Binding 13 (Boys of Tommen #1)

by Chloe Walsh

I would like to dedicate Binding 13 to anyone who's ever had a dream they dared to chase with insatiable hunger and drive. This story is for you.

I once read somewhere that we mature with damage, not with age. If that's the case, I was an old age pensioner in the emotional stakes.

I'd long since grown tired of begging for love from a man who, in his own words, never wanted me.

“Hey…girl?" I added lamely because I didn’t even know her name. I'd almost killed the girl and I didn’t know her fucking name. "Open your eyes."

She opened her eyes and fuck me, I unintentionally sucked in a sharp breath. Jesus, this girl was beautiful.

Hands down, she possessed the most gorgeous pair of eyes I'd seen in my life.

"That's really your face?" she asked, eyes drooping, as she studied me with a vacant expression. "It's so pretty."

It was going well – right up until she face-planted on my dick. Jerking at the insanely intimate contact, not to mention the sudden jolt of awareness in my dick and the scorching pain in my groin, I attempted to move her face from my crotch, but she groaned loudly in resistance. And then she pulled her legs up on the bench and settled herself down for a nice, old kip on my cock. Fuck my life.

Thank fuck for that, because you're ruining all of me right now, I thought to myself.

That drew a smile out of her, a proper smile, not a shy one or a small one. It was an honest to god megawatt smile. She was just so fucking pretty.

Fuck, I had a feeling that her pretty face would be cemented in the fore point of my mind for a very long time. But it was those wild eyes that really struck me and I had this crazy urge to google eye color charts just so I could figure out the fucking color blue in her eyes. I would do that later, I decided.

I didn’t need the hassle. Girls were a fucking complication I didn’t need; even little ones with wild blue eyes. Dammit, now I was thinking about her eyes again.

A girl, a fucking female I'd known for no longer than two hours, had managed to do what no one else ever had; knock me off kilter. Shannon like the river was on my mind, and I didn’t fucking like it.

I couldn’t explain why my body broke out in a cold sweat, my hands turning clammy, my heart fluttering rapidly, and my stomach twisting itself up in knots whenever I laid eyes on him. Well, that wasn’t technically true. There was an obvious, perfectly logical reason for my reaction towards him. He was beautiful.

"Boys with pretty eyes and big muscles mess everything up for girls," Claire huffed. "Yep," I agreed weakly. "They certainly do."

Shannon Lynch had eyes the color of midnight blue that wouldn’t stay the fuck out of my head. At least that's the closest comparison I could find on the countless internet searches I had performed.

We were into February and I was still silently obsessing over Shannon like the river.

"Did you ever talk to Shannon Lynch after that day on the pitch?" I turned my bleary gaze on him, too drunk to mask my curiosity. "My Shannon?" Hughie laughed. "She's your Shannon now?"

Either Claire was clueless, Gibsie was clueless, or they were both as blind as each other because I could feel, see, and taste the chemistry wafting off them.

I can take you home when you have to go? What the actual fuck? I might as well have shouted, love me, fucking love me at the girl. I felt like a bleeding eejit.

I wanted her, I realized, and it was entirely inappropriate and horrendous bad luck on my account, but I did. I wanted Shannon Lynch. And worse than wanting her, I really fucking liked her.

I hated humans. They were such a disappointment. And to think, god switched dinosaurs for man. He must be raging.

I was annoyed with myself for being the kind of person who cried when angry. I wanted to be a shouter. A shouter was much better than a crier. I was disgusted with myself for freezing, too.

Snatching the paper out of my mother's hands, I stared down at the girl who'd been driving me crazy for the best part of two months. Jesus, she looked gorgeous; all wide-eyed and smiling as I held her to my side.

I was so frightened that I could taste it. You're going to die, Shannon. This is the night he's going to kill you…

"You are so concerned with fighting the bullies at school, Mam," I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks. "When the biggest bully of them all lives under this roof."

My body I could do nothing about, but my head? I needed to get my head in the game. Problem was, I left it with Shannon Lynch.

Go for it, I thought to myself. But you can't destroy what's already broken…

His words threw me and I turned my face to look at him. God, he was just so beautiful, it was painful. Everything about Johnny Kavanagh was pure perfection. He was big and strong, and his face? Oh god, his face was the best face I had ever laid eyes on.

"Now," I sneered, glaring down at their faces. "Who wants to call my girlfriend a whore to my face?"

Get your ass away from this girl before you do something stupid like lose your heart as well as your head, my brain hissed as I tore out of the carpark, nerves shot to hell. Too late, asshole, my heart taunted.

You could love this girl your whole life, the crazy thought persisted inside my brain over and over, if you just let yourself.

I arched a brow, amused at the fighting stance Ryan had taken. If he thought I was going to throw my career away for a punch up over Bella, he was seriously mistaken. Shannon – absolutely, but Bella? Not a chance.

"What do you want me to do with him?" Joey asked. I shrugged and contemplated telling him to drive over the annoying fucker, but then I knew I would be terribly lonely without him.

But I want to fuck her... I want in your sister so bad you wouldn’t believe it... The things I imagine doing to her would shock you…

Without another word, Joey turned around and walked away, leaving me standing in the doorway, staring after him with only two things on my mind. The first: finding an icepack for my balls. The second: fantasizing about all the terribly inappropriate things I longed to do with his sister.

"I love how you don’t even deny she's yours anymore, lad." "Fuck off," I grumbled.

"Yeah, that," Johnny bit out, glaring at my cheek. "Who did that to you?"

"Are you hurting her?" He arched a brow. "Lad, you better start talking, because brother or no brother, I will kick your fucking ass."

"I can go now." "Shannon." Johnny's hand snaked out and wrapped around my wrist. "I don’t want you to go," he said gruffly, tugging me back down beside him. "I want you here." He rested a hand on the bed right behind my back and leaned close. "I want you to stay with me."

It was her birthday. Today was Shannon's sixteenth birthday. And she was spending it with me. I was glad. How crazy was that? This girl who before Christmas was a total stranger, and since Christmas, I couldn’t imagine going through a day not thinking about. I didn’t want to give her back. Something inside of me told me that if I did, she would return with another bruise. At least if I kept her with me, she would be safe.

The one person who could fracture all my hard work. And the most nerve-wrecking thing about it all was that I liked it. I liked the fact that she was turning my life on its axis and encouraging never seen before notions and feelings inside of me, and then I hated that I liked it.

I knew I needed to get a fucking handle on myself. Except I couldn’t. Because she was addictive. And I was obsessed.

"You think I'd let anyone hurt you?" Johnny finally asked, his eyes dark and intense and focused solely on my face. "You think I'd let anything bad happen to you, Shannon like the river?"

There was something very wrong with me. Running around in the rain for twenty minutes in the pouring rain for a shoe was a good indication that this girl was making me lose my mind.

The worst part was knowing that if my mother hadn't shown up when she had, there was a very big chance I would've kissed her. I wanted to. Badly. And that was beyond terrifying.

If she was here, then she was here with me. She was mine and I didn’t want to share.

"I thought you liked me," I strangled out. "Jesus Christ," Johnny groaned, dropping his head in his hands. "Of course, I like you." He tugged on his hair and sighed. "I think it's pretty fucking clear that I'm mad about you." Exhaling a pained groan, he added, "But I'll be eighteen in May, Shannon."

All through dinner last night, I was too lost inside my own head. I was too caught up in her. "I thought you liked me." Well, fuck me, my heart just about cracked when she said those words.

Shannon was in my car again. So much for not bulldozing. They might as well slap a JCB sticker on my forehead and switch on my hazards, I seemed to do so much of it around this girl.