Dangerous Games (13 page)

“Of course,” I replied as I turned my body toward hers.

“Clive is absolutely awful in bed. When he goes…down on me, he has absolutely no idea what he is doing. He can’t make love, and he’s never given me an orgasm. Isn’t that sad? I mean, where are the fireworks? I look at you and Finn, and I know you two have such an awesome sex life. Mine, on the other hand, completely and irrevocably sucks ass, and I am really
pissed
off about it,” she explained before she sipped from her wine glass.

“Well, if he can’t have sex properly, you know you have to dump him, right?”

Monika looked at me as if I suggested she commit murder. “Oh no, I can’t do
that
, Evie. I can’t just
dump
him because he’s bad in bed. We’ll just work on it, and get some Blu-rays on how to make love or something. Besides, my parents think he is perfect, and they really like him.”

“So, you’re going to stay with him because your parents like him, and not because he can do anything for you in the bedroom? You do realize how screwed up that is, right?”

“How so?” she inquired completely clueless.

I smiled wryly before I glanced over at Dylan. He walked over immediately. “Dylan, this is Monika, my best friend. She’s just confessed to me her boyfriend can’t fuck. Isn’t that reason enough for her to dump him?”

Dylan’s steel blue eyes lit up. “Absolutely. You do not stay with a man who can
not
perform in the bedroom. It’s a prerequisite for a lasting relationship.”

Monika’s blue eyes softened. “You know you have the sexiest accent I have heard in a really long time. And I totally dig your tats. You’re so
not
what my parents would approve of but I don’t care. Can you…fuck?”

I almost spit out my Pinot Grigio.

“Well, I don’t like to toot my own horn but let’s just say I’ve had no complaints.”

He glared at me quickly, and I looked away just as fast. We were only half-cousins but it was still a blood relationship, and I was ashamed about what happened between us. I had gone to Catholic school and was brought up Catholic—shame came part and parcel with everything wrong I did in my life.

Every time I did drugs, drank or slept with Finn, a part of me felt like I was an awful human being. It made no difference I had never hurt anyone as much as I harmed myself, I still didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as the righteous amongst us.

“Monika, what are you doing or suggesting for that matter?”

“Well, I haven’t slept with anyone other than…Clive…and if I am going to cheat, it should probably be now before he puts a ring on my finger, right?” Her eyes were bright and her pupils, dilated. She was high as a kite and it was entirely my fault.

“Think about what you are saying. You really want to sleep with Dylan? What’s wrong with you? He has a girlfriend.”

“Not anymore,” he interrupted in a bitter tone. “Finn told me about Lita freebasing on Oxy and coke. No can do. I use because it’s fun, not because I 
need
 to be high or drunk. I won’t put up with a druggie for a girlfriend.”

“Well, that is quite the birthday present, cousin dearest,” I replied in a flippant tone. “In that case, you two are free, and white—though Monika
isn’t
twenty-one yet…you can do what you like.”

My best friend slipped her delicate right hand into Dylan’s much larger one and she stood to her feet. I expected to see her wobble or at least stumble a bit but she still had perfect posture.

Dylan lifted her into his arms as if she weighed nothing and she squealed. “We’ll see you all a bit later.”

I watched in mock-horror as the two disappeared upstairs while Finn took a seat next to me.

He grabbed my right thigh and squeezed. “What’s the matter, babe? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Please tell me she’s going to be okay with him. I mean…if something happened to her and he…did something, I would never forgive myself.”

“You slipped her a twenty-milligram tablet, honey. She’s still very much in her right mind, and she isn’t doing anything she doesn’t want to do. Why don’t you focus on us for a change? Your best friend is a big girl, and she can take care of herself.”

“I have a question for you,” I began, changing the subject. “Why do you think my mom is so insistent I see her and Etienne off tomorrow?”

“Well, you are her daughter. Why wouldn’t she want to see you again before she flies back to Montreal?”

“I think she brought Monika and Clive along because it’s an ambush. They don’t trust me and if she has her way, I will never start Boston University. She wants me to go back to L.A. even if I don’t want to…what am I supposed to do?”

Finn gazed at me while he continued to stroke my thigh. “You’re a grown woman, Evie. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do—”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” I stood and began to pace nervously before I walked out of the house and sat outside in the small backyard.

Moments later, my boyfriend followed and sat directly beside me. He grabbed my hand closest to his and held it within both his hands gently yet possessively. “What’s going on? What 
aren’t
 you telling me?”

I bit my bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood before I opened my mouth and exhaled. “When my parents’ divorce went through, my dad turned over my ‘share’ of what I am supposed to inherit to my mother. Her attorney acts as the trustee and he pays for my college fees and gives me a small stipend. Well, not so small to regular people but it’s only ten thousand dollars per month. Not exactly enough to keep me in Tributes and Birkins if you know what I mean. I also have access to an account with a hundred thousand dollars but that is only open to me during the school year.

“Most of the expensive clothing and handbags I have were given to me by my father…birthday gifts and what not. Guilt presents for never being around. When he comes to the States, instead of visiting, he might send me a text or leave a voicemail message to let me know he’s opened a credit line for me at Chanel or Christian Dior and I am allowed to purchase a certain amount of clothes, shoes, perfume—whatever.”

I paused and tried to stop the tears from falling. They would mess up my perfectly applied mascara. “He didn’t even call me today. He just texted me to let me know he opened a credit line for me at Hermès here in Back Bay. I could go in and get anything I wanted and he would pay for it. It’s a birthday gift so he recommended one of their new smaller sized Birkins in crocodile or perhaps I would prefer something exotic like ostrich.”

“I can see how this would be an issue for you, baby, but…your parents have never been here for you. Don’t you give that son of a bitch one of your tears because he isn’t worth it—he never is. We saw the people who count most in your life this morning, your grandparents. Sure, they might not have given you much—we know a one hundred dollar gift card means nothing at a place like Bloomingdales but it’s the thought that counts,” Finn explained in a calm voice.

“I know, and that’s why I want to stay here with you and my grandparents. I believe it is important I am surrounded by people who love and give a damn about me. Alas, I also know my mother, and she isn’t going to want to let me stay here and she is going to use all the leverage she has…including my inheritance.”

He looked at me with perplexity in his eyes. “I don’t understand. How can she just take away your inheritance?”

“Well, it would be quite easy now…you see, she’s married, and now all she has to do is call her attorney. She can threaten to take away what she was going to give me and hand it over to her husband instead. They have a legal contract now they are married, and she counts her allegiance towards him over me. He is warming her bed, after all. Who do you think she would choose if I pushed her hard enough?”

Finn stood and I followed his lead since he still held my hand. “Baby, are you afraid she would choose him over you?”

“No, I’m not afraid because I 
know
 she would choose her new husband over me. My father does it with his new wife all the time. He spends all of his free time with her and I am just an after thought.” I sighed as we faced one another, holding hands. “I seriously believe they never loved one another, and the only reason why they went through their sham of a marriage was because it helped both their careers. I have never been anything more than an after thought, and you think the situation changes just because I am an adult now?”

“No, of course not.” I allowed him to embrace me and accepted the warmth and safety he provided. “However, you’re forgetting something very important. I love you so much, and I would happily pay for your college courses. I would take care of you…it’s why I wanted us to get married once and for all. You need to get from underneath their thumb. You need to become your own person.”

Finn spoke the truth but it didn’t change my situation. As long as my mother held control over my trust and could wield it as she saw fit, I would never be my own person. Freedom wasn’t free, and without money I had no power, prestige or way to take care of myself and that was scarier than anything else I could think of in the world.

F
inn sensed Evie’s reluctance immediately. He knew she felt like her life would spin out of control if she had no way of controlling her own finances and this caused him to panic.

The woman was stubborn as hell and always had her pride. If she didn’t think there was a way for her to somehow make it out of her current predicament, she wouldn’t marry him. She’d be too afraid he’d think the only reason why she agreed was due to her financial situation.

He knew she’d grown up in a situation similar to his until her eighth birthday but she’d never know what it was like to have been born poor. Her grandparents still raised her in a fairly comfortable—though certainly not wealthy—manner. She had enough food to eat, extracurricular activities, attended a local Catholic private school and had friends. Her life had been normal until her parents had come back into the picture, and whisked her away to California.

Finn knew poverty because he’d lived it first hand in Omagh. He knew what it was like to go without proper clothing and food. He had first hand knowledge of growing up in a rodent-filled dump with a mother who barely had two pennies to scrape together. It didn’t help his father was an American citizen who did not bother to send child support, and she had to raise him all on her own.

After everything they’d been through, they should have been close but he hadn’t spoken to his mother in nearly two years. She’d been quite young when she’d had him and although he was now an adult, his mother was barely forty years old.

She’d remarried and relocated to Vermont. Her husband and their two children—Padraig, age three and Constance, age eighteen months—didn’t think it was kosher to have a drug dealer in and out of their happy home. Finn faced the fact he had no family other than the one he’d created for himself: Brandon, Dylan, Fiona, and Evie.

Although he hadn’t seen her in years until she’d recently moved back to Boston, she would always be part of his family because they shared a child together. One they were allowed to have nothing to do with but their son was still on this earth, and being raised in a home full of love and warmth instead of by two adults who weren’t prepared to have a child in their life.

The thought of Kieran made Finn love Evie more, not less, and he desperately wanted her to be his wife. If he didn’t find a way to get a ring on her finger, she would move on, and that was unacceptable.

He knew she loved him but Evie was damaged and like all damaged people, she could learn to live without anything or anyone. She cried and talked about how much her inheritance meant to her because without it, she couldn’t just get up and go. She would have no freedom and therefore, she’d be trapped in a situation not of her choosing.

Everything about Elvira boiled down to choice. If she didn’t make it then she would resent the situation, and life would not be pleasant for either one of them. He could accept that but he also knew he had to help her and make sure she received her inheritance so she would say yes to marriage with him. It was the only way.

“Listen, when you go see your mother tomorrow, I’ll come with you,” he finally said after a long silence.

Her steel blue eyes lit up. “Really? You’re not saying that just to say it?”

“Course not. It doesn’t do either of us a bit of good if you aren’t happy.”

“I am happy, Finn, because I’m with you but…my mother isn’t like anyone you’ve ever met. She charms everyone with her star persona but I actually had to grow up with her, and she is incredibly insecure. Now she’s old too, and it would be so much easier for her if I were ugly. I think she secretly wanted an average looking daughter but she doesn’t
see
me as average even if I am—”

“You’re kidding, right?” He looked at her gorgeous face and sighed. “Honey, you’re beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. Even if you didn’t have blonde hair and wore your own
natural
hair color—”

“—you mean my dirty blonde locks that do nothing for my complexion?”

“Yeah, your dishwater blonde hair, you still have a light inside those gorgeous eyes of yours, and you are so full of life. She has every reason to fear you. Her hubby was staring pretty hard, and you can’t tell me a thirty year old like
him
wasn’t thinking lecherous thoughts about
you
.”

Evie smiled at him after he grabbed her ass possessively with both hands. “Mmm, nice moves, Romeo but you’re going to have to dance with me before you have your way with me. Let’s go.”

She dragged him into the house where Brandon and Fiona were dirty dancing to the Femme Fatale re-mix of Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends.” Evie dragged him to the hard wood floor, and they began to dance as she turned around against him. She began to grind her ass against his crotch as the music took over her body.

He loved to see her like this in better spirits, and had a feeling she would be all right. Once they visited her mother and got everything settled, she would be fine. Of course that didn’t mean he was averse to using his multitude of Irish charm if he had to because he never had any intention of settling in California. He would be damned if his baby would be dragged back to the land of movies and fake tans kicking and screaming.

Evie turned toward him as the song ended and slower one came on by Robin Thicke. She placed her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to her. “This song expresses how much you mean to me. I am lost without you, you know that right?”

Finn smiled in return and wrapped his arms around her slender waist. “Of course which is why I will do everything in my power to make sure you won’t have to go anywhere.”

Her head rested against his shoulder for several stolen moments before she looked into his eyes again and leaned toward him. Her lips found his without any problems, and before he knew it they kissed each other deeply and passionately. Their tongues touched and teased one another as she ground her pelvis against his growing hard-on. She knew exactly what she was doing, he thought as he twisted his hands through her silky locks.

They stood where they were and got lost in one another. The scent of each other, their breath and the feeling of their bodies pressed tightly against one another. He began to back up until he’d reached the staircase and that was when he decided to take advantage, and lifted her in his arms.

She held on tightly although they never broke their kiss, he expertly guided them to his bedroom. He wished for a moment she had chosen a skirt or dress instead of pants which he would have to unbutton and help her slide out of them. As soon as he got her to his room, he closed and locked the door before his hands reached for her jeans and began to unbutton them.

Finn was hard, painfully so, and he wanted to make love to her with all encompassing and fiery passion. He never got tired of being inside of her, and moving with her. After all, he’d broken her virginity, and every time she allowed him inside her body, it felt like a sacrifice on her part.

They knew where it all led and had proof with the child that had been born to them but it was different this time around. They were both older and wiser; Evie was on the pill, and he’d made damn sure he was never as careless as he was when he’d been younger and raging hormones had taken over common sense.

The moment he undid her zipper, he pulled her jeans off, thong included. Her beautiful lightly tanned skin, which smelled faintly of vanilla and lemon enlightened his senses but it was the sight of her sex, bare and waiting with only that landing strip of hair that caused his erection to become downright painful.

His fingers caressed that sensitive spot between her legs, and she moaned out loud before opening her legs in a lascivious manner as she climbed onto the bed. Her vaginal lips glistened with moisture from her arousal and her clit sat like a queen on a throne, hard as rock and pronounced in such a sexy way, it was vulgar and beautiful at the same time.

Finn began to unbutton his own pants and watched as his own cock sprung out and pressed itself in a curve against his belly.

“Well, if that isn’t a thing of beauty, I don’t know what is,” Evie murmured before her gorgeous gray-blue eyes met his own.

“I want you to play with yourself,” he commanded.

Evie raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow before her right hand reached down between her parted thighs and opened herself to him with her fingers while her index and middle finger lightly caressed her clit. They circled the nub in a slow, languishing way before she reached further down and slid two fingers inside herself. She pulled them out slowly, her fingers glistened with her own juices before she raised them to her mouth and sucked on them in seductive, come-hither way.

Finn lost all perspective and slid out of his jeans before he pulled off his tee-shirt and stalked toward her with a predator’s grace. He leaned down and his mouth immediately suckled her clit greedily as her fingers played with her rock hard nipples.

She tasted of honey and heaven, salt and sin. Her skin heated beneath his touch and as the juices began to flow, he spread her lips like a flower and darted his tongue into her hot passage that was slick with her own desire. His tongue slipped in easily and he tongue-fucked her in a languid pace that had his own cock on fire to be inside that sweet, tight, moist spot of her body.

Everything about her was perfect. From that tight passageway that lead to a den of pleasures to her perineum, which he teased for several moments. Her anus was tight and pink, perfect as far as he was concerned, and he would absolutely adore exploring that place on her body but not at this point in their relationship. That required absolute trust but when done by the right person, it could be a highly satisfying, and a mind blowing experience for both partners.

Evie panted as he moved his tongue up and over her clit again. She began to buck her hips in a maddening gyration as he pleasured that center of heat and passion while he slid two fingers inside of her and began to fuck her slowly as his tongue fluttered over her hard nub.

She came in a wave of pleasure and flooded his fingers with her juices. He would have loved to have her beautiful, slightly parted lips around his cock but he couldn’t hold out any longer. He had to have her at that very moment.

Finn climbed onto the bed and positioned himself between her legs. He kissed her passionately and tasted her on his tongue and hers at the same time. Slowly, he guided himself into her until he reached the hilt. He didn’t want to move or change positions. He wanted to be like this, inside her and with her forever.

Her vaginal muscles flexed hard around his cock as he began to thrust inside her with a slow tortuous grind that would prolong his orgasm for as long as possible. Raw sex was a very different feeling than intercourse with any kind of barrier. It was intimate and exciting, tantalizing and all his senses were heightened. He could smell his freshly washed body and Dior Homme Sport—a gift from Evie—with its heady scent of ginger, citron and cedar wood.

His bedmate was no lightweight and before he knew it, she had rolled him on his back. Evie began to control their sex as she rode him with all the enthusiasm of a cowgirl at a rodeo. She had this great technique of pulling her feet under her and sliding up and down on his shaft before she ground him deeply into her and flexed her muscles around his manhood.

It was a beautiful to see him disappear inside her, and all that perfection. Her skin glowed with a light sheen of sweat and her body, equally naked as his, positioned on top of him with her perfect breasts and dark pink nipples was as tantalizing as the sex itself.