She Likes It Irish (19 page)

“What the fuck happened between you two?” Mason asked.

“Ask her,” Sean said as he swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Talking about Kristin made him feel like his skin was being scraped off to the nerves.

“I did. She has no clue why you dumped her.”

Sean didn’t respond.

“At least tell her why. It’ll help her move on. Zoe didn’t give me a reason for dumping me, and I…” He shook his head. “I’m still fucking stuck on her.”

The warm tingly effects of the beer flowed through Sean’s blood and heated his slogged brain, but he heard Mason’s comment clearly, and something about it bothered him. “Zoe said you broke up with her.”

“Dude, the girl’s hot and wild, she wants to fuck all the time, she sucks better than a vacuum, and she was into me. Why in hell would I want to give that up?”

“Because she’s fucking crazy.”

Mason’s lips thinned and he shook his head and leaned forward. “Just talk to Kristin.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“Maybe not for you. But it will for her. If you ever did care about her, you owe it to her to tell her why you don’t anymore. Look, Randy’s signaling that my beer’s up, so I’ll leave you to scowl into yours.” He started to scoot out but Sean stopped him.

“How did she look? When you talked to her.”

Sean thought he saw a spark of anger flash in Mason’s eyes as he pulled up the image, as if he wanted to punch Sean in the face, and his words confirmed it.

“She looked like she’d been fucked over. I’ve never seen her in that kind of pain, even when Nick pulled his shit on her.”

And you caused it.
Mason didn’t say the words, but Sean felt them. Like knives to his core. He nodded twice and dropped his head in his hands.

“Don’t be a pussy, man. Talk to her. You owe her that much.” Mason walked away.

Moments later, Raena slid another beer in front of Sean. He looked up, his eyes saying he didn’t order it.

“On the house.” Rae rubbed his back and let her hand slide up into his hair, caressing his head. “You look like you need it.”

He stared up at the blatant offer in her dark eyes and she took it as an invitation. She dropped a knee onto the seat beside him and leaned toward him, showing him her ample cleavage and pressing her large breasts against his arm. Then her mouth was on his, her tongue in his mouth. She tasted warm and spicy, like whiskey. He drank deeply, the taste numbing his broken heart for an instant.

She squeezed his leg, high on his thigh, her long fingernails brushing his dick, which twitched at the touch. She released his mouth, but held on to him with a look in her eyes that said how much she wanted him.

“I get off in a couple of hours,” she whispered, rose from the seat, and moved back to the bar with a smile on her face.

She was already gone when Sean remembered to nod. Maybe a fast, no strings fuck was just what he needed to start getting over Kristin.

****

“It ain’t even two yet,
bruja
!” the second-to-last customer complained as Raena escorted him out.

“How would you know, Diablo,” she said, “you’re too drunk to see the clock.”

“I see good enough.”

“Good. Then you can see to tell the Tavern Taxi driver how to get to your house.”

She watched at the door to make sure Diablo got into the safe-ride-home car before locking up tight. Then she turned her gaze back to where Sean stood, waiting for her.

She sauntered over to him, unbuttoning her shirt as she did. She untucked it from her tight black jeans, pulled it off, and threw it at him. He caught it one-handed and tossed it onto the bench where he’d waited for her to come to him.

Her black bra showcased her big titties to their best, but at this moment, the lingerie was nothing but a hindrance. As if reading his mind, she reached around her back and unhooked it. Her breasts, free from their restraints, plumped as his eyes fondled them, and her tight, dusty pink nipples peaked.

The hunger in her eyes made him squirm—and not in a good way. He fought to ignore the fist slamming into his stomach when she tossed her bra aside. When she raked her fingers through his hair and pulled his face down to hers. When she ground her lips against his and undid his belt. When her quick fingers unbuttoned his jeans and moved to his zipper.

Suddenly, the blood in his veins turned heavy and cold, and his body froze. He broke the kiss and caught her hand, removing it from his boxers.

She tried to pull him back into the kiss, but he moved his head.

“Raena.”

“What’s wrong?” He heard the frustration in her gravely voice, the raw need.

He stepped back from her and quickly fastened his jeans and belt.

“Something I said?” she asked, covering her breasts with her arms.

He felt like an asshole of the first order, knowing she probably felt ridiculous standing there, exposed, literally and figuratively. And it was his fault.

“Raena, you’re a desirable woman.”

“Ah,
mierda
.” She released the breath she had been holding. “But?”

“My heart belongs to someone else.”

“No problem, honey,” she said. “That’s not the part of you I want.”

He smiled his apology.

“Let me guess—that woman you’ve been in here trying to drink off your mind?”

He retrieved her shirt and held it out for her.

She slipped her arms into her shirt and fastened the button over her breasts. “This woman of yours must be pretty damn special.”

Even though Kristin broke his heart, he had to agree with Raena. Kristin was special. He’d never met anyone like her. It would take him a long time to get over her. He knew that, but he couldn’t make himself answer Raena’s question.

She nodded as if she knew the answer. “She cheat on you?”

His continued silence answered Raena’s question.

She scoffed a gentle rebuff. “Yet you’re still faithful to her.” She shook her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “She doesn’t deserve you, and you don’t deserve me.”

What he deserved was a kick in the arse for what he’d been about to do. He still loved Kristin, no matter what she had done. He didn’t want another woman. He didn’t want to be the kind of guy who hurt a woman just to get over the one who had hurt him.

He needed to get out of there.

He needed Kristin.

****

Sean found one of the few payphones in town at a sketch gas station on Central and dropped in two quarters. Yeah, he could use his phone, but he didn’t want her to know it was him calling in case he couldn’t find his voice. He punched in her number and held his breath.

It rang three times before she picked up. Her voice, sexy and sleepy, blew through his soul like a cool breeze on a sizzling summer day, bringing with it every memory they’d made together. The feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth, the rush of being inside her body. He felt like half a man without her by his side.

“Hello?” she repeated. “Who is this?”

His mouth moved, but no sound came out. He couldn’t force himself to say the words he had called to say.
Meet me, Kristin. Let’s talk. Let’s work this out so we can get back to each other, where we belong.

“Sean? Is that you?” He heard hope in her words, and they stung like icy shards.

“Kristin,” he whispered her name.

“Sean.” Her voice rose, tears breaking her words into pieces. “Please, come over. Let’s talk about what went wrong. Whatever it is, I want to fix it.”

He opened his mouth to beg her not to cry when images of her and Zoe superimposed themselves over her lies of love, making him swallow the tender words he’d wanted to say. Feeling his heart tighten, he squeezed his eyes shut and hung up.

He shouted her name and a curse into the cold, velvet night, wishing that he had the courage to go to her now and say the words that would turn things around for them. In the end, he only turned toward home, sadness filling him.

****

“It’s three in the morning! Where the fuck do you get off ordering me here, Randy?” Zoe spat the words, her hands in fists. “Our business is done.”

“The way I look at it, it’s just started.”

Zoe grabbed his balls through his shorts, squeezed, and twisted them. “That’s where you got it wrong.”

She released him, and he fell to his knees, his hands cupping the injured dangles. Considering her job done, she turned to leave. “Don’t call me again,” she said over her shoulder.

“Do you think Kristin and Sean would be interested in knowing you’re the one who posted the video to the internet just to break them up?”

Randy’s words pulled her back like she was tied to a rope he yanked in his hands.

So…The little dipwad was threatening to tell Kristin who broke up her perfect relationship. He had to know that as soon as he did, she would rat on him and Kristin would hate him. But still…She wasn’t willing to risk losing Kristin.

“What do you want?”

He took in a deep breath, released it, and struggled to a standing position. “I want you at my beck-and-call for a month.”

Zoe slapped him. “You son-of-a-bitch! You think you can screw with me? We had a deal, and I lived up to my part of it. You don’t get to come back later and renegotiate.”

“New deal. You give me what I want, and I don’t tell Kristin what you did.”

She moved closer. “You sure you want to fuck with me? You’re the one who told Sean about the video, not me.”

“You sure you want to risk losing Kristin?” he countered. “She forgave you for recording her, but I don’t think she’d forgive you for intentionally using it to destroy her relationship with Sean.”

“Do you want to risk that I might twist your balls off during one of your beloved blowjobs, or bite the head off your cock and let you bleed to death?” She leaned forward and bit his neck, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make him wince at the demonstration of what her teeth and her ire could do.

He jerked back, but wouldn’t look her in the eye.

She smiled. “I didn’t think so.” She laughed, turning her back on him, and sauntered away, hoping he was too afraid of her to persist in his blackmail attempt.

“I’ll tell her, Zoe. I mean it,” Randy called out.

She screamed a string of obscenities as she stormed away. But in that string was the word okay.

Chapter Fifteen

Kristin sat on the bench, her eyes scanning the direction she knew Sean would come from. Unless he had changed his routine, he’d be walking her way in another five minutes or so. The electrified nest of snakes in her stomach strangled her confidence, and she took a few deep breaths to untangle it.

How many times had she practiced in the mirror what she would say to him when she saw him? It felt like a thousand at least. She had a plan for what to say and do if he took her in his arms, kissed her, and begged for her forgiveness for being such an ass. Another one if he agreed to talk, but immediately began accusing her of something she didn’t do. And yet another one if he ignored her and walked away. She was hoping for the first one, but figured it would be the second or third.

She was tired of waiting for him to come to his senses. If she could get him to talk, she knew she could fix whatever was wrong between them. So she was taking matters into her hands. Her heart slammed into her ribs on its way to her throat when she spied him walking down the path that would take him into the archaeology building and his first class.

He’d grown a scruffy beard and mustache since she’d last seen him a week ago. And his hair looked like it did after crawling out of bed from making love all night with her. Overall, the look gave him a rougher, tougher, even sexier presence and accentuated the sweet mouth she missed kissing.

****

Last night’s beer pounded in Sean’s skull like a tidal wave as he headed to class, making his mouth feel like he’d eaten sand all night and his stomach feel like a fucking boxing match was going on inside it. The pain was strong, but not enough to kill the pain in his heart. It also wasn’t strong enough to ease the shame of what he’d almost done with Raena. He’d let his dick do his thinking again and had almost entangled himself in another mess that he’d regret.

As he neared the building where his class was, he saw Kristin sitting on the bench. He felt like
shite
and wasn’t up to talking to her about why he broke up with her. And he knew that’s what she wanted.

She looked pale and thinner, and dark smudges had appeared under her eyes since he’d last seen her that morning he’d walked her home. She looked lost, shattered, beautiful. A twinge of empathy pierced his heart and, in that moment, the thought of taking her in his arms and kissing her back to happiness appealed to him. But the moment was fleeting, leaving behind it the bitter taste of anger when he thought about his own pain.

He hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, either, and sleep was hard to catch—even harder to hold on to. The woman had demolished their sweet, budding affair. He would not feel sorry for her, and he would not allow her to lie her way back into his heart and crush it again.

Fighting the urge to vomit, he set his eyes on the path before him and steeled himself to pass her by.

****

Fighting the urge to throw up, Kristin wiped her hands on her jeans and stood, her shaky legs feeling like fifty pound weights were attached to them. They didn’t want to move. But if she didn’t move, Sean would pass by as if she were a ghost. She took a stumbling step toward him.

“Sean.”

At first he ignored her, but when she called his name again, louder, he stopped in the middle of the path and glared at her, his face darkening like the late winter sky hanging thick and gray overhead. His mouth and eyes were narrowed and unyielding, mirroring his mind, she guessed.

He adjusted his backpack, stuck his hands into his front pockets, and kept walking, hunkered slightly, chin down, as if he were walking in a stinging storm.

She rushed after him. “Sean.” She caught his arm and stopped him, pulling him toward her. “Talk to me.”

His lips curled as if to spew harsh words, but he snapped them closed and shook his head.