Come Monday (14 page)

He frowned at her words, trying to make sense of her sudden change of heart. This afternoon on the phone she’d been excited about their plans to, as she’d said, “Fuck their brains out.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said.

Her jaw was set and tense and she clenched her hands together so tightly her knuckles were white. Something had upset her. “I just think it would be better if we slowed things down, maybe took a break for a while.”

“A break?” he asked, aware of his sharp, angry tone but unable to hold back his alarm. “Keira, what the hell is going on?”

“Dammit, Will! Can’t you see, it’s too much. Can’t you just respect my feelings and let it go at that?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I want—I
need
a better explanation. What’s happened to scare you off like this?”

“I’m not afraid,” she insisted.

“Yes, I can see that,” he replied as his gaze landed on the rapidly beating pulse in her neck and he listened to her strained breathing. She wasn’t afraid. She was terrified.

But of what? Him?

“The timing on this thing,” she waved her hand between them and he felt his fury grow in the face of her refusal to call what they shared a relationship, “is just off.”

“Off?” he repeated shortly.

“Things at the pub are crazy. My family needs me right now and I can’t keep ditching them to come over here to scratch an itch.” 109

Mari Carr

“Scratch an itch?” His voice was dark and if she hadn’t been so nervous, she would have sensed the danger in his tone. With each word, she was driving a stake farther into his heart and he worried he wouldn’t be able to survive the inevitable fallout of this conversation.

“I don’t want you to think I haven’t enjoyed our time together, but you have to see, we go too far sometimes. I mean, where is the limit? How far will be too far?” He stood stock-still as he tried to process her mindset. Too far? She thought their lovemaking needed limits?

“Keira,” he said, his voice strained with the effort to speak the words. “I don’t think we need to limit our sexuality because we’ve never done a single thing that was wrong.

Why don’t you say what you mean? Your problem isn’t with the sexual acts, but what they make you feel. Is it the loss of control that’s bothering you? The idea of giving up some of that hard-earned power trip you’re on?”

She sucked in a breath at his harsh question and he wondered if he’d hit upon the root of her problem or driven her away with his cruelty.

God dammit. She was making him crazy. Making him say terrible things. “Listen, Keira, I didn’t mean—” he started, but she interrupted him.

“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with everyone! What’s wrong with a woman wanting to have a bit of control over her life?”

“Nothing,” he said. “But I don’t see what’s wrong with letting someone else guide the ship every now and again either.”

“I can’t keep doing this, Will,” she said, and he fought to remain impassive to the tears gathering in her eyes. “I can’t keep letting my family down.”

“Your family? What do they have to do with you and me?”

“They need me. And lately I haven’t been there.” 110

Come Monday

“You work in that damn pub from morning to night. You give them everything you can, but Keira, you aren’t the mother. It’s not your job to raise them. Hell, all of them are already grown.”

“I don’t think I’m their mother.”

“Of course you do and believe me, you use that excuse every time something happens in your life that you can’t handle.”

“What does that mean?” she asked, her anger suddenly rivaling his.

“You’re allowed to have a life too. God dammit, Keira. It’s time you grew up and got the hell out of there. Spread your wings. Live a little.”

“I’m so fucking sick of everyone telling me I don’t have a life! I have a life and I decide how to live it.” She was yelling now, taking a step toward him and her fury merely fed his own. “I decide who I want to see, who I want to fuck and you can’t tell me otherwise. I don’t belong to you.”

Her last sentence cut him to the core. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he replied through gritted teeth.

Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. He watched her nipples tauten beneath her tight T-shirt. Jesus, she was magnificent, and she was provoking him like a raging bull with her red flag.

“You want me and you know it. You’ve belonged to me for weeks—fuck, you’ve belonged to me since the first day you walked into my class—and there’s no way I’m going to let you leave this apartment without a fight.” She took another step toward him, her finger digging into his chest. “Is that right?” she asked. “Well then, Will, I dare you to try to keep me here. I dare you!” He turned her, pushing her back against the door with more force than he’d intended. He started to release her, started to apologize when she reached up and gripped the lapels of his shirt. With one strong tug, she ripped the material apart, buttons flying as she bent forward and sank her teeth into his chest.

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Mari Carr

He bellowed from the pleasure-pain of her sharp bite. Without thought to his rushed actions, he pulled her skirt up around her waist and yanked her panties down before shoving her T-shirt over her breasts. He jerked her bra down, releasing her breasts, taking them one at a time into his mouth, alternating between long, hard sucks and sharp bites on each nipple. Her hands hastily unbuttoned his pants, pulling down the zipper and roughly working them over his hips. He kicked them and his boxers off before returning to her breasts.

She held him to her with a painful grip on his hair and he increased the pressure of his suckling until she was screaming and bucking beneath him.

His cock was throbbing painfully but he pulled back. He had to know he wasn’t forcing her, wasn’t forcing her to do this.

“Keira,” he said, her name rumbling through his chest, the sound shattering him like a wrecking ball.

“Don’t stop,” she demanded, jumping up and wrapping her leg around his waist, trying to pull his cock inside her dripping cunt. “Don’t stop. Make me feel so good it hurts.”

He lined the head of his cock up and shoved into her in one hard, spine-shaking thrust. She came almost immediately, her nails scraping down his chest, drawing blood.

He fucked her as if his life depended on it and for a moment, he considered that perhaps it did. There was no life without her. He pounded into her hot flesh, filling her again and again, the intensity of his blows driving her up the door of her back.

“Harder!” she yelled as she came again.

Still he moved, still he thrust. He hadn’t bothered with a condom. She was on the Pill, but he’d never taken her unsheathed. A rush of cum filled his balls as he thought about releasing his semen into her waiting cunt. That idea triggered the reaction as her next orgasm milked every forceful jet out of him.

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Come Monday

She cried out, her hands digging into his forearms, her chest rising and falling with her attempts to take a deep breath. He leaned forward, covering her with soft, pleading kisses, touching every part of her beloved face. A face closed down to him once more.

“Don’t do this,” he said at last.

“I can’t stay,” she said, her voice breaking on the words. “I can’t keep giving you this power over me.” She tried to set herself to rights, pushing him away to pull up her panties, smooth her shirt and skirt back down.

He scoffed at her words. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it, Keira? You have
all
the power. Dammit, I’d give you anything you want. Anything. All you have to do is ask.” Tears fell down her face and he realized the mistake of his words the moment he uttered them.

“I want to be left alone.” She turned to open the door as she spoke and rushed down the stairs, slamming the downstairs door in her hasty retreat.

113

Mari Carr

Chapter Ten

Will shoved his way past Tristan, who appeared to be locking the pub up for the night.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? We’re closed,” Tristan said, grabbing his arm as he fought to pass.

“I’m not here for a fucking drink. I want to see your sister.” Will pushed Tristan back and headed for the stairs to the family apartment.

“Oh no you don’t.” Tristan grabbed him from behind and Will turned, clenching his fists.

“I’m going up those stairs, Tristan, and I don’t care who I have to hurt to get there.”

“God dammit, Will!” Tristan yelled. “I’m not stopping you just to be a prick. I’m saying you shouldn’t go up there. It’s not a good time.” Tristan’s words took a bit of the wind out of his sails and he sucked in a painful breath at the thought of Keira telling her family to keep him away from her.

“I just want to talk to her. Apologize,” he said, struggling to calm down. He wouldn’t do himself or Keira any good if he went upstairs in his current state. It was taking all the strength in his body not to punch something—the wall or her brother top on his list of receivers.

Tristan walked over to the bar and poured a glass of bourbon, pushing it toward him. He followed him to the counter, not sitting down.

“I don’t want a drink.”

Tristan shrugged. “It’s a far cry between want and need, and buddy, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look like you
need
a belt.” 114

Come Monday

He picked up the glass, swirling the amber liquid around as Tristan poured himself a shot and drank it.

Will sank down on the barstool miserably, following Tristan’s lead and swallowing the alcohol in one gulp, savoring the burn as it glided down his throat. Tristan poured them both another and he guzzled it as well.

“I fucked up,” Will said, his voice betraying his misery. Keira’s brother probably wasn’t the best person to spill his guts to, but the alcohol and exhaustion were taking their toll.

“How?” Tris asked.

Will shook his head dejectedly as all the worries and regrets that had tormented him for two days came bubbling out. “I pushed her too far, too fast. I knew she was an innocent. I was wrong to drag her into my twisted desires like that.” Tristan was silent for several moments, but Will was too consumed with his own depression to consider what the man must possibly think of his confession.

“Keira blames herself for your breakup. Said it was all her fault.”

“No,” Will insisted. “It was me. I came on too strong. Pushing her into things she wasn’t ready for.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely true.” Will glanced up, surprised by the man’s words.

“I don’t know exactly what happened between you and my sister and I don’t want to know all the gory details—Christ, I
really
don’t. I was ready to come by your house today and beat you to a fucking pulp for making my sister cry all night, but Teagan said something this morning that sort of got me thinking. I don’t think it’s your fault that Keira ran.”

“You don’t?” Will asked.

Tris shook his head. “When you live with someone, changes come so slow and gradual that it’s virtually impossible to see them. I think we all missed something we should have seen a long time ago.”

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“What’s that?”

“Teagan was sort of yelling at Keira, telling her to snap out of it. Teagan’s cranky when she hasn’t had enough sleep and like I said, Keira’s been a bit upset.” Will’s heart ached at the thought of Keira crying.

“Don’t get me wrong. Teagan wasn’t being cruel. She’s probably the softest one of the bunch, even if she does come across as someone who never takes things seriously.

She told Keira that she needed to start living her own life and stop living Mom’s.” Will leaned back as he remembered making the same comment to her the night they fought. She constantly worried about her family. She felt she’d failed them somehow.

“I didn’t realize it until Teagan said it. Pop was there and I don’t think he’d seen it either, but once I started putting the pieces together, it was just sitting there, as obvious as the sun on a summer day. Bit by bit over the years, Keira put aside parts of herself in her attempt to fill in the gap left in our family when Mom died.”

“I know she feels responsible for taking care of you,” Will said. “Didn’t you all realize that?”

Tris shook his head. “She was eighteen when Mom died. I was fifteen. Like I said, she didn’t wake up the day after Mom’s funeral and start wearing her clothes. She just sort of gradually started becoming what she thought we needed and the thing that’s bugging the hell out of me is…we let her.”

Tristan finished his second whiskey, pouring them both a third, and Will could see the man was suffering his own guilt over Keira’s apparent meltdown.

“She loves you all. She’d do anything for you,” Will said, his words meant to be comforting.

“Even give up her own happiness, her own personality. Shit, Will, this last month with you in her life, she started acting like the old Keira again. I didn’t even realize how much she’d changed until my real sister reappeared.” 116

Come Monday

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” Will asked, aware that his chances of making things up to Keira suddenly seemed less likely. He’d mistakenly thought he’d made her run because of his needs, his demands. If she’d run because of some deep-rooted sense of responsibility toward her family, his task had just became insurmountable. He’d never ask her to choose him over her family and he didn’t know how to solve the problems she was facing.

“I guess you give her time,” Tris answered. “I don’t know what you do, Will.

Keira’s got some seriously fucked-up shit going on in her head right now. I think by bringing the true Keira back out into the light, you triggered some feelings in her that she’s gonna have to sort out for herself.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Will forced a smile. He might not like what Tristan had said, but he appreciated the man’s candor. Keira’s brother had unwittingly relieved some of the massive amounts of guilt that had been eating away at his gut since Keira ran out.