@RonanFitz: @Socialmedialite I’m not having fun and I hold you solely responsible.

@Socialmedialite: @RonanFitz Have you checked out @dirtyrugbyjokes yet? ;-)

@RonanFitz: @Socialmedialite My earlier statement stands firm.

 

*Ronan*

As it happened, we did make it out of Manhattan. It took us a while, but I was finally on the motorway heading toward Poughkeepsie. Man, they did roads so much better here than they did back home. Sometimes it felt like there were a million lanes going each way. Also, there was something deeply satisfying about having Annie sitting beside me while I drove. It had been almost ten days since I’d been on the road, so I was obviously in dire need of a fix.

I heard Annie let out a quiet laugh and turned my head to look at her. “What?”

“I was just thinking that I’ve never seen anyone so fixated on a car before,” she replied, her tone surprisingly playful.

I held back a smile, quiet for a moment, before I teased, “Yeah, well, I never saw anyone perform fellatio on an éclair until the day I met you, love.”

She gasped and proceeded to slap me on the arm. “Ronan! I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Hey, I think you should own it. The way you eat is sexy as fuck.”

I glanced away from the road to look at her and saw that she was blushing again. She fiddled with the hem of her pink cardigan and stared out the window. I wanted to touch her so much in that moment that I was practically white-knuckling the steering wheel. It would be so easy to just slip my hand under that silky dress, feel her skin, see how quickly I could get her wet....

I pushed those thoughts away because I was suddenly having difficulty focusing on the road.

“I’ve never owned a car before,” she said, breaking the quiet.

I looked at her. “No?”

She shook her head. “Never. I’ve always wanted one, though. Something fast, like this one. It’s gorgeous. But I’ve never had a reason to buy one, and I don’t know how to drive. Also, highways feel so…I don’t know, intimidating.”

“Ah, once you get over the learning part, it’s as natural as walking. Believe it or not, you’re sitting in my very first car. To this day, she’s still my favorite.”

She gave me an incredulous look. “This was your first car? This is a classic! Did you fix it up yourself? It must have been so expensive.”

“It was, but I scrimped and saved for it. It wasn’t until I made it onto a professional rugby team that I could finally afford it, though.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “Well, all the scrimping and saving was definitely worth it. I’d love a car like this.” She leaned back as though luxuriating in the comfort of the seat and classic lines of the muscle car, and I had to admit, it was a bit of a turn-on. Like I needed to be any more sexed up around this woman.

A couple of minutes passed before I could speak again. “Hey, Annie.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“What did you mean back in the office when you said people might find you a sympathetic character because of your past?”

There were several beats of silence, like she was considering whether or not to answer me. Finally, she did. “You know how in movies sometimes, they’ll have this cliché where a parent leaves their baby on the steps of a church or a hospital or something?”

I nodded and glanced at her. She was smiling, but it was the most heartbreaking smile I’d ever seen.

“Well, that cliché is me.”

I frowned at her, dividing my attention between her and the road. “What do you mean?”

“My mom abandoned me at a fire station when I was six.”

Jesus. Fuck.

I blinked at her, stunned. “Christ….” I exhaled the word and refocused on the road.

I wanted to ask more but didn’t know how to proceed, so we sat quietly for a few minutes.

She surprised me by volunteering, “Then I was sent to a group home and…well, eventually, following that, I was in and out of foster homes. See, I know this business, and if people love anything, it’s a sob story. Why else would they continue to highlight the contestants with sad backgrounds on all those reality talent shows? It helps the audience to relate, to sympathize and, in turn, show support. So, when the press digs into my background, sees how I dragged myself up from low beginnings, it could work to our advantage.” She tilted her chin up, a stubborn tilt, like her professionalism was her armor.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to say. Instead I drove, thinking about what it must’ve been like for her, a beautiful little girl with big brown eyes, a little girl given more brains than affection, a little girl who no one loved.

When I considered her innate tendency toward introversion paired with her childhood, it really was a wonder her past hadn’t completely destroyed her, made her withdraw into herself completely.

She was brave, but it was buried deep under layers and years of neglect and loneliness. She had no one.

Honestly, her story and the bland tone she used when she related it made my stomach hurt like I’d been sucker-punched. I felt queasy. She spoke about her past like it had happened to someone else. It made me want to hit someone.

While I appreciated that she was doing this fake girlfriend act to help me, I couldn’t care less about all that. I cared about her, and I was struck by how much.

Oh, Christ.

I cared about her.

This was not supposed to happen. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let anyone get close again after being taken for a fool by Brona, and now Annie was already burrowing under my skin. I wanted to know all about her, and it unsettled me. I also had a feeling getting Annie to open up, really open up, wasn’t going to be an easy task, especially now that I knew the basics about her childhood.

She broke the silence. “With Brona’s story coming out, even though it’s all lies, you need to be prepared for people to turn against you. Having me as your girlfriend allows us to balance out some of that negativity.”

I realized that, unlike me, during the last few minutes she hadn’t been thinking about her childhood; she’d been thinking about how to exploit her childhood to help me, how her past was going to work to my advantage. I was used to other people using me, but I’d never had someone voluntarily offer to be used by me. My protective instinct flared, like a beast, fierce and strong. But still I said nothing.

She turned an introspective smile to me, one that I caught out of the corner of my eye. I glanced at her as she suggested, “I could plant a nickname for Brona around social media—The Harpy has a nice ring to it. No one would be able to trace it back to me.”

I let her attempt at humor lighten my black mood, and I gave her a half smile. “My mates call her The Hag.”

She chuckled softly and shook her head. “Name calling…it’s like we’re in elementary school.”

“She started it,” I said, hoping to make her laugh again. It worked.

Eventually, the silence lightened, grew oddly comfortable. About twenty minutes passed before we reached a town. I noticed a small, old-timey-looking ice cream parlor as we drove by, so I did a quick U-turn and parked outside. Annie looked out her window.

“We’re going in here?” she asked curiously.

“I figured it was about time you ate. You haven’t had anything since breakfast,” I told her, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. She didn’t protest at my touching her, so I ran my knuckles along her neck for a second, savoring the silky feel of her skin. She trembled. Yeah, she wanted me just as badly as I wanted her. She was just better at hiding it, and now I knew why.

“You know, despite evidence to the contrary, I don’t actually eat dessert for every meal. You’d make a terrible parent. All you’d feed your children is sugar.”

“Ha-ha. Come on, let’s go inside.”

“I’ll go in, on one condition,” she said, holding up a hand.

“Does that condition include eating you out? Because if so, you don’t even have to ask,” I replied, filthy flirting.

She sucked in a breath. “Ronan, you are….”

“Hush. I know. I’ve got a dirty mouth. Continue with your condition, honey.”

Shockingly, she gave me a playful scowl even as her cheeks blushed scarlet. “I’ll have the ice cream, but only if you have some, too.”

“Oh, will I be licking it off you then?”

I could tell she was trying not to smile now. “God, you’re insufferable. No, you won’t be licking it off me. You’ll be eating it from a cone, like a normal person who eats food for pleasure every once in a while, rather than only for fuel.”

I really, really didn’t want to eat the ice cream, mainly because it would fuck up my regime. However, I thought that maybe I could use this deal to my advantage. “Hmm, I’ll eat the ice cream—like a normal person—if you’ll let me ask you five questions about yourself. And you have to answer honestly, and you can’t talk about work for the entire duration of the conversation.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Two questions.”

“Three and it’s a deal,” I said, holding my hand out to her. “Besides, I’m going to have to learn more about you if we’re trying to convince people we’re a real couple.”

She sighed. Looking a little sad and—dare I say, regretful?—she shook my hand. “Fine, but you’re not allowed to order vanilla.”

I gave her a dark look. “Vanilla’s not my flavor, Annie.”

Shit, if only she knew.

Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting on a park bench eating our ice creams. Annie had ordered one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of pistachio while I’d gone for a cherry chocolate combination. She watched me expectantly as I brought the ice cream to my mouth and licked it. And yeah, okay, I might have groaned a little at how good it was. I hadn’t had sugar in a long time, maybe a year. Annie smiled bigger than I’d ever seen her smile, looking satisfied.

“You can wipe that smug look off your face,” I said, eyeing the handful of paparazzi who were hovering across the street, snapping shots of us. “Otherwise, I may have to kiss it off.”

“Smug, moi?” she asked, happily licking away. The sight of her pink tongue sneaking out past her lips did great things for my filthy imagination.

“You know you are. Now, I think it’s time I got my side of the bargain. First question.” I hesitated, made sure she was looking into my eyes, and kept my tone carefully respectful. “What was it like growing up in foster care?”

Annie furrowed her brow. “Lonely. Frightening. Disappointing.”

“Why frightening?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re this little kid at the mercy of strange adults, strange kids. It’s like roulette. You could get nice people, or you could get bad ones.”

Thinking of her as a little girl being sent to live with bad people made me angry, and it made me want to tuck her away someplace safe and take care of her; but I didn’t let her see that. I was also careful to keep pity from my expression. “And why disappointing?”

“Because you get your hopes up, and then people decide they don’t want you anymore,” she practically whispered before her voice turned steely. “That’s why I never let my happiness or survival depend on others. It means I eliminate the disappointment.”

A light bulb went on like a fucking lightning strike, and understanding hit me.

Annie kept herself closed off from people, from relationships, so they couldn’t reject her. It made me wonder if she’d ever allowed herself to be in a relationship at all, which prompted my next question. “When was your last boyfriend?”

“I do believe you’ve had your three questions, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

“The second two were follow-ups. Not real questions. Answer me.”

She sighed, pursed her lips to show me she was dissatisfied, but answered anyway, “A little over two years ago. His name was Jamie. We…dated all through college.”

I wasn’t sure why, but I actually felt a bit disappointed with her answer. The possessive side of me wanted her never to have been with anyone. I was the kind of man who needed ownership, and that need had never been satisfied in my relationship with Brona. I never really felt like she was mine; she was sweet and unassuming at first, but soon she felt like an obligation, unable to take care of herself without my constant praise and reassurance. I also sensed she was always on the lookout for the next best thing.

“Follow-up question: Why did you break up with this Jamie person?”

“Follow-up? No, no, no. I fell for that once already.”

“Fine. Then tell me because you want to tell me.”

She considered me for a moment, licking the ice cream off her lips then sighed. “Fine. We weren’t in a very traditional relationship. We were exclusive, but….” She shook her head, frowning.

“What? He wouldn’t commit?”

“No. More like the other way around,” Annie muttered to her ice cream cone. “Anyway, he wanted something more substantial. I wasn’t amenable to his terms. So when I moved to New York, I saw no reason to continue our agreement.”

“Agreement?”

“Uh, relationship.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What was his story? Not very smart?”

“Oh, no. He was in medical school at Penn State and is probably in residency by now at Harvard or someplace equally impressive.”

“Oh, so a troll? Ugly?”

She laughed a little but then caught herself before she could full-on giggle. “No, nothing like that. He was quite handsome.”

I was putting the pieces together. She’d had an emotionless relationship with some good-looking, successful doctor guy, and she’d been the one to break it off after several years. She hadn’t been lying earlier when she said she was a bit of a mess and had severe abandonment issues.

I wanted to ask her more about Jamie, but I didn’t want to push my luck or use my final question. It wasn’t even a very important one; but—maybe it was the horny caveman in me—I wanted to ask her about sex, suss out her likes and dislikes, and this was the perfect opener for that.

“Okay, so, last question. When did you lose your virginity?”

Annie shook her head and turned to stare at me. “Why do you want to know that?”

“Because I’m nosy. Talk.”

We were both finished with our ice creams now. She folded up her napkin and took the end of my cone from me before walking to the bin to dispose of them. There was something surprisingly comfortable and intimate about the gesture. She came back, sat down, and smoothed her dress over her legs. I sat close, my arm resting along the back of the bench. I imagined the paps were getting some good shots of us.

“I was sixteen; he was eighteen. We’d been going out for a week or two, and then he took me to prom. That was the night we did the deed.”

“And,” I probed, “was it good, bad, mediocre?”

She thought on this for a while, mouth drawn into a slanted line. “It wasn’t…good. Mostly it was just sore, and I wanted it to be over with.”

“So he didn’t make it romantic for you? Sounds like a right arsehole to me.”

“Show me a teenage boy who cares about romance. And yeah, he was an asshole, as it happens.”

I grinned down at her, moving my body closer so that our thighs pressed together. Annie froze for a second, so I nodded subtly toward the photographers. “Just making things look right for our audience.”

“Oh, my God! I didn’t even notice they were there.”

I gave her a wide grin. “That’s probably because you’ve been so enamored by my potent manliness.”

This elicited a cute little laugh from her and a sarcastic, “Oh, yeah, that must be why.” She paused and considered me a moment. “So, how about you? When did you lose yours?”

Her question caught me off guard. But still, I didn’t mind answering. “I was fifteen.”

“Wow, that’s young. And who was the lucky girl?”

“It was young, I suppose, but I was a horny little bastard.” I glanced down at her and winked. “Not much has changed there. The lucky girl was Trina. She was just fourteen. We’d been going out for a couple of weeks and decided to take the next step.”

Annie moved closer, curious. “And?”

I shrugged. “And it was good. Well, as good as it can be between two kids who hardly know what they’re doing. We quickly got the hang of it, though, and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. A couple months later, we had a little pregnancy scare. She freaked out while I tried to be the big man and asked her to marry me.” I paused and chuckled. “I was fifteen and ready to sign my life away, thought it was the honorable thing to do. It turned out her period was just late, and my proposal was unnecessary. She was so spooked by the whole thing that she broke up with me. I was heartbroken for a while before I really began dipping my toes into the world of sex again.”

Annie’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I had a bit of a promiscuous phase in my late teens. Sex was a stress reliever for me. I probably over-indulged because my tastes got a little…kinky.”

Annie’s expression was a mixture of surprise and curiosity. I could tell she was about to ask me to elaborate on what I meant by “kinky,” and I wasn’t ready to go there yet; so I quickly changed topics.

“I almost forgot. We need to take a picture for my Instagram account. It’s been left lonely and disused since Gerta opened it for me.”

Annie looked up and bit her lip. “Oh, right, you want me in the picture with you?”

“Of course. We’re a couple now,” I said and pulled her close as I found the camera function on my phone.

“Yes, but there are quotation marks around ‘couple,’ remember?”

I gave her a fake scowl. “Like you’d let me forget.” Raising the camera in front of us, I quickly turned in and laid a kiss on her cheek as I was taking the shot. She squealed when I did it, but it was already taken.

“That was sneaky!”

“I’m just trying to make us seem genuine, Annie dearest.” I smirked and brought up the picture. “Wow, we look good together. And look at you,” I went on, nudging her playfully. “Absolute stunner. Those eyes. Fuck.”

“It’s a nice picture,” Annie admitted, grudgingly.

A naughty idea came into my head, and I couldn’t help but vocalize it. I ducked down and brought my mouth close to her ear, my voice low and husky. “Yeah, and imagine how good we’ll look when I’m inside you.”

Annie’s eyes met mine, and I saw her pupils dilate. A little breath escaped her, and her throat moved as she swallowed. Our gazes remained locked for a long moment before she drew away and tried to compose herself. I could practically feel her withdrawing.

“Please know this, Mr. Fitzpatrick, the only reason I’m not walking away right now is because there are photographers watching.”

“Don’t like the idea of my penetrating those walls you’ve built?”

She swallowed thickly, her hands balling into fists. “You like to make things hard, don’t you?”

“No. You make things hard, Annie.”

Her face flamed red and hot, and her breathing was uneven. “Please stop.” Annie’s eyes lifted to mine, and they held a desperate edge. “You think you’re being cute, that you can be aggressive and flirt shamelessly and that it doesn’t mean anything, that your words don’t…affect me. But they do. You need to stop pushing—you need to be respectful of my wishes.”

Shit, she was kind of sexy when she was scolding me.

With that, she stood and gestured for me to follow her. I did. But I also grabbed her hand and held it as we walked. We made our way back to my car in silence, and the return drive to the city was similarly conversation-free. I should have been pissed off at myself for ruining things, but I wasn’t.

What I’d said had more than interested her. I’d seen it in her face and the way she’d clenched her thighs together. She’d even admitted that I affected her. She’d practically been humming with arousal. Yeah, she wanted me bad, and the challenge would be respectfully encouraging her to let go of her inhibitions.

I was determined to make it happen. I could be respectful…and still aggressive.

When we reached her apartment building, Annie was all business as she organized for us to go running together in the morning. It would save us both time, she said, as it meant we could be seen together and also get our daily exercise in. She barely gave me a second glance as she exited the car. I was back at my building, parking the car, when I noticed she’d forgotten her phone. It must have fallen from her handbag because it was lying on the floor.

Picking it up, I was about to tuck it in my pocket when it buzzed.

Yeah, I could have ignored the buzz, but I didn’t. Instead I glanced at the screen and saw that it was a notification from her Twitter account. Except it wasn’t her Twitter account. And I nearly dropped the phone because the handle in the notification wasn’t @AnnieCat.

The handle was @Socialmedialite.