Fearless Sinner (Empire of Sinners #3)

Chapter 30

Chloe

Chapter Thirty

Today was a hectic day. Roxanne and I picked Mom up from the hospital this morning to finally take her home.

Being there with her was just as emotional as I expected. But not for the reasons I originally thought.

The bad memories from three years ago never resurfaced. It was more the case of remembering good times and feeling gratitude that I had her back.

Since Cillian needed to be out with the guys today, I spent the day with Mom and Roxanne packing away Harlan’s things. Or rather getting rid of them.

Roxanne and I boxed up the decent things and arranged for them to be dropped off at a charity tomorrow. We dumped the other stuff. I was surprised by how much crap and junk he owned.

He loved anything to do with fishing but seemed to be a world-class hoarder.

There was so much stuff that it took all day to sort through. Neither of us wanted Mom to be uncomfortable or do any unnecessary lifting.

She’s supposed to be on bed rest for the next two months with only the exercises the physiotherapist gave her. She’s allowed to drop by the restaurant once a week just to get out of the house, but that’s it. Dr. Chase advised against stress and her being anywhere she could get sick. Due to the medication she’s taking and the actual heart transplant itself, viruses are her worst enemy right now.

The day ended with us enjoying a nice home-cooked meal that reminded me of the past. Roxanne made Mom’s famous meatballs and spaghetti, and we drank the Italian wine Roxanne brought back from her last trip to Italy.

It was nice. I almost forgot the dangerous situation we need to be mindful of until I stepped outside and saw Cillian’s guards. There are some he has stationed at the house and others he has accompanying me everywhere I go. There were more today because he wasn’t with me.

They escorted me home, where I’ve been waiting patiently for the last two hours while trying not to worry about my husband.

It’s nearly midnight. Cillian was home with me last night at this time. I also had Seamus throughout the day to keep me company and assure me that Cillian would be fine. Seamus has gotten better with me. He seemed to have done a one-eighty and is warmer toward me. I don’t know why that is, but yesterday, it was comforting.

I have no such comfort tonight and I couldn’t possibly go to sleep knowing Cillian’s not home. I keep thinking that one day, the guards will get a call and tell me something horrible happened to him.

I’ve come to realize that when he’s late like this, it’s never a good sign of how his day went. He doesn’t have to tell me; I just know from the look in his eyes.

I go to the bathroom to splash some cold water onto my face. It helps to wake me up.

When I go back out to the room, I nearly jump out of my skin when I see Cillian walking through the door.

“You’re here.” I rush toward him, and he pulls me into his arms.

“You should be asleep.” He sounds tired.

“I couldn’t until you got home.” I hug him again, grateful that he’s here.

“Baby.” He breathes the word against my hair, and we pull apart.

I’m about to ask him how he is but stop myself when he undoes his jacket and my gaze lands on blood all over his white shirt underneath. The entire side is covered so much I feel my own blood drain from me. “What happened to you?”

He looks down and notices. “Don’t worry. My… bandages must have moved.”

“Bandages?”

“This happens to me sometimes.” Cillian takes off his jacket, then his shirt to unveil a nasty-looking wound on his shoulder that looks like someone sliced him with a knife. It’s stitched up, but the bandage that covered it has indeed come away.

“Cillian, you look like you were stabbed.”

When he doesn’t answer, I realize the wound looks like he was stabbed because he was.

He walks over to the closet, rummages around, then simply gets another bandage and places it on the wound.

“Did you go to the hospital?” I continue watching him.

“We have our own doctors on call.” He comes back to me and gives me a weary smile. “See? All good.”

“Cillian—”

He covers my mouth with his, silencing me in my favorite way. “Shhhh. I just want you.”

“But—”

“No. I need my wife.”

My wife.

Every time he says those words to me, something happens to my heart. It expands and glows and the light it produces ignites my soul.

“Your wife is right here, waiting for you.”

“Then kiss me and let me fuck you.”

I stand on the tips of my toes and kiss him. The kiss starts off tender, then it swiftly turns into the hungry insatiable ones we shared before he caught me in his office with that picture. Something changed between us that night.

It feels like it’s changed back. As if someone flicked the hands of time backwards and reset it.

Cillian picks me up and carries me to the bed, where he sets me down. “Take your clothes off for me. I want to watch you do it.”

I pull the flimsy nightie I’m wearing over my head and cast it to the side, then I roll my panties down my legs and do the same. Cillian stares down at me on the bed like a hungry wolf.

“Fucking perfect and all mine.” He grabs my ankle and positions me so that I’m on the edge of the bed.

He looks so sexy and forbidden as he crouches down between my legs. And I stop thinking when he buries his face between my thighs and thrusts his tongue into my pussy.

Holy shit. How does this always, always feel so good? There is never a point when I get used to the waves of pleasure pulsing through me just from the flick of his tongue.

Cillian eats me out as if he’s never tasted me and I’m his last meal.

When he has me coming in his mouth, he continues drinking me while he sucks on my clit to take me back to the height of pleasure all over again.

Another vicious orgasm rips through me, and it’s like he knows my body so well, he knows when to change things up to give me even more pleasure.

Cillian picks me up again and sets me further up the bed, then he takes off his pants and climbs onto the bed with me.

He lifts my left leg and sets it on his shoulder, and with a wicked smile, he guides his cock to my entrance and slides right into me.

In this position, he hits that secret part of me that craves him harder when he starts pounding into my body. Raw undiluted pleasure courses through me, causing havoc inside my body in the most delicious of ways.

He fucks me into the mattress, his grunts and groans of pleasure coming to life with every relentless thrust.

Pleasure takes me over, powerful and spellbinding, and I don’t stop coming.

Cillian pulls out of me and flips me onto my hands and knees, then he’s back inside me, fucking me from behind.

“You want more, don’t you, lass?” He groans.

“Yes… give me more.”

On my word, he pounds into me harder and faster until we both come.

Electricity dances over my skin, sparking my nerve endings until it consumes me. It burns me from the inside out, leaving me spent and drained. And still, if he gave me more, I’d take it.

We slump down together, and he pulls out of me, then he scoops me up in his arms and folds me into his chest.

I listen to the steady beat of his heart until our breathing calms and he caresses the side of my cheek.

Cillian turns to face me and catches my face, then he stares at me, looking deep into my eyes past the layers of my soul.

He’s looked at me like this before. I’ve looked at him the same way several times as well. This moment has happened so often that I call it the breath between what we are and what we’re not.

It’s the line that decides the next change in a relationship. Break the line, and your relationship changes into something more. Walk away from the line, and you either stay the same or what you have fades away.

He continues staring at me and the seconds that tick by feel like that make-or-break moment people talk about.

I’m convinced he’s going to look away—synonymous of walking away—but he doesn't. Instead, he leans closer and presses his forehead to mine.

“I love you.” He whispers the words over my skin.

I’ve imagined him speaking those words to me so often that I think this is another figment of my mind. When he inches away, I lift my head to look at him properly.

“What did you just say?” My voice is small and cautious. I’m so afraid I heard him wrong.

“I love you, Chloe,” he repeats the words I’ve longed to hear, and the deepest joy fills me.

“I love you, too, Cillian O’Ridian.” I touch his face, take in his bright blue gaze, and I wish and I pray and I hope that we never have to end.

Maybe we don’t. Maybe this is the start of us figuring things out.

I hope it is, because I know I’ll never love anyone the way I love him.

“C’mere, lass.”