“Aye.” I look away, feeling exhaustion start to overwhelm me. “It’s not an easy thing to grapple with, Father. I don’t wish to break Saoirse’s heart or break my word. But I have two things pulling at me. The legacy my own father left me—”
“—and your feelings for this woman.”
“I don’t think you’re an expert on affairs of the heart. No offense, Father.”
Father Donahue smirks, an odd expression to see on the old priest’s face. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that said to me, son. But I don’t need to have felt the fires of lust myself or have entered into the bonds of marriage to know the struggles that it makes other men grapple with. And as for love—” he shrugs. “There are other loves than just the kind between a man and a woman or the love for a partner. Family, friends—I’ve felt love and loss too, son. I’ve lived a long life, and loss is a part of that.”
“I can’t—”I can’t lose her,I want to say, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. “I can’t abandon her. But I can’t abandon all of my responsibilities here, either.”
“You’ve put yourself in a hard position, lad,” Father Donahue says. “I don’t have much in the way of advice to offer you, only compassion. But I caution you to think of the weight of a vow before you take it.” He pauses, his flinty gaze meeting mine.
“Your father didn’t.”
* * *
Those words hangover me as I return to my hotel, alone and weighed down with a dozen burdens that threaten to crush me underneath their weight.Your father didn’t.
He’s right, of course. My father didn’t think of the weight of a vow, or rather he only thought of his own profit, and now he’s beneath dirt and concrete, executed by Viktor Andreyev.
But it’s not profit I’m concerned with. My father’s goals were mercenary, but mine is different. Mine has to do with emotions, with the heart, and while I know it won’t change the consequences, surely it makes what I’m doing all the more justified.
Ana.I can’t get her out of my head. As I loosen my tie, unbuttoning my shirt, I can’t help but think of what it would be like to have her here, in my room with me. I’d clung to that memory of the afternoon in the garden, but now I have more of her, thanks to Sofia. I have a picture not just of a broken girl in a wheelchair, but of who she was before that. I think of the laughing girl in the bar and imagine what it might have been like to run into her somewhere like that—how different things might have been for us both. Or if I’d seen her at a performance if she’d made it to the New York Ballet, and how I might have been entranced by her. How I might have pursued her, tried to make myself her patron, started a romance with none of the complications I’m currently facing.
It’s a foolish thing to imagine. Ana was never an appropriate match for me—a ballerina, particularly one with her last name, is no more a suitable wife for the head of the Kings than she is now. But I can’t help but linger on the thought of it, a fantasy of going to her dressing room with roses, asking her out for the night, taking her back home.
I wanted to kiss her that day in the garden, as inappropriate as I’d known it would have been. She’d smiled at me in the cold light, and I’d wanted to get up from the bench where I’d been sitting, cup her delicate face in my hands, and press my lips to hers. I’d thought about her reaction, the way she might breathe in sharply with surprise, and even now thinking about it makes me hard, my cock stiffening in my suit trousers as I slip off my shirt.
Fuck. My gut feels twisted with guilt, but the rest of me is flooded with desire, my skin tingling with it as I finish undressing and stride towards the shower, my cock hard and aching, visions of Ana filling my head. The image in my head flickers between the sweet, shy, nervous girl in the garden who had looked at me as if I were the first good thing she’d seen in a long time and the vivacious, boisterous girl in the bar, the elegant ballerina on the stage. I know that the girl in those videos is therealAna, the girl that she’d been before the world broke her down, and I want to know that girl too. I want to know all of her, every part of her, every facet.
Everything that ever happened to her to make her who she is, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. I can take it and still love her.
I know I can.
But first I have to find her. And then I have to convince her of that fact, that I want her, damage and all. Scars and all.
I bend my head under the hot water of the shower, bracing my hands against the wall as I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. The desire for her tears through me, hot and insistent, overtaking my good sense.I could have kissed her that day in the garden. Giving her something to hold onto.
But I’d had no idea of what was coming next.
I hear it, over and over, the soft, sharp intake of breath she might have made as I kissed her, the way she might have tilted her chin up, leaning into the kiss. My mind takes it further, to me lifting her off of the bench, sweeping her into my arms, and carrying her upstairs, forgetting about the obligations I’d had that afternoon. Laying her down in my bed in the guest room, gently stripping away the layers of clothes, the soft sweater she’d worn and the shirt underneath, revealing the inches of skin to my gaze as I dragged my lips over her body, showing her what it would feel like to be adored, desired, loved.
It mingles with all the other fantasies that have become jumbled up with that one since Sofia showed me the photos and videos on her phone, and my cock throbs insistently, so hard that it’s nearly touching the smooth ridged muscle of my belly as a tumult of images of Ana flood thorough my mind. Ana in her ballerina’s outfit, Ana in the bar, Ana in the garden. My hands on her face and my mouth on her lips, pulling her into a cab after meeting her at the bar, backing her into her dressing table after following her backstage post-show. Her body under my hands, smooth and lithe and graceful, and it’s the Ana that Sofia showed me that takes over, laughing under my touch, arching into it, her hands tangling in my hair as she rises up to kiss me.
Before I know it, my fist is around my cock, sliding across my taut, straining flesh under the hot spray of water, a grunt of pleasure and need escaping my lips as I start to stroke myself, slowly and first and then faster. There’s nothing but thoughts of Ana in my head, pushing her back against her dressing table as I fall to my knees and pull the edge of her leotard aside, pressing my lips to her hot, drenched flesh as I lick her pussy until she screams with pleasure. I want to know how she would taste, how she would feel, the muscles of her thighs leaping under my hands as I lick her to climax after climax, lifting her up onto the table while she’s still quivering, freeing my aching cock, and thrusting into her.
I gasp as I squeeze the length of it, my thumb rubbing over the slick head as I thrust into my fist, imagining that it’s her, her legs wrapped around my hips, her head tilted back as she moans with pleasure, her long bare throat exposed for my lips to trail down, biting and sucking as I fuck her.
It doesn’t matter that none of that is a reality now, that the Ana who danced so beautifully on the stage is gone, that the fantasy filling my head will never happen. It makes me want her all the more, the girl she once was and the girl she is now, and I grit my teeth, groaning with lust as I push myself towards the release that I so desperately need. I want her here, with me now, drenched and wet in this shower as I push her up against the tiles, kiss her mouth, her neck, her jaw, lift her up so that her legs wrap themselves around my waist as I slide into her. That new image fills my head, the steam wreathing around us as I clutch her head in the back of my hand, her wet hair tangling around my fingers, and my hips pump harder and faster into my fist, imagining that it’s her, that I can hear her cries of pleasure as she comes, as I—
“Fuck!”I snarl the word aloud as I feel the tingling rising up from my toes, my balls tight and aching between my legs as I feel the first rush of my climax, every muscle in my thighs rigid as I stroke myself hard and fast, groaning with pleasure.
It feels so fucking good. Not as good as being buried inside Ana would, but something about the fantasy intensifies all of it, making my cock throb with a sensation that makes my toes curl against the warm tile floor of the shower, my breath coming in hard, fast gasps as I paint the wall of the shower with my cum, groaning out Ana’s name between gritted teeth as the flashes of fantasy keep pouring through my brain until every last shudder of my climax has passed through me.
I lean forward, panting, my body still twitching as I let go of my pulsing cock, letting it begin to soften under the hot spray of the water as I try to catch my breath. Even after the intense orgasm, I don’t feel as if I have any more clarity than I did before. I still feel consumed by her, by the need to find her, to see her again.
I can’t rest until I do. I can’t go back to Boston until I do. I made two promises, and there’s one thing I know, down to my very bones.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to break both of them.