#she wont shut up about rourke

[katie-knightoc]

“Oh man. That guy is so far gone on you, Kate,” Luca teased, busting her eyeing the very pert backside of the man who just kissed her breathless as he walked away. “He’s so, so gone.”

She flushed, ducking her head to hide the burn across her cheeks with her dark hair. “I don’t know,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. In spite of it, her chest filled with warmth because Luca wasn’t far wrong. If Rourke really wasn’t as fond of her as he seemed, then he was one hell of an actor. “Maybe.”

Luca met her gaze, eyebrows up and grinning madly.

“Oh, like you can talk,” she huffed back pointedly, trying to shift the conversation back to Luca’s favourite subject in an effort to hide her own embarassment. “Ryan made goo goo eyes at you all night at dinner.”

“That’s because I was giving him a handie under the table,” Luca quipped back dismissively. They both laughed even as Kate’s cheeks went pinker at the thought. Luca’s lack of shame lately was sometimes surprising. Kate didn’t recall him having such an open attitude to sex, but she supposed the pilot had a lot to do with that.

It seemed there was something in the water here, or maybe it was just the magnetic pull of the O’Riain bloodline that was changing her opinions too. Because lately, she had looked at herself in the mirror and seen a woman she didn’t recognize. Someone who was bruised beautifully with perfectly shaped love bites, swollen lips and a heavy lidded gaze because she had been turned completely boneless by a pair of incredibly talented hands.

Now, she was missing those hands. Already craving his lips. Rourke had slipped between her legs early in the morning - long before the sky turned orange – to claim her. Shifting her legs over his shoulders and huffing warm breath and soft kisses along her core until he had drawn her out of sleep. And then, when she had been fully awake, he’d started on her in earnest- lapping, sucking, fucking her with his tongue until she could barely take anymore and she pulled him up to find his face shiny and wet from her juices.

It was filthy but she loved to grip his hair and kiss the taste of herself from his mouth.

“Katie,” he had groaned and the sound was music to her ears. “My girl...”

“I need you,” she’d whispered back and that was all it took for Rourke to snap and lose all control. He’d fucked her so hard she saw stars, her throat became hoarse from screaming and her body ached from trying to force him as deep as possible. Luca had whispered to her once, eyes alight over cups of Devonshire tea in the local village teahouse during one of their exploratory ventures beyond the estate, of how it felt like he couldn’t ever get enough, couldn’t ever feel close enough. Like he could crack open Ryan’s chest and crawl inside and he would still crave more, that he was restless and unsettled unless they were joined.

She understood that need now. That fierce desire to meld into the other person. She wanted it so badly with Rourke and every step he took away from her felt like physical pain.

She was in love with him. That much was clear. Even not knowing what he did, what he was other than a vague unease when she saw him slip into the dark and return with bruised knuckles and blood on his boots. That alone should terrify her but she knew she was nothing but safe in his arms.

She looked towards the door he had disappeared through and Luca gave her a knowing smirk.

“Go,” he said easily. “If you hurry, you’ll catch him before he makes it out of the gate.”

Kate didn’t need to be told twice.

[the-ever-humming-girl]

Atlantis: Edvard Munch

     It was late-September and barely autumn. There was a slight chill in the air and the trees had only just began to turn. Overhead, dark clouds scudded across the sky and the wind picked up. Rain was coming. There was a flash of lightning and Rourke counted thirty seconds of silence before the crack of thunder echoed over the countryside. He could remain outdoors for a few more minutes at least.

    He stood on the terrace behind Whitmore manor and stared out across the expansive grounds and gardens. Someday quite soon he’d have enough money to buy his own mansion. He felt a thrill of anticipation. The long-awaited expedition was taking place soon. Most of the crew had been hired over a year ago and the Ulysses was nearly finished.  Only a couple of loose ends remained one of which was snagging Thaddeus’s idiot grandson to decipher the journal. He’d never met him, but he’d known Thaddeus a while and that gave him a fairly good idea of what the kid would be like. It was all about the upbringing. Thaddeus had been an idealistic idiot so it stood to reason that his grandson would be one to. The apple never fell far from the tree.

    Rourke sipped his scotch. He’d been waiting for the right time to speak with Helga and had asked Whitmore when she was available. He wanted to catch her at the end of the week when she was tired and would have her guard lowered.

     Helga was the other loose end. She still hadn’t committed to the position of lieutenant, and Whitmore, patient man that he was, wanted to get someone else in for the job. Rourke wouldn’t have it. He’d known her since she was seventeen and he flat out refused to have a stranger as his second in command. If things went wrong, as they were wont to do, she was the one he wanted by his side. She hadn’t committed yet, but she would. It was simply a matter of manipulation. Helga liked to think she made her own choices, but he’d had more of a hand in her life than she realized, and he wasn’t about to let her go so easily. All it would take was the right comment at the right time and she’d give in. Her fatal flaw was she cared too much, and Rourke had been exploiting it for years.

    The first drops came a few seconds later and fell rapidly, dampening his coat. Maybe it was time to head back inside, he though as the rain began to fall harder. He turned, his hand already on the door lever when from somewhere in the growing darkness behind him there came a sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was a long-drawn-out howl and it echoed over the empty grounds long after it had died away.

    He froze and turned back, scanning the far-off tree line. The wind of the approaching storm whipped trees and shrubs but there was no movement of human or animal that he could see. Pull yourself together, man. He thought, disgusted at being so easily rattled. It’s only an animal. Only that hadn’t sounded like any owl or fox he’d ever heard. It had sounded like a woman.

    The sound came again, more chilling than before.

    And suddenly he was a small boy, sitting on Grandmother O’Rourke’s lap as she whispered stories of the old country in his ear. Stories that included the banshee. How she followed certain Irish families and what her wail heralded.

    His grandmother had been an O’Rourke until the day she died, refusing to modify her surname the way that immigration official had done because he hadn’t wanted to bother writing an extra letter on his form.

    “Now you listen to me, boy,” she’d say, grasping his shoulders in her bony hands. “The O’Rourke’s are an ancient and noble family. We have the blood of lords and kings in us. Never forget where you come from and never forget that even lords and kings fear the banshee and her wail. Death comes for us all in the end.”

    Looking back, he realized she couldn’t have been much older than he was now though she’d seemed ancient to his young eyes. She’d been a superstitious woman, his grandmother. Something he was not. He didn’t care about those stories. It wasn’t where he came from that mattered, it was where he was going. And belief in an ancient presence that foretold death was asinine. Rourke didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see with his own eyes. He wasn’t a scared, impressionable child and hadn’t been for a long time.

    He though of his grandmother and how she had claimed to hear the banshee herself. “I’ve heard her.” He could hear the whispered words clearly even now. “I’m not long for this world, mark me.” She’d been dead two days later. Fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. Of course, it had been a coincidence. His grandmother had thought she’d die, and she had. She’d brought it on herself.

    Rourke however planned on living a while yet. He hadn’t schemed and manipulated his way through life only to have it end. No, Lyle Tiberius Rourke still had many years left and he was going to take full advantage of them.

    Darkness had fallen completely now and out of that darkness the cry echoed a third time. Rourke set his jaw and turned, stepping back inside. It was an animal, nothing more. He told himself as he shut the door behind him, the sound of that final cry ringing in his ears.