Dark hearts, p.21
Dark Hearts, page 21
There. That’s where I want you. Where I need you.
CHAPTER SIX
Ronan
I pulled back. “We’re partners now,” I told her, my voice low, my eyes locked on hers. This was a tightrope I did not like, holding myself distant while pulling her in.
“Fine,” she said. “Partners. But don’t lie. No more lying.”
“The same to you, Poppy.”
She nodded, her breath hitching with nerves and desire. “Ask your question.”
I sat on the edge of the tub. “Why would the Morellis want you dead or alive?”
“How do you even know this? Like, is there some kind of bad guy newsletter you’re all on and you get updates about murders for hire?”
I would not smile at her. Would. Not.
“It’s what Theo said before I put a bullet in his brain.”
“Did you kill him for shooting me?”
“I’m asking the questions now. Why do the Morellis want you dead or alive?”
I saw it settle over her face. The confusion and fear. “I’m no one. Nothing.”
You’re not no one, I wanted to tell her. And you are far from nothing. But how I felt about her was never the point. “Well, that’s what we need to figure out, Poppy. And fast.”
“Okay,” she whispered, nodding, a star pupil. “What do we know about the Morellis?”
“They don’t hide their crimes. Of which there are plenty. They’re as rich, if not richer, than the Constantines.”
“That must bother Caroline.”
“Everything about the Morellis bothers Caroline.”
“She doesn’t want me dead or alive, does she?” Poppy asked, like the question was pulled from her stomach.
“She very much wants you alive. And living in her pocket.”
“I guess . . .” She blew out a slow breath. “I was an idiot thinking she loved me. That we were family.”
“Oh, princess, she treats everyone like that. It’s not just you.” I’d known going in I was a tool for Caroline. A weapon she wielded against her enemies. But at the beginning, being needed that way, and being appreciated in any way . . . well, it’d felt like love. Like a mother’s love. To a killer who didn’t know his mother, Caroline had filled those shoes in a way that embarrassed me now.
But I wouldn’t be saying any of that out loud.
“What do you know about the Morellis, Poppy?” I asked, pushing us back to the subject at hand.
“They’re violent,” she said. “Lawless. Like . . . they don’t play by the same rules Caroline and her family play by.”
“They don’t care about the same things. But,” I said. “They’re upfront about it. The Constantines are a knife in the back. The Morellis are a gun to your face.”
“You sound like you admire them.”
“They’re a worthy enemy, and I spent a lot of years fighting them. Did Caroline ever tell you anything about them? Something that might have seemed like a secret?”
“Never. I swear it. She rarely talked about them. I don’t even know what the feud is about.”
“Money. It’s always about money. And control. It started in the ’50s over a land dispute in Las Vegas. Bryant Morelli and Caroline Constantine just inherited the fight.”
“Would they want to hurt me because of you?” she asked, pink cheeked and embarrassed. “Like, maybe they thought what was between us was real. On your end.”
Ah, she was still wrestling with that bit. Fair. I was too.
“No one gives a shit about me.”
“I do,” she whispered. So sweet. So precious and sweet and brave sitting there.
I stood, getting some distance from the beautiful naked woman in the tub. “It’s got to have something to do with the senator.”
“I don’t know what,” she said.
“Yeah. Me neither.” I sat down on the closed toilet lid and grasped a corner of the tray still balanced on the sink. “You want some of this?” I asked her. “You must be starved.”
“I don’t want to get crumbs in the bathtub. But I can’t . . .” She sighed and gave me a chagrined smile. “I can’t actually get out of the tub. My arm . . .”
Pulling her up and out of the water was nothing. Resisting the press of her body against mine was harder. She was damp and warm and soft against me.
“Here,” I breathed, looking away from her face and sweeping her legs up over the edge of the tub. I set her down on the mat and I made the mistake of looking into her deep brown eyes.
With my blood-soaked killer hands, I touched her throat, the fragile edge of her collarbone, the sensitive skin of her neck where she’d been bruised that day when I saw her in her kitchen. It had been easy, for the two years when I didn’t cross paths with Poppy again, running Caroline’s obstacle course, earning her approval crime by crime, to believe Poppy wasn’t getting hurt by her husband. I’d known, of course, the second I met the guy just what kind of man he was. How he shared the same space as the priests up the hill in the school I’d been sent to.
But then she’d stood in that kitchen, trying to make awkward small talk with me, worrying the cuff of her sweater and pulling the neck aside until I saw that bruise. After that, there’d been no more pretending. If I could have, I would have turned right around and put a bullet in that man’s brain that very minute.
But I’d been a beast on a leash.
I set Poppy away from me and grabbed a towel hanging by a hook on the back of the door to wrap it around her. She was shivering now in the cooling air. Hungry no doubt. “Come on,” I said. And with the tray in one hand and my other arm around her, I led her out of the bathroom and into the room with the fire. I pushed the chair up close to the hearth and sat her down in it.
“I’ll get the chair wet,” she said, her hair streaming down her back.
“It’ll dry. Eat.” I pressed the butter-covered bread I’d made for her into her hands. I poured her a cup of tea, putting plenty of sugar and milk in it, and set it on the tray so she could reach it.
I made myself the same and dug in.
She made a low moan of pleasure and I remembered, when I didn’t want to, Sinead feeding me the exact same all those years ago. Sweet, milky tea and butter an inch thick on fresh bread. It was proper medicine.
“Was there something from the senator’s will?” I asked. “Anything surprising, like?”
“That he left it all to me,” she said, licking her lips and leaving them shiny. “I’m rich now. Like . . . really rich.”
I shook my head, sitting back with my own cup of tea, wishing it was coffee. “The Morellis wouldn’t kill you for a couple of million dollars. That’s nothing to them.”
Poppy pouted at me and it was ludicrous, but so undeniably . . . cute.
“Are you mad because I don’t think your fortune is big enough?” I asked her.
“Maybe.”
I laughed, a low surprising rumble from the center of my chest, and the sound startled us both. Her eyes lit up like the sunrise, and, uncomfortable, I turned away.
“You know,” she said after a long moment. “I thought it was really weird that he used the lawyer he did. He was local out of Bishop’s Landing. Why wouldn’t he use some multimillion-dollar firm out of New York City?”
“That is weird,” I said.
“And.” She looked at me, the fire reflected in her eyes. “There was a box of stuff he gave me. Files from a trust he’d been creating and some things to do with the foundation . . .”
I got to my feet. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“Because I didn’t know if we were on the same side earlier. You locked me in my room.”
“Where’s the box?”
“Still at the house. I was looking at it when Theo came in. I shoved it under the desk but . . . wouldn’t the police have found it when they found Theo’s body?”
“Theo’s body wasn’t at your house.” Theo’s body was buried in the Ocean City Landfill. Another favor I called in.
The truth was Caroline had probably been through that house in the hours I’d been gone with a fine-tooth comb. At this point, I had no friends in the Constantine house. But I might have some at the police department.
And I had one favor left. My last ace card.
My plan could backfire spectacularly. Or it could be a moot point. But the box was the first solid clue we had.
I stood and pulled Sinead’s landline out of the cupboard where I’d hidden it when we first got here.
“You hid the phone from me?” Poppy asked.
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“I don’t think your ‘safe’ means the same as it does to me.”
“What do you think it means to me?”
“Prisoner.”
No matter how much I liked this sassy version of her, I would not smile. She needed no encouragement.
I plugged the phone into the jack and tapped the button under the receiver until I got a dial tone.
“Who are you calling?”
“I think I have one friend left,” I said. “Who might be able to get the box without letting anyone know.”
“Who?”
I glanced up at her. Like the people I knew were the people she knew. She traveled with minnows and I circled with sharks. “You don’t know her.”
“Her?” She couldn’t hide her jealousy and I did nothing to ease it.
“Yeah,” I said. “Her.”
* * *
Poppy
It never occurred to me that Ronan would have a . . . girlfriend? Was that the right word? Would a man like him have a girlfriend? The word seemed far too tame for the kind of woman he’d keep around in his life. Lover? Even that seemed ridiculous.
A wife? Oh my God. Was that why he wouldn’t actually sleep with me? He could fuck around with me but not sleep with me because that was his moral marriage code? He turned away from me and I looked into the fire, pretending to give him privacy while I was actually listening as hard as I could to his side of the conversation.
He said something I couldn’t understand, and it took me a second to realize he was speaking Irish.
And as much as I wanted it to be extremely unlikely that Ronan had someone else in his life, the way he was talking to the woman on the other end of the phone was . . . well, it wasn’t the way he talked to me, that was for sure. His tone was sweet. And kind.
I watched him for another second as he turned sideways, his profile so handsome and sharp it sliced right through me. And then, exhausted and full from the bread and the tea, I stood and went to the bedroom. I dropped my towel and climbed damp and shivering into the bed. Jealousy curdled in my stomach.
When I woke up, it was dark outside the small window and the door to the main room was open, the fire visible. There was a quiet roar that took me a second to identify as the shower running in the bathroom. I only figured that out when it suddenly turned off. A few seconds later, Ronan stepped out into the bedroom from a cloud of soap-smelling steam.
“Ronan?” I whispered.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he whispered back, like other people were sleeping nearby when it was really just us and a lonely priest for miles.
“You didn’t. What time is it?” Time was slippery right now.
“Nine. This is our second night here. You all right?’
He stepped forward and the shadows and light slipped over his bare chest. His stomach. His naked arms and shoulders. He had a blue towel with white flowers all over it wrapped around his waist, and water dripped from the tips of his hair onto his skin, dripping from the scar along his jawline onto his chest snaking paths over muscle and scars across his chest and stomach.
I’d never seen him naked, despite what we’d done together, which made him, in this moment, somehow more naked.
And so very beautiful. Every curve of muscle and ridge of bone was something I wanted to take in. To stare at and admire. There was a scar over his chest, a bright star fire. Another slice along his ribcage, catching just the edge of his abdomen. He looked both incredibly hard and infinitely soft. A blade and a feather. He was every contradiction. All I wanted in this world was to figure him out.
And touch him. I really, really wanted to fucking touch him.
“Poppy?”
“I’m fine.”
“Your shoulder?” He kept getting closer to the bed, and I wanted to tell him to stop. To just give me a second. “You slept through your last dose. Let me get the meds.”
“You’re watching me sleep?”
He turned, and his back was a wide slope, curling in at his spine. The towel slipped as he walked, revealing the two dents at the top of his ass. I moaned, closing my eyes.
Naked in the bed, my skin felt alive, my blood humming just under the surface.
“Here,” he said, bringing in a glass and shaking out the pills from the bottles on the bedside table. I waited for him to set the pills down on the counter, but he held them out to me, and I was forced to take them from his hand. His touch an electrocution. I bit my tongue against a gasp.
I put the pills on my tongue and drank the water he handed me, and he stood there watching me like a half-naked doctor. Beneath the thin towel around his waist, I could see the imprint of his dick, and the intimacy of it all was going to kill me.
“Where are you sleeping?” I asked. “Is there another bedroom?”
He shook his head. “I’m out there.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I don’t sleep much, Poppy,” he said. “It’s fine.”
I wanted to ask a million questions, but I kept them all behind my teeth. “Your friend? Is she able to get the box?”
“If it’s there, she’ll get it. She has a connection at the police station too. So, if they have it, she might be able to get it from them.”
Oh, what a thing it must be to have Ronan’s faith so securely like that.
“It never occurred to me that while we were . . .” Oh God, what was the right word? Not sleeping together? There was no right word for what had been between us. It certainly wasn’t a relationship. It was barely a fling. But it was still somehow completely more consuming than all of that. “You know . . . you might have someone else . . . in your life. And I think . . . I think I deserve to know that. To know what I was a part of.”
“You’re asking if putting my mouth on your cunt was a betrayal of another woman?”
I could hear that ripple of laughter under his words. “Yes.” I sounded prim to my own ears.
“You’re thinking the woman I called to find the box was my missus?”
“Or something like that.”
“Princess.” He set down the pill bottle and braced his hands on the headboard over my head. I could smell the freshly washed scent of him. The bow of his arm muscle and the dip where it turned into his shoulder were close enough, should I choose to, I could turn my head and bite him. Looking at the black patch of hair in his armpit made me feel like he’d been kissing me for hours.
“Niamh is my landlady.”
My eyes flew to his only to find him laughing at me. “You don’t live at Caroline’s?”
“She keeps her pets in her house. Not her monsters.”
“You’re not—”
Ronan talked over me. “Niamh had to leave the United Kingdom in 1982 or be tried for treason. Made her way to New York City and rents out part of her place to good Northern Irish lads like me.”
“Ronan!”
“I’m serious.” He was smiling again, almost laughing, and in all this time with him, I’d never seen him so relaxed. “She’s seventy-two years old and can handle herself if anyone gives her trouble.” He tilted his head; he was so beautiful when he smiled. It was hard not to smile back. It was hard, actually, not to put my arms around his neck and pull him down to kiss me.
God, I wanted him to kiss me.
“Were ya jealous, macushla?”
His accent was so thick I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “What—?”
“Were you jealous, princess?” he asked, clearly this time, dropping some of what he’d said. “Thinking I was putting my tongue in another woman’s cunt?”
I started to shake my head, not wanting to give him that much knowledge. That much power over me.
“I thought we weren’t lying to each other anymore.” He cupped my face, his thumb at my lips, forcing me to meet his eyes. “So?”
“Yes,” I whispered. Caught. Immobile. “I was jealous.”
“It was only you,” he said. He brushed his thumb over my lips and then stood. I grabbed his hand before he could step away. This was ridiculous. I was . . . ridiculous. It was like standing in line to get knocked down and then, after getting knocked down, getting back in line to do it again.
Why did I want this pain so much? Why was I begging for him to hurt me?
“Poppy,” he breathed. I saw his dick twitch beneath the towel, push against the white flowers. I put my hand over him, my fingers curling under the edge of the frayed fabric. He hissed in a breath like I burned him, and I liked it. I wanted that same fire to burn me.
With my fingers around his wrist, I pulled him closer, putting his hand under the blankets over the beat of my heart. His fingers were cold against my warm skin.
And he didn’t stop me. Not even a little.
“All this talk,” I said, “of cunts and tongues . . .”
His laughter was a solid bark of delight and I smiled in reaction. What a pleasure it was to please this man, and I wanted more. I pulled the towel out of the way, and his gorgeous cock was getting thick and hard right in front of my eyes.
I pushed his hand further down my body, over my breasts, down the smooth soft skin of my belly, while I reached for his cock.
“No,” he said, shifting away from my touch.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter why.”
I tried to wiggle away, push his hand off my body, but he was steadfast.
