Chapter 3
She wasn’t as fiery as I imagined.
Did that disappoint me?
Maybe.
Then I had to chide myself because, Jesus, the woman had just been coerced out of her business. What did I expect? For her to be popping open a champagne bottle after I’d forced her to sign over her building to me?
Sure, she’d made a nice and tidy profit on her investment—I hadn’t screwed her that way. But this morning, she’d gone into work with a game plan in mind, and tonight? Well, tonight she was out of a job and knee deep in a deal with the devil.
Of course, she hadn’t actually agreed to my other terms, but when I guided her out of the tea room and toward my waiting car, she didn’t falter.
Didn’t utter a peep.
Just climbed into the vehicle, neatly tucked her knees together, and waited for me to get in beside her.
Like the well-oiled team my chauffeur and car were, they set off the minute I’d clicked my seatbelt.
The privacy screen was up, and I knew how soundproofed it was—not because of technology, but because Samuel knew not to listen to any of the murmurs he might hear back here.
And if he was ever to share the most innocent of those whispers he might have discerned? We both knew I’d slice off his fucking ear.
This was a hard world. One we’d both grown up in, so we knew how things rolled. Samuel had it pretty easy with me, and he wasn’t about to fuck up this job when he was so close to retirement. If he kept his mouth shut, did as I asked, ignored what he may or may not have heard, and drove me wherever the fuck I wanted to go, Sam knew I’d set him and his missus up somewhere nice in Florida. Near the beach, so the moaning old bastard’s knees didn’t give him too much trouble in his dotage.
See?
I wasn’t all bad.
Rapping my fingers against my knee, I studied her, and I made no bones about it.
Her face was tilted down, and it let me see the longest lashes I’d ever come across on a woman. Well, natural ones. Those fucking false ones that fell off on my sheets were just irritating. But as with everything, Aoife was all natural.
So pure.
So fucking perfect.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
She was a benediction come to life.
I wasn’t as devout as Aidan Sr. would like me to be, but even I felt uncomfortable thinking such thoughts while sporting a hard-on that made me ache. That made my mental blasphemy even worse.
“Why did you let him touch you? Was it for money?”
I hadn’t meant to ask that question.
Really, I hadn’t.
It was the last thing I wanted to know, but like poison, it had spewed from my lips.
Who she’d fucked and who she hadn’t, was none of my goddamn affair.
This was a business deal. Nothing more, nothing less. She’d fuck me to make sure I kept quiet, and I fucked her so I could revel in the copious curves this woman had to offer.
Simple, no?
She stiffened at the question, and I couldn’t blame her. “Do I really have to answer that?”
I could have made her. It was on the tip of my tongue to force her to, but I didn’t really want to know even if, somewhere deep down, I did.
“You know why you’re here, don’t you?” I asked instead of replying.
Her nostrils flared. “To keep silent.”
I nodded and almost smiled at her because, internally she was furious, but equally, she was lost. I could sense that like a shark could scent blood in the water. This had thrown her for a loop, and she was in shock, but she was, underneath it all, angry.
Good.
I wanted to fuck her tonight when she was angry.
Spitting flames at me, taking her outrage out on me as she scratched lines of fire down my spine as she screamed her climax. . . .
I almost shuddered at how well I’d painted that mental picture.
“When you’re ready, you have my card.”
“Ready for what?” she asked, perplexed. Her brow furrowed as she, for the first time since she’d climbed into the car, looked over at me.
“To make another tea room. I’ve had them move all the stuff into storage.”
She licked her lips. “I want to say that’s kind of you, but I’m in this predicament because of you.”
A corner of my mouth hitched at that. “Honestly, be grateful I was the one who came knocking today. You wouldn’t want any of the Five Points’ men around that place. Half that china would be on the floor now.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I pay them protection money,” she snapped. “Plus, I grew up around enough Five Pointers to know the score.”
That statement targeted my curiosity, hard. “You did, huh? Whereabouts?”
Her mouth pursed. “Nowhere you’d know,” she muttered under her breath.
“I doubt it. This is my area, too.”
She turned to me, and the tautness around her eyes reminded me of something, but even as it flashed into being, the memory disappeared as I drowned in her emerald green eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why do you think?” I retorted. “You’re a beautiful woman?—”
“Don’t pretend like you couldn’t have any woman under you if you asked them.”
I wanted to smile, but I didn’t because I knew, just as Aidan had pointed out to me earlier that day, that Aoife wasn’t exactly what society considered on trend.
She’d have suited the glorious Titian era. She was a Raphaelite, a gorgeous and vivacious Aphrodite.
She wasn’t slender. Her butt bounced, and when I fucked her, I’d have some meat to slam into, and her hips would be delicious handholds to grab.
If I smiled, I’d confirm that I was mocking her, and though I was a bastard, and though I was enough of a cunt to blackmail her into this when it hadn’t been necessary—after all, before I’d told her who I was, I could have asked her out and done this normally—there was no way I was going to knock this glorious creature’s confidence.
“Some men like slim and trim gym bunnies, some men like curves.” I shrugged. “That’s how it works, isn’t it?”
Her eyes flared at that. “But Jenny?—”
“Would you prefer she be here with me?” I asked dryly, amused when she flushed.
“Of course not. I wouldn’t want her to be in this position.”
I laughed. “Nicely phrased.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Leaning forward, I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. “It’s supposed to mean that you can fight this all you fucking want, but deep down, you’re glad you’re here. Your little cunt is probably sopping wet, and it’s dying for a taste of my dick. So, simmer down. We’re almost at my apartment.”
And with that, I dipped my chin, and opening my mouth, raked my teeth down her bottom lip before I bit her. Hard enough to make her moan.
***
Aoife
The sting of pain should have had me rearing back.
It didn’t.
It felt. . . .
I almost shuddered.
Good.
It had felt good.
The way he’d done it. So fucking cocky, so fucking sure of himself, and who could blame him? He’d taken what he wanted, and I hadn’t pulled away because he was right. My pussy was wet, and even though this was all kinds of wrong, I did want to feel him there. To have his cock push inside me.
Jesus, this was way too early for Stockholm syndrome, right?
I mean, this was . . . what was it?
It couldn’t be that I was so horny and desperate for male attention that I was willingly allowing this to happen, was it?
Fuck. How pathetic was I if that was true? And yet, I didn’t feel desperate for anything other than more of that small taste Finn had given me.
As a little girl, I’d watched Finn. It had been back in the day when his old man had been around and Fiona had lived with her husband and son. He’d beaten her up something rotten. Barely a week went by when Fiona, my mom’s friend, didn’t appear with some badly made-up bruise on her face.
I was young, only two, but old enough to know something wasn’t right. I’d even asked my mom about it, wanting to understand why someone would do that to another person.
I couldn’t remember what my mother had said, but I could remember how sad she’d been.
For all his faults, my dipshit stepfather had never beaten her, he’d just taken all her tips for himself and spent every night getting drunk.
Well, Finn’s dad had been the same, except where mine passed out on the decrepit La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, Gerry had taken out his drunk out on Fiona.
And eventually, Finn.
Even as a boy, in the photos Fiona kept of him, Finn had been beautiful.
I could see him now, deep in my mind’s eye. His hair had been as coal dark then as it was now, and not even a hint of silver or gray marred the noir perfection. His jaw and nose had grown, obviously, but they were just as obstinate as I remembered. Fiona had always said Finn was hardheaded.
When I was little, I hadn’t had a crush on him—I’d been a toddler, for God’s sake—but I’d been in awe of him. In awe of the big boy who’d been all arms and legs, just waiting for his growth spurt. Sadly, when that had happened, he’d disappeared.
As had his father.
Overnight, Fiona had gone from having a full house to an empty nest, and my mom had comforted her over the loss of her boy.
To my young self, I’d thought he’d died.
Genuinely. The way Fiona had mourned him? It had been as though both men had passed on, except we’d never had to go to church for a service, and there’d been no wake.
As kids do, I’d forgotten him. I’d been two when he’d disappeared, so I only really remembered that Fiona was a mom and that she was grieving.
We’d barely spoken his name because it could set her off into bouts of tears that would have my mom pouring tea down her gullet as they talked through her feelings.
As time passed, those little scenes in our crappy kitchen stopped, yet Fiona hung around our place so much it was like her second home.
One day, my stepfather died in an accident at work. The insurance paid out, Fiona moved in with us, and Mom had started scheming as to how to make her dream of owning a tea room come true. With Fiona living in, I’d heard Finn’s name more often, but the notion he was dead still rang true.
Yet, here he was.
Finn wasn’t dead.
He was very much alive.
Had Fiona known that?
Had she?
I wasn’t sure what I hoped for her.
Was it better to believe your son was dead, or that your son didn’t give enough of a fuck about you to contact you for years?
I gnawed on my bottom lip at the thought and accidentally raked over the tissue where Finn had bitten earlier.
“We’re almost there,” the man himself grated out, and I could sense he was pissed because the phone had buzzed, and whatever he’d been reading had a storm cloud passing behind his eyes.
“O-Okay,” I replied, hating the quiver in my voice, but also just hating my situation.
This was. . . .
It was too much.
How was it that I was sitting here?
This morning, I’d owned a tea room. Now, I didn’t.
This morning, I’d been exhausted, depressed about my mom, and feeling lost.
Now?
I was the epitome of lost.
A man was going to use me for sex, for Christ’s sake.
But all I could think was: did I still have my hymen?
God, would he be angry if he had to push through it?
Should I tell him?
If I did, it would be for my benefit, not his, and why the hell was I thinking like this? I should be trying to convince him that normal people did not work business deals out by bribing someone into bed.
But, deep down, I knew all my scattered thinking was futile.
I wasn’t dealing with normal people here.
I was dealing with a Five Pointer.
A high ranking one at that.
It was like dealing with a Martian. To average, everyday folk, a Five Pointer was just outside of their knowledge banks.
Sure, they thought they knew what they were like because they watched The Wire or some other procedural show, but they didn’t.
Real-life gangsters?
They were larger than life.
They throbbed with violence, and hell, a part of me knew that Finn was cutting me some slack by asking to sleep with me.
Yeah, as fucked up as that was, it was the truth.
He could have asked for so much more.
He’d have a Senator in his pocket, and to the mob, what else would they ask for if not that?
Yet Finn?
He just wanted to fuck me.
My throat felt tight and itchy from dryness. I wanted some water so badly, but equally, I wasn’t sure if it would make me puke.
Not at the thought of sex with this man—a part of me knew I’d enjoy it too much to even be nervous.
No, at what else he could ask of me, that had me fretting.
Was this a one-time deal?
How could I protect my dad from the Five Points when . . .?
I shuddered because there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could even broach any of those questions since I wasn’t in charge here.
Finn was.
Finn always would be until he deemed I’d paid my dues. Whether that was tomorrow or two years down the line.
Shit, it might even be forever. If my dad hit the White House, only God knew what kind of leverage Finn could pull if my father tried to carry on covering up my existence. . . .
“We’re here.”
Something had definitely pissed him off.
He’d gone from the cat who’d drank a carton full of cream, to a pissed off tabby scrounging for supper in the trash.
“We’re going to go through to the private elevator, and I’m going to head straight down the hall to my living room. You’re going to slip into the first door on the right—that’s my bedroom.”
“O-Okay,” I told him, wondering what the hell was going on.
“You’re going to stay quiet, and you’re going to try to not hear any fucking thing I say, do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“You’d better,” he ground out, his hand tightening around his cellphone. “Coming to Aidan O”Donnelly’s attention is the last thing a little mouse like you wants.”
A shiver ran through me.
Aidan O”Donnelly was in his apartment?
Fuck, just how high up the ranks was he?
CONTINUE