Page 76

The blanket drops, forgotten as she and I kiss. Her legs wobble, and I put my knee in between them. The position means that she’s kind of half-standing against my leg, her back to the wall, my thigh between hers.
And when she starts to rub herself, slightly, on the hard length of my thigh, I practically purr with joy.
The kiss deepens. It becomes something different entirely. It’s the kiss that we shared all those nights ago, the one that was interrupted. It’s the one in the shower that I hated myself for.
It’s every kiss I wish I’d given her, over and over again.
Roisin gasps, and I growl. I want her like this. Needy. Open. Wanting me. She scrapes her nails along my scalp, and I want to growl like a fucking tiger at the sensation.
She’s perfect.
She’s mine.
I have to keep her safe.
Roisin’s fully rubbing her hot center on my thigh now, and I’m as hard as a fucking rock inside my thick denim jeans.
I want her.
I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my fucking life…
“Well. This is not exactly how I was expecting this would go.”
A woman’s voice, with a lilting Irish accent, breaks through the fog of my lust.
Roisin shoves me away, peering from around me at the person in the alley. I turn.
There’s a woman there. She’s about Roisin’s height. Come to think of it, she has Roisin’s tangle of hair as well.
My world shatters when Roisin says one word.
“Mum?”
14
ROISIN
My mother is standingin the alley.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind. It’s the mother I remember, but a decade and a half older. Her hair is the same, the brown of her eyes the same. Her skin looks older; there are marks there that have never been there before.
Wrinkles. Lines. Spots. Things I don’t remember.
But no scars.
That I can see.
She’s got her arms folded across her chest, and her head tilted. I step away from Marco, who keeps trying to stand in front of me.
The expression on her face isn’t anger, or loss, or surprise, even.
It’s a kind of mild amusement that reminds me of the time I’d covered a hallway in a crayon mural when I was four.
Having one’s mum catch them making out is never good.
But finding her like this, while I’m wrapped up in Marco’s arms?
I feel so shocked, I’m numb.