daughter of a mob boss like an animal, knowing the potential consequences.
He was fearless, and a rebel, and a sinner, and a saint. A prince who’d never wanted his title. A pure-hearted rake. He was everything a woman should run away from, personified. And yet here I was, falling deeper.
“Where do you think you’re going, aingeal dian? If you can still walk, that means we’re not finished yet.”
She nuzzled her head in the crook of my arm as her fingers played with my chest hair. I fucking loved when she did that. I didn’t even know why. Sometimes she tugged at them real hard, but it was an intimate gesture no fling had ever done.
We didn’t talk about what we were. What we weren’t. We just existed: a butterfly and a man who appreciated beautiful things. Co-existing in the eye of a storm we’d been thrown into.
Song of the day: “Wild Horses” by The Rolling Stones.
I loathed his self-control. It freaked me out. I imagined he was one of those sociopaths who could fuck someone for hours without coming just to punish them. He was that disciplined.
“Priceless and worthless are the same sum, presented in different manners. Words make you or break you. By cursing, you reduce yourself to someone who cannot convey their feelings sufficiently.”
And I didn’t want to go back to a Sailor-less apartment. It always felt cold and hollow without another person there.
“The Brennan girl is going to have you by the balls if you touch her. Do not touch her.”
“I could handle her if I wanted her.”
“No, you can’t,” he countered.
“So who can?” I hissed, turning to face him as he revved up the engine. “You, I suppose?”
“If I thought she was worth the effort, yes.”
“You’re supposed to keep me celibate and sober. So get your ass dressed and do.” So that’s why he needed me there. My heart sank. Figures.
“Ghosts? Blood? Murders? Vaughn would have married this place,” Knight said, making Hunter and Luna laugh.
“Especially when I can almost taste freedom. And pussy. I can taste that, too.” You do, every day, I wanted to scream. Or do I not count?
His love was like the sun. Even when it wasn’t there, It didn’t mean it ceased to exist. And even when his rays did not warm her skin. He kept her universe alive. And even when the night engulfed her in loneliness, when winter wrestled him out of her life. She knew he would come back. He always did. Long after they said goodbye.
Because I wasn’t content with being just the babysitter he slept with to let off steam. Because I expected more than being treated like an acquaintance. Because I wanted us to have what Knight and Luna had.
“When you’re like that, you make me want to fuck the defiance out of you, aingeal dian.”
“You barely even acknowledged me out there,”
“I didn’t know how,”
“I’ve never had a…” He paused, thinking about how to label us. Girlfriend? “Lady friend. A real one,”
“I don’t know how to communicate with you without unbuttoning your clothes with my teeth.”
“Good girl. Up and down, now. Rub it, baby.”
fooling myself by pretending I had what Luna had, when Hunter clearly offered me nothing more than sex.
“Jesus fuck, Sailor! What did you want me to do? Kiss you? Make out with you in public? That’d throw us out of fuck-buddies purgatory, which is exactly where we’re supposed to be. I have a shit-ton of money on the line. You’ve got your career. This shit’s almost over. Why kill the fun now?”
Hunter wanted us to remain nothing, and I? I wanted everything.
“Swear to God, Sailor, I will fuck your mouth so hard you’ll lose teeth if you disobey.”
“This is a punishing orgasm, not a rewarding one, Sailor. You should’ve thought about that before you had the idea of breaking this off.”
Tonight he entered me like he thought I was going to evaporate into air any moment and he needed to find his release before that happened.
“No. Give me an orgasm, and then leave me alone. I mean it, Hunter. We’re through.” Something in his face changed just then.
“It’s true that I’ve never stayed with a woman, but it’s also true that women never stay with me. My mom neglected me. The revolving door of nannies didn’t help, either. My only sister used to ask my da for permission before calling me because he’d told her I was bad influence. Any other chick who noticed me wanted to either fuck my face or get access to my wallet. Women don’t think highly of me, but the truth is, I don’t think so highly of them, either.”
Cillian: Told you not to touch that one.
The worst part was, I was going to apologize. I’d bought flowers from Trader Joe’s. I even Googled best flowers to get a chick. I put work into this thing.
I had two days of zero supervision without my nanny dearest, and all I wanted was to have her back.
“I cannot keep you from making mistakes, because then you’ll never learn from them. The world is tough, and cruel, and mostly unfair. It’s our job to find a way to navigate our way in it. The more I shield you, the less chance you’ll have of surviving.”
You needed someone to introduce you to the world. Hunter was supposed to be the guy to do it.”
Hunter was the guy, I thought bitterly. Thanks to him, I had Ash, had learned how to push myself forward, to believe in myself, and stood up to Junsu. Because of him, I’d started dressing up and paying attention to what I looked like. Hunter had dragged me out of the house to restaurants and the theater and to meet his friends and family. He made me a part of something bigger than my teeny-tiny life. I couldn’t deny it. And Hunter, like my parents, hated my obsession with what I was doing—my tunnel-visioned quest to the Olympics.
“He is that guy. He changed me, Dad. Maybe not as fast or as thoroughly as you and Mom had hoped, but he did. I’m not the same person I was when we moved in together.”
The truth was, for the past few months, there was nowhere I’d rather be than with Hunter Fitzpatrick. He was my home, the little corner in the universe that understood me.
Hunter was sitting in Junsu’s chair, naked. Lana was on top of him, straddling his narrow waist. She was wearing his dress shirt and seemingly nothing underneath. She had her back to me, but there was no mistaking the lush, brunette hair extensions. Her arms were wrapped around his neck possessively, her face buried in his chest. I wanted to throw up.
