Authors: Aubrey Irons

Thief: A Bad Boy Romance (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ivy

“
Y
ou shouldn’t be here
.”

He sees me coming this time, sitting on the roof of his boat and watching me as I come down the docks towards him.

“I should be wherever I want to be, actually.”

He shakes his head, his jaw tight. “Not here.”

I ignore what he’s said as I step over the side of the boat. “Silas, what my dad said-”

“What your dad said is fucking
true
.” His words come sharp as he climbs down from the roof until he’s standing right in front of me. “I can’t be near you, Ivy,” he says icily. “I can’t be near you or anyone
like
you, it’s why I fucking
left
in the first place!”

It’s only then, in the shadows cast from lights further down the piers that I see how strained he looks. His face is drawn, his eyes burning into mine as he slowly shakes his head. He looks hurt - broken from all those years ago.

“I’m not your ‘bad boy’, Ivy,” he says quietly. “I’m not your walk on the wild side or whatever. I’m just
bad.
That’s it
. My world and your world shouldn’t ever mix.” His chest rises and falls slowly as his eyes lock onto mine.

“Done yet?”

He glares at me. “What?”

“I said are you
done
yet, with all your shitty excuses.”

Maybe it’s seeing the hurt in his face, and being reminded of that knocked-down-but-not-broken boy I fell in love with all those years ago. Maybe it’s being so close to him after being apart for so long - the proximity of pheromones my body remembers.

Or maybe it’s that I’m just confused, and scared, and looking for something to grasp onto in the storm of my life. And come hell or whatever happened in the past, he’s always been the lighthouse in that storm.

But in the end, none of it matters.

Because right then, I kiss him.

I don’t even know why, or what
insanity
possesses me to do it, but before I know it, my lips are pressed to his, my hands sliding up his chest to his collar to pull him into me.

But when I
do
kiss him, the reasons why become irrelevant - lost in the whirlwind of that moment.

He holds back for one shred of second before he’s growling into my mouth, his arms wrapping tightly around me and pulling me into him. He kisses me hard right back, and I moan as his tongue finds mine, his hands sliding across my body.

The reasons leading to this moment don’t actually matter, because we’re
right back
to that passion from before. It’s the visceral need for each other we’ve always had, before we decided to pretend it wasn’t there. He’s pulling at the hem of my dress as my hands drop to tug feverishly his belt, and none of the years matter as we pull away pretenses and clothes and come together.

His hands slide down to cup my ass beneath the short dress, pulling me up as my legs wrap around his chiseled waist. He carries me into the houseboat, his lips never leaving mine.

It’s small, bare.

Perfect.

His strong muscled arms lay me down across his bed, finally pulling the dress from my body and letting it drop behind him on the floor. His eyes lock onto me, devouring me like I’m a meal he’s been waiting a lifetime to feast on. His shirt and his jeans join my dress on the floor before he’s crawling over me, his mouth crashing into mine again.

I gasp as he breaks the kiss, his lips sliding down my neck, down to my breasts. My back arches as he takes a nipple between his lips, one hand slowly sliding over my soft belly towards my panties. His fingers slip under them, and I moan as he finds me wet and ready for him. My legs spread as if remembering this dance, and as he moves further down my body, I lift my hips as he pulls them down my legs.

He kicks his boxers off, and I can feel my blood run hot at the sight of his body after all these years.

His chest, those grooves of his hips.

That perfect cock that I’ve
never
forgotten.

He’s got more tattoos and more scars than I remember, but it’s all coming rushing back as he wraps his arms around me, kissing my body. We’re bare but for the necklaces and our memories of each other, and I can feel his thick cock so hard and throbbing against me there between my legs. My body remembers what the mind never did.

His lips drag low again, leaving kisses in their wake.

“No-no,” I murmur with a moan as his tongue flicks across my thigh. “I want you now.”

His eyes drag up to mine up the length of my body. “If you think I’ve waited eight fucking years for this and that I’m
not
going to taste you as much as I can, than you are
sorely
mistaken, gorgeous.”

God, his mouth.

I jolt as his tongue drags through my wetness, teasing over my clit and making my hips buck from the bed. He’s merciless in his teasing, his tongue and his fingers pushing me higher and higher, until my body sings and I feel like I might pass out with the gasping breaths I’m somehow managing to suck in.

His tongue rolls across my clit again, and I come, biting my hand and gasping as the orgasm practically elevates me from the bed against his mouth.

And I remember now that I’ve never come as hard or as earth-shatteringly as I did with him.

And never since him.

He starts to crawl up my body as I lay there like a puddle, but I grin and pounce, flipping him over. He laughs as I jump on him, sitting astride his legs and bringing my mouth down to his neck.

Now it’s my turn.

My lips kiss and bite and suck their way down his body, remembering every hard inch of it. My eyes drink in the newer tattoos, the scars I’ve never seen.

“What’s this?”

My lips and my fingers linger on the round little scar on his side the looks like I’d imagine a bullet hole looks like.

He shakes his head, eyes sparkling at me. “It’s nothing.”

“Silas-“

“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly, kissing me. “None of it does.”

I somehow drag myself from his lips, but only because there’s more of him I want to taste. I push him onto his back on the bed as I make my way down.

God, he’s big.

So hard, throbbing in my hands, like iron and silk. I stroke him as I wet him with my tongue, teasing and making him groan.

I wrap my lips around the head, filling my mouth as I slowly move up and down. I’m loving the feel of him, how he fills my mouth and how he groans under my tongue.

He pulls me up.

“Get up here,
now
.”

He’s more demanding than he was, and there’s something hot about that. There’s so something so masculine about - well - the
man
he’s become.

My legs go astride his, and I can feel him hot and pulsing against my skin. My eyes never leave his as I reach between us, fingers circling him and drawing him against me.

He pauses, turning to stretch towards the nightstand drawer and pull a condom out, and I raise my brow.

He grins. “No one else has been here but you, you know.”

I swallow the heat that comes to my face as I start to look away. “I told you, it’s been eight years, Silas. I don’t have any sort of claim on you or any-”

“Yeah, gorgeous,” he says gruffly, stopping me with a kiss. “Yeah, you do. You always have, and always fucking will.”

He looks deeply into my eyes, the sea squall inside his own crashing like a storm.

“I’m yours.” He shrugs, like it’s the only truth left in the world. “Always will be.”

My mouth crashes into him, kissing him fiercely and gasping into his lips. He pulls away to tear the foil of the condom with his teeth before moving to roll it down his length. His hands slide over my hips to my ass, raising me up.

And then I’m sinking all the way down.

God, it’s so good.

He’s so big, and yet so damn perfect as he slowly fills me.

Perfect, like two puzzle pieces locking together exactly how they should. Exactly how they were meant to.

We stay like that, gasping at the memory of this and what this feels like with each other again.

Slowly, he brings me up, before pulling me back onto him, filling me with one stroke. He grinds deep inside, and my head falls back as we start to move together. Up and down, moving like one, riding with the motion of the waves lapping the side of the boat.

This is memory.

This is remembering.

This is fickle time shattering away as we find each other again.

When I come, it’s like the world freezes for a second. When the orgasm rocks through me like a northern storm, I’m frozen for one single second before I explode in his arms. He growls my name over and over into my ear as he comes with me, his hips rocking off the bed to meet me as we crash together.

And it’s a white light, shining through the storm and the waves.

It’s my lighthouse, all over again.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Silas

S
ilas

We’re wrapped in each other’s arms, her breath against my skin, when she slowly raises her head from my chest. She blinks at me sleepily, like she’s been dozing.

“Shit, I should go.”

I frown. “Where?”

“Home.”

I scowl and she rolls her eyes at me. “I can’t
stay
here.”

“Sure you can.”

I almost want to tell her she can stay here forever. That she can stay right here with me in this bed for the rest of our damn lives - or at least until we make up for eight fucking years.

Then
we can get up.

For food or something.

She grins at me. “I can’t, and you know that.”

I think of the implications of Rowan, or
Jacob
for that matter, putting two and two together somehow and coming looking for her here when she doesn’t come home.

It’s not a fun thought.

But at the same time, who cares? Ivy’s a grown woman, and capable of doing what she wants and making her own damn decisions. If those decisions just so happen to involve staying right here in my bed without any clothes on, all the better.

“I think you should get back in this bed, and let me worry about what the Hammond family thinks of it all later.”

She smiles, but shakes her head. “I need to go.”

“So when am I seeing you again?”

Her face darkens slightly the second I say it, and she looks away.

Yeah,
there
it is.

That nagging thought that’s been in my head since she stepped onto this boat tonight comes back with a vengeance, the same question on its lips: is this a reunion or a bookend.

She shakes her head, reading the look on my face.

“Look, Silas, I-”

“It’s complicated, I know.”

She laughs softly. “I don’t think that even begins to describe it.”

And she’s right of course, even if I hate that she is. As much as I tried to deny it, I spent eight damn years trying to come
right
back here - imagining it in my dreams. In the fantasy, it starts right back up again, like turning on en engine or pushing a button.

Except that’s not a thing.

We’ve both changed since then, we’re not the same kids we were. We’ve been bruised and battered by pain and suffering, battled demons and the memory of each other - her more than me on that last one.

“Look, Ivy, I don’t have any expectations of whatever this-”

“Good.”

We lock eyes for a second before she wrinkles her face. “Sorry, that came out harsh.”

“It’s fine.”

And it is.

“Look,” she slips her hand into mine, squeezing my fingers. “Can we just not label this? There’s a lot going on, and-”

“I know that.” I squeeze her hand back. “I’m here, just know that.”

She looks at me as I stand and put my arms around her.

“I wish you’d never left,” she whispers.

“Me too.”

“No, I mean…” she pulls away and looks down. “I mean I
really
wish you hadn’t left. It’d have been a lot easier.” She looks back up at me. “Who knows where or what we’d be today?”

“I was on a course for disaster and I was going to bring you down with me.”

“Silas, everyone knows what you did for Rowan.” She shakes her head. “But it doesn’t change that you
left
.”

I tighten my jaw. “Doesn’t change much for your dad.”

She nods, mulling it over. “Well, you know him.”

“I
was
responsible for that, Ivy.”

She bites her lip, her hands sliding into mine again. “
He
went on the job, after you told him not to, and after you weren’t going to.”

“He was there because of me though,” I growl, reliving that night again in my head. “I pulled him into all that. I never should have let him
near
Declan and his poison.”

I look away, glancing out the small round window of the bedroom at the dark ocean beyond. “I told you, I’m bad fucking news, Ivy,” I say quietly.

I turn back to her. “Well, or I was.”

She smirks. “Not bad news now?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“I want to believe that.”

“Do.”

I pull her against me, running my hand up and down the bare skin of her back, drinking in her scent.

“I need time.”

I nod. “I’ll be here, just know that.”

I pause, the grin spreading across my face before I whisper it in her ear.

“
Wife
.”

She pulls back and shoots me a look. “Watch it, buster.”