Conor
I woke up that morning like I had most mornings: to a raging erection and a deepening well of guilt and shame. Waking Aurnia up with my palm circling her nipples beneath my threadbare t-shirt, watching her lick her lips as she awoke in sweet pleasure, tugging down her panties before drawing myself into her helped. God, it fucking helped.
Aurnia and her body and her sweet little voice chattering over cereal at the kitchen table only kept the guilt away for so long. I was taking what was not mine to take. What should not be taken. I wasn’t sure I could stop. I was goddamn sure I didn’t want to stop.
Also much like other mornings, I woke up with the phone ringing. Being with Aurnia had disconnected me from everything except her. Her waist and how it drew in and quivered just before she was about to come. How her toes curled as I fucked her on the bathroom counter. Her smile as she rolled over to kiss me and mutter into my mouth, “Good morning.”
My goddamn cell phone had nothing at all to do with her. So it had gone ignored. Voice messages piling up. Texts stacking up in the dozens.
Just like most mornings, I was going to ignore the phone ringing out in the living room. But something told me this morning was not like most mornings.
I moved slowly to keep from waking Aurnia, at least not until I could return. Return between her legs. To my fingers pushing aside her panties. To my tongue swirling around her clit.
I palmed at my erection as I padded across the cold floors to my phone. When I saw the name on the caller ID, all thoughts of fucking Aurnia fell from my mind. My cock softened like it goddamn should have. Like I wasn’t a predator. Like I would dare do anything to the child sleeping in my room.
“Diarmuid,” I said into the phone in a low voice that I was certain sounded every bit as suspicious as it goddamn should. “Diarmuid, hey, it’s early, isn’t it?”
“It’s past fucking ten,” came the sharp reply. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”
I glanced at the clock on the microwave. 10:18 a.m.
We had stayed late at Dublin Ink the night before. Mason had stayed at Miss Last Night’s flat. We had the place to ourselves. I checked on Aurnia’s tattoo and well, one thing led to another. She’d returned the favour of that first night I’d tattooed her.
How long had she sucked me? How long had my fingers twisted in her hair? How long had I laid there, spent, as I watched Aurnia’s tongue swirl in the cum splattered across my stomach, her eyes fixed seductively on mine?
Time didn’t seem to exist with her. I didn’t remember a dawn. But then again, I wasn’t sure I saw anything but her. Not as we left the shop. Not as I drove us home on the motorcycle, her hands around my waist. Not even as I closed my eyes beside her in bed, her cheek on my bare chest.
“Conor?” Diarmuid shouted. “Did you hear me?”
I glanced at the closed door of the bedroom and moved farther away.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, cupping my hand over the bottom of the cell phone. “It’s past ten. Is that a crime?”
“No,” Diarmuid said sharply. “But I suspect something else is.”
His words made my chest clench painfully.
“What do you mean?” I said slowly.
“I just came from Aurnia’s house,” he said, and my stomach dropped. “You know, an adult doing his job. An adult trying to make sure a child is safe. An adult doing what he’s supposed to do. In the eyes of the law. In the eyes of what is just and right. You know?”
“Diarmuid—”
“And do you know what I was told at the door of the godforsaken place, Conor?” Diarmuid asked. “Because Mason didn’t know. And Rian didn’t know. But I have an inkling that maybe you know. Do you know, Conor? Do you know what I was told?”
Diarmuid was yelling now. I could hear the anger in his voice. It was an anger I knew all too well. It was an anger I had for myself. An anger I beat myself down with. An anger that consumed me.
Until that night. Beautiful, horrible, incredible, disgusting, can’t happen again with a girl way too young for me, must happen again and again and again that night and every night since.
“Look, Diarmuid,” I said, dragging a hand over my face. “Look, I should have told you.”
“Told me what?”
A chance to tell the truth. A chance to tell the whole truth. A chance to get Aurnia free from my clutches. A chance to remove her as a temptation. A chance to make things right after letting them go so, so, so wrong.
Of course I didn’t take it.
“She’s been staying at my place,” was all I said, all I admitted to.