Page 57 of Dublin Beast

I roll my eyes. “Och, I see how it is. You don’t want me to step outside the little box you’ve put me in. Well, tough tits, Kieran, I’m a fucking person.”

“Fuck you. What I want is for you to be on your game, so I don’t end up bleeding out in a field in the fucking Yorkshire countryside.” The driver’s door slams shut as he stomps to the back of the truck and opens the back hatch.

I stare up at the ceiling, my head dropping back to the leather headrest.

Who the fuck pissed in his porridge?

I close my eyes and sit tight for a minute. Images from this afternoon replay in my head and I hold back the smile that tugs at my mouth: playing naked with Harper, then taking a shared shower to wash away the sweat and sin, and then leaving her sleeping with a contented smile as I went out to meet Kieran to leave.

Kieran says Harper has me all spun up and is a distraction—he’s wrong.

It’s true that I feel ‘present’ in a way I haven’t in a long time. Mam died when I was a kid and I barely remember that loss, but Yasmine’s death…

It hollowed me out.

Every goddamn bit of that agony and loss has haunted me for four years.

The suffering. The loneliness. The guilt of living.

They say time heals all wounds, but that’s a fucking lie. All time does is numb the pain and kill the one who survives in small measures every day after.

You’d think he could be happy that an afternoon with Harper made me smile. We had a good time—that’s all.

She piques my interest because she’s fearless, resourceful, and determined. She’s got this fire inside of her and it warms my cold, dark heart.

That’s all it is—it’s all it can be.

There’s no world where a Canadian journalist and an Irish made man build something beyond the heat of a moment. She’s a temporary distraction.

Och, my bad.

So maybe Harper has been a bit of a distraction. That doesn’t mean I’m not wholly focused on our mission.

Except, I’m lying back in the truck, my mind spinning with thoughts of Harper—her feminine moans when I lapped at her pussy, the tangy taste of her pleasure on my tongue, and the sight of her as her body arched with each release I gave her.

She asked for many orgasms and I’m proud to say I delivered on my promise to give them to her.

But now, I should be standing in the farmer’s field helping Kieran get his new toy up into the night sky so we can kill the bitch set on destroying my family.

As much as I hate to admit it, the pissed-off energy Kieran was radiating from the driver’s seat a moment ago holds some merit.

He might be right, but he’s also wrong because I’m all-in on ending Siobhan Daley.

I pull the handle of the door and swing my long legs out of the truck, spilling out into the night. Straightening, I adjust the fall of my leather jacket where it’s caught on the holster of my gun.

The night is black as pitch, the October chill settling deep into my bones. I tend to burn hot, not bothered by the cold. Not that I wouldn’t rather be toasty warm under the covers back in the hotel.

I shove that thought to the back of my mind and keep my focus on the here and now.

Kieran has his head down at the back of the vehicle, so I stride back to check on things. “How you getting on?”

He gestures to the screen of the laptop open in the back hatch of the SUV. It shows an aerial view of the landscape as the drone closes the distance to our target.

His thumbs manipulate the joy sticks to position our eyes in the night sky. “I’m almost over the Sentinel farmhouse now.”

A muscle ticks in Kieran’s jaw, but he doesn’t say anything more about Harper.

Good. Smart man.

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