“Tell me the truth, lass,” Niall says sternly, and something about the rough tone of his voice thrills me, even as my stomach knots with anxiety. “I’m willing to hear you out, but even a relationship as brief as ours can’t be built on lies. If you can’t be honest with me, lass, I’ll have to end things here.”
No. No, this can’t be how it ends.My entire body tenses at that, reacting viscerally to the idea of my brief, passionate affair with this man ending with shame and tears behind a smoky dive bar. Of him turning me away over the story I’d concocted.
But I can’t tell him the truth, not therealtruth. I can’t tell him my name, or that I’m Ricardo Santiago’s daughter, or that what I gave him last night is, to men in my world, worth starting a war over. But I have to tell himsomething, something he’ll believe.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, feeling my cheeks flush. “I didn’t mean to lie. I just—I didn’t want you to know it was my first time. I came here looking for someone to go home with because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. So many of my friends had experiences that were bad, or pressured, or these huge emotional events—and I just wanted to have fun. I wanted it to be an adventure, and I was afraid if I told you, the night would become all about that, when I just wanted it to be about us.”
There.It’s a lie that skirts the truth, which I’ve always heard is the best kind. It’s not even entirely a lie; at least half of what I just saidistrue. I’ve just left out the context surrounding it.
Even so, I can see him relax visibly, taking another drag on his cigarette and puffing it out as he looks down at me. “I see, lass,” Niall says quietly, and my heart flutters in my chest again.
“Are you angry?” I ask in a small voice, and he hesitates for a moment, but then he shakes his head.
“I was this morning, when I put the pieces together, I’ll admit,” he says slowly. “I wished you’d been truthful with me from the start. But no, Gabriela, I’m not angry. I just wish you’d given me the choice to say yes to you anyway—and let me know, so I could have made it better for you.”
“Oh.” I let out a breathless, nervous laugh, feeling relief rush through me. “I don’t think it could have been better—”
Niall shifts against the wall, reaching for my wrist with one hand to pull me closer. I go without a second thought, breathing out on a sigh as I feel the hard, muscled solidness of his body brush against mine. “Tell me, lass,” he murmurs, his voice a deep and rolling rumble, “are you sore tonight?”
“I—” My voice dies on my lips as his heated gaze locks with mine, and I feel him hardening against me where my hips meet his.
“Your pussy.” His other hand drops to my hip, his cigarette stubbed out and flicked away. “Are you feeling tender after what we did last night?”
I feel a throb between my legs hearing him say it, my heart stuttering in my chest. “Y-yes—” I admit, not needing to hide the way it makes me flush to think about, the uncertainty I feel any longer. “I woke up sore this morning.”
“I would have tended to you better last night, lass, if I’d known. Gone slower, opened you up with my tongue and fingers until you were ready for my cock. I wouldn’t have pushed you so fast.”
Fast?He’d made me come up against the door with his mouth, and then we’d made out on the carpet before we ever had sex—“Last night was quick?” I blurt out, unable to stop myself.It’s not like it matters; he already knows it was my first time now,I remind myself.
Niall lets out a laugh, grinning down at me wickedly. “Aye, lass. It can be a bit quicker, if both are in a hurry, but last night was quick for me. I was too hungry, too needy for you. It’d been a while since I’d had my pleasure like that with a woman, especially one so—”
I look up at him as he trails off, my breath catching in my throat, my pulse throbbing there as I feel his hand tighten on my hip. “So--?”
“Beautiful,” he whispers, reaching up to trail his thumb over my cheekbone. “Eager.”
I flush a little at hearing him call me ‘eager,’ but it’s not as if it’s not true. “I wanted you,” I admit. “I still do. I want to—do it again.”
I feel him throb against my thigh at that, stiffening as he pulls me closer, and the hand on my face threads into my hair, cupping the back of my skull as he pulls my mouth to his. His lips claim mine, hot and fierce, his tongue pushing into my mouth as if to claim it for himself all over again.
“Do you still want that drink?” Niall asks against my lips as his fingers trail down the back of my neck. “Or just straight back to the hotel.”
“Back to the hotel, please,” I whisper back, arching into that thick hardness that I feel pressed against me. Niall chuckles, pressing another kiss to my lips before threading his fingers through mine.
“Let’s go, then,” he says, leading me around the bar to where his motorcycle is parked, waiting for us.
This time, I’m not as nervous. I let him help me with the buckle of the helmet, swing astride it a little clumsily, wrap my arms around him and pillow my cheek against the buttery leather of his jacket, breathing him in. I feel the wind sweep past us as he drives down the winding road, and I feel that sense of freedom, the sense that we could go anywhere, be anyone. It’s like I can feel all the ties that bind me to my life coming unraveled as we ride, fraying and blowing away in the wind, and I almost don’t want to get back to the hotel, just so that we can keep going.
I want Niall more, though, the two of us together, and now I don’t even have to pretend to be more experienced than I am. I dodged the bullet of telling him who I really am while still admitting to my innocence, and he still wants me. Now, tonight, I can explore him at my leisure.
A shiver runs through me at the idea of him exploring me, too. Of his mouth on me again like last night—
“Here we are.” Niall kills the engine as he parks in front of the hotel, helping me off of the motorcycle. His fingers thread through mine, urging me forward, and my heartbeats feel like they’re dancing in my chest as I follow him through the hotel doors, breathless and weak-kneed with anticipation.
It’s like every romance novel I’ve ever read, every fantasy I’ve ever had come to life, just as thrilling and just as full of desire and passion. We stop halfway up the stairs to kiss, his lips crashing onto mine as he groans against my lips, his hands roving over me, and then halfway to the room again, my back against the wall as he tangles his fingers in my hair. He wants me as badly as I want him, the heat and desire thick and ravenous around us, and I can feel everything but us slipping away. Here, with him, IamGabriela. I’m anyone I want to be, locked away in a world of our own making in this tiny, shoddy hotel.
When Niall finally manages to fumble the door to his room open, we stumble to his bed the way we did leaving the shower last night, hands everywhere. His mouth finds my throat as we fall back onto the bed, his fingers tugging at the hem of my dress, but I somehow find the strength of will to push him away breathlessly.
“I want to exploreyouthis time,” I tell him, pushing at his chest with my palm in an effort to get him onto his back, as if I could ever really move him anywhere he didn’t want to go. But he’s clearly amiable to my suggestion as he rolls onto his back against the stack of crisp pillows on the bed, a lazy heated grin spreading across his mouth as he does so.