Four years later
Feathery kisses made their way down my throat. The loose fabric of Hunter’s shirt, which I’d used as pajamas, was pulled over my head. I recognized those kisses well: the let’s-get-freaky morning kisses that signaled the start of a new day.
I turned to my side, wiggling my butt into Hunter’s erection, my eyes still closed.
“Too tired,” I murmured.
“Too horny,” he replied gruffly, springing his dick out of his briefs and nestling it between my butt cheeks.
I didn’t know when exactly he’d gotten rid of my underwear—only that I’d gone to sleep wearing a pair, and right now I was naked from the waist down. His engorged shaft was hot and velvety against my skin. Saliva pooled in my mouth.
Yes, please.
“Hunter Fitzpatrick. No means no.”
“No can also mean maybe, if I promise to get you off before your eyes are open,” he murmured, and I felt his breath on my neck.
Minty. He’d already had a shower and brushed his teeth. I bet he was minutes away from dashing to work. He was always the first one in the office. Gerald Fitzpatrick was showing signs of retiring, which put Cillian as potentially the youngest CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company in American history. It also meant Hunter was putting in extra hours at the office. I didn’t mind. We always met somewhere nice after work to try new food.
I was a food critic nowadays. Savory Sailor Sampling Boston was picking up. I was even thinking of starting my own YouTube channel and website. My Instagram (which was checkmarked, something that made Hunter jokingly check off boning a celebrity from his imaginary list), already had over seventy thousand followers, including three high-profile celebrities.
None of them were Lana Alder. She’d stayed under the radar since her banishment from archery, along with Junsu. I heard she was an aesthetician in Albuquerque. And a few years ago, Sam told me he saw Junsu wearing a fast food uniform, walking down the street.
“Give it your best shot, stud.” I rolled to my back, feeling Hunter’s face already nestling between my thighs. I bucked my hips up to meet his lips, groaning when his hot, minty tongue pressed against my entrance. I was already embarrassingly wet.
“Jesus,” I moaned.
“Speaking,” Hunter said, into me. I laughed as his tongue swirled around my clit. “How can I help?” His voice was muffled, as his mouth was on my pussy. He faked an echo, drawling a quieting “Help, help, help.” I felt my body vibrating with pleasure, delight, and laughter.
“My boyfriend and I have the most inappropriate sex discussions. I don’t know what to do with him.”
“Well…” He sucked my clit into his mouth, pumped it a little, then released it, pushing two fingers into my wetness and playing with me. His other hand moved to my breast, flicking my puckered nipple. I shuddered and clenched around him, sighing as my entire body tingled. Currents of voltage ran from my toes to my head.
“Maybe he shouldn’t be your boyfriend, then,” Hunter suggested.
His mouth was now available to talk—he worked his magic with his fingers—and when I popped my eyes open and stared at him in confusion, he was looking at me, his head still between my legs. He straightened up on his knees, not breaking eye contact as he pushed a third and fourth finger into me. I felt full and tight and on the verge of something euphoric. My body was blossoming with an orgasm, but panic washed through me.
“Do you consider this an appropriate time to break up with me?” I asked as evenly as I could, considering my out-of-control pulse and mild hysteria.
He licked his lips. “Is this worry I detect, Miss Brennan?”
My eyes widened. What was his game?
“No. Of course not. I couldn’t care less. Besides, you’d never leave me.”
Over the years, Hunter and I had become a fixture in the tabloids for all the right reasons. We went to charity events together, wearing the best frocks. We were caught canoodling in our swimsuits on exotic vacations with our families. We never caused drama and never had a public feud, and we were the second-best thing since Boston’s most eligible bachelor, Cillian, wasn’t showing signs of settling down.
We were a solid couple, to a point that people had largely forgotten Hunter had been in a sex tape. I felt secure in our relationship, in who he was now.
“Thing is.” He pressed his thumb to my clit, his fingers still inside me. He rubbed my sensitive bud in circles. “That boyfriend gig? Kind of got old for me, I’m afraid.”
“Oh,” I half-moaned, half-whispered. I was shaking all over, coming hard against his fingers. The rush was insane, gloriously climactic, but also filled with anxiety. “Hmm, do you…want to take a break?”
“I want to be your husband,” he finished, my body clenching tightly around his fingers as the orgasm washed over me. He used his available hand to produce something from under his pillow—a little box—throwing it into my hands.
My fingers shook around it, and I dropped it on my chest, laughing nervously. I picked the box up again, struggling to open it. My heart raced. My breath caught. My chest filled with pure, unfiltered joy I couldn’t contain. I thought I was going to burst.
“Hunter…”
“Open it,” he demanded hoarsely, clearing his throat.
I realized he was nervous, too.
I opened it, and what I saw inside brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t just an engagement ring. No. The stones—rubies and diamonds—were arranged in the shape of a bow. It must’ve cost a fortune. Not to mention it was definitely a custom design. I looked up, wide-eyed.
“Before you say anything.” He leaned down, grabbing a second velvet box from under the pillow. He threw it into my hands. This time I caught it without a problem. “This one’s mine. You know, if you say yes.”
I opened the second box. Hunter’s ring was black, with three gold stripes in the shape of an arrow.
I was the bow.
He was the arrow.
We hunted together. A team.
We were also each other’s prey.
“I want you,” he said gruffly. “Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. Forever. I want you to be mine, Sailor Brennan. No one else’s, ever.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “I want that, too.”
He slid the ring onto my engagement finger, leaned down, and kissed me hard. It was a blur of passion, tears, and hunger. The kiss turned feral. He flipped me to my stomach and was inside me, just like he’d said he wanted to be when he woke me up. I didn’t care much for my morning breath, nor for the fact that he was probably running late for work.
“Aingeal dian,” he whispered to my nape as he thrust into me.
“My favorite Hunter,” I whimpered beneath him.
He would never know, I thought.
How he’d caught me.
How he’d captured me.
How he truly owned me.
The boy who let the hail drown him.
Who didn’t fight back.
Who once gave up.
He would never know, because in his eyes, I was the one who’d caught him.
Hunter
“What’d you send him this time?” Cillian asked, going through a thick pile of envelopes on his desk.
Who the fuck sent snail mail anymore? Did people give zero craps about the rainforests? I mean, okay, I worked for a company producing fucking fuel—I could see the glaring irony in my statement—but fuel was essential to run cars and airplanes. It was vital to run heaters and build asphalt. Paper was wholly unnecessary at this point. Want to read? Buy a Kindle. Want to send a letter? Email someone. Use Messenger. WhatsApp. Carve a message in a fucking cave.
I took a seat in front of a standing Kill, rolling the ring I was already wearing on my wedding finger. “Just a few pictures of us in Barbados. Some souvenirs from our weekend in Puerto Rico.”
It had become a hobby of mine to send Syllie a biannual update on how the company was doing without him—great, by the way—and what we were doing in the outside world. I sent him pictures of me smiling in vacations, getting my degree, and apartment shopping with Sailor. I got a sick kick out of it, knowing he was rotting in a cell for the rest of his life for attempted murders while I lived my best life with the woman I loved.
Cillian wasn’t so personal with his hatred toward Syllie. Don’t get me wrong, he would go to extreme lengths to ruin people’s lives, but he needed them to be able to fight back. Syllie was a done deal, and Cillian was above playing with his food.
Me? I was the asshole in the cafeteria who started the food fight.
“Nicely done,” Cillian clipped, gathering all the envelopes his secretary had sorted for him alphabetically and dumping them into the trash can under his desk. “Now get out of my office. Your contentment is ruining my appetite.”
“Are you sure it’s my contentment and not an allergic reaction to life?” I pretended to salute, standing up.
“Positive.”
“Nothing about you is positive, fuckface.” I laughed.
“You kiss our mother with that mouth?” he tutted, sitting down to take a call.
“Cursing is the least of the dirty things I do with my mouth, son.” I clucked my tongue, gunning him down with both index fingers.
“Call me son one more time and the rest of your meals will be consumed through a straw,” Kill hissed. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
“Aww. You said ass.” I slapped a hand over my mouth, feigning shock. “That’s a potty word. Go put a dollar in the piggy bank.”
Cillian picked up a small golden statue on his desk and hurled it at me. I dodged it by inches, laughing as it crashed against the glass wall, sending the eyes of everyone outside flying to watch what happened.
He smirked up at me, a devious glint in his eyes. “Out.”
“Don’t forget eight o’clock. We have this dinner thing with Sailor and her parents.” I pointed at him. He shook his head.
“Gread leat.” He was now throwing me out in Gaelic.
“Love you, bro.”
“I’ll call security,” he threatened.
He wasn’t even kidding. We’d been known to use security on each other multiple times during our disagreements in the last four years. I got out of his office, making my way to mine—approximately three steps away. I had my own assistant now. Since I’d graduated, actually. People actually gave a shit about my opinion in this place.
I made money for Royal Pipelines as the head of PR and marketing. I liked working with people, charming my way into their good graces. I channeled my extrovert personality for a good cause. I made serious dough, and I actually took the company in the direction I wanted it to go: greener. More environmentally friendly. True, Greenpeace wasn’t going to hit us up for drinks anytime soon, but thanks to my future projects, Royal Pipelines was no longer the ocean’s villain.
The first thing I did was stop the drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. Cillian spun it publicly that the high cost of the drilling wasn’t worth the amount of oil we’d found. It was bullshit, but it soothed his precious pride. We were no longer fucking with the world’s natural air conditioner and killing all the fishies.
Not to mention, I had friends now. With pulses and everything. The real deal.
True, I didn’t love them like brothers the way I did Knight and Vaughn, but for that, I actually had a brother.
“Hunter!” Da’s voice boomed from the other side of the floor. He was just getting out of the elevator, pacing toward his office. “A word, son.”
I made a U-turn and walked toward him. We met inside his office. He closed the door (the new one, which didn’t take a fucking century to close), because now, we met all the time to talk about everything, without Cillian as a buffer.
“What’s up?” I leaned my shoulder against a glass wall, tucking my hands into my suit pockets. He rounded his desk and sat behind it, smoothing his tie.
“What did she say?” He scrunched his eyebrows.
His firstborn was as far from marriage as The Joker was from sanity, and Aisling was still young. I was his best bet for grandchildren.
“Who?” I feigned confusion.
“I’m too old for these charades. What did Sailor say?” His eyes narrowed.
“She needs more time.”
I scanned him coolly for his reaction. His face fell before he schooled it, offering me a what-can-you-do huff. He tried so hard to keep a poker face, but the fact he reached for his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead gave away his despair.
“Buy her a bigger ring. That’ll do the trick.”
“Not with Sailor.” I shook my head, still eyeing him.
He groaned, rubbing his temple. “Probably. She’s a toughie.”
“I’m tougher.” I grinned, pulling out my hand and showing him my ring finger. “I won’t keep you and Mom waiting for long. I want to put this shit on lock as fast as I can, before she realizes she can do much better.”
Da looked up from his seat, shaking his head, and whispered, “No, she can’t.”
I believed him—not that it was true about Sailor and me, but that he meant it.
“I love you, ceann beag. More than this kingdom.” Da smirked, slow and deliberate, trying not to burst with pride.
I grinned back, fingering the Dala horse on my neck. Sailor had given it back to me the day she’d moved back in. It was no longer colorless, though. She’d painted it orange—like her hair.
“I love you, old sport. More than pu—”
“No.”
“Puppies! Chill.”
I turned around and made my way to my office, laughing.
I totally meant pussy.
