Chapter Twenty-Seven Lila #2
I nodded. I did understand. But I was too busy with the sensation of his body pressing against mine to actually comprehend.
“We all have a dominant eye. Mine was taken by Achilles. Yours is your right eye. Its pupil moves first when you read lips. This is the eye you’ll always keep open. Nod.”
Another jerk of my chin. I felt his erection digging into the curve of my lower back. He made no attempt to shift away, but also didn’t draw any closer.
Would it really be so bad if we had sex the way he preferred? It wasn’t like I had anything else to compare it to. And something in me wanted to please my husband.
“Your goal is to form small groups at the same point to check your accuracy. Choose a spot on the target.”
“The center of his chest,” I answered verbally. He nodded, his stubble brushing against the side of my neck.
His scent. His touch. His very existence made me drunk.
“Pay attention to your wrist. Here.” He adjusted my hands. “This’ll help you avoid jams. Watch your stance, baby.” He kicked my legs apart, and the movement was so confident and erotic that something inside me clenched and heated.
Baby.
“The wider your legs are, the firmer your core. Now I want you to show me a good, steady grip. Yeah, just like that. You’re ready.”
Evidently, I wasn’t.
My first shot hit the target’s head. My second—his shoulder.
The third one got his throat, and the fourth finally got the center of his chest, through sheer luck rather than technique.
Tiernan walked me through my many mistakes.
He had good input. Too bad I couldn’t concentrate on anything when his body was glued to mine, his hands encasing my own, his scent wrapping an invisible hand around my throat, squeezing erotically.
Desire.
Just like that, I understood perfectly all the Roman legends and Greek mythology stories about empires falling and heroes sinning for lust.
The session lasted for another hour before Jace knocked on the side of our booth.
“Callaghan. You’re up.”
Tiernan nodded and motioned with his hand. A clean target sheet was placed in front of us. This one was rolled all the way to the back, twice as far as the length I trained with.
Tiernan unloaded my gun, emptied my chamber, and handed it back to me.
He nudged me aside, the loss of his body against mine leaving goose bumps across my arms. I stood back and watched as his target started moving, jerking from side to side on its cord.
Tiernan raised one steady hand, and in two-second increments, shot the target in the head eighteen rounds with chilling accuracy.
By the time they rolled the target toward us, there were only two bullet holes in the center of the forehead and nowhere else. He basically rammed through the exact same spot over and over again.
“Legend.” Jace slumped against the wall, a postorgasmic look on his face. “Fucking legend.”
Tiernan turned toward him, tossing our earmuffs into his hands. “Out.”
Jace floored it out of our booth.
“What’s wrong?” Tiernan swiveled to scowl at me.
“Why do you think something is wrong?”
“You’ve been staring.”
Blush crept up my cheeks. I was completely taken with a man who did no more than tolerate my presence in his life so my family could help him.
He didn’t choose me. He was forced into this union.
“I’m just annoyed with myself for doing so poorly,” I lied.
Explaining I was daydreaming about him kissing me silly was out of the question.
“Seen worse.” Tiernan unloaded his pistol. “Your brother Enzo couldn’t shoot an elephant if it sat right on top of him.”
I gave him a chiding look.
“You’re lying.”
His stone-cold expression remained stoic. “Why do you think he prefers knives?”
“You’re jealous because he’s good with his hands.”
“And I’m not?”
“I wouldn’t know. You haven’t touched me much.”
His smirk was mocking, amused. “Are you flirting with me, wifey?”
I pushed at his chest, my face unbearably hot. “Hardly.”
“Looks to me like you are.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t worry. It’s working.”
“Maybe guns aren’t for me.”
“Guns are for everyone.” He threw me an incredulous look. “Especially the wife of a man who just killed the Russian pakhan.”
“Is that why I have so many bodyguards?” I asked. “Because of the dead pakhan?”
“Why the fuck else?”
“Because of what happened to me.”
“That won’t ever happen again. You’re mine now, Lila.”
“But the Russians can still hurt me,” I pointed out. “Maybe the answer is not to be married anymore.”
I gave him my back, stomping out of the booth. I wanted to escape this feeling. This urgency. The need to touch him. To conquer something inside him I wasn’t even sure existed.
Tiernan clasped me by the wrist, yanking me back to him. My body slammed against his, my full, tender breasts colliding with his abs. He glowered at me, a hint of disgust pulling the corner of his lips down.
“You want me to kiss you.” He stared at me abhorrently, like I was deranged.
I barked out a laugh, snatching my wrists back so I could answer. “You’re delusional.”
“You’re more fucked up than I suspected.”
How could he read me so well? It drove me to madness.
“I just might kill you,” I warned.
“I just might let you,” he deadpanned. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want us to kiss?”
“Because…” I spluttered, dying of embarrassment. “Well, forget about it!”
I spun again, but he tugged me back to his body, grabbing my jaw and tilting my head up.
“I may not be good.”
I huffed, wanting to strangle him. This absolute idiota.
“I think we can handle one bad kiss.” My hands moved clumsily. “We both survived far worse.”
“Whiskey in a teacup,” he muttered to himself, staring at me in fascination. “Unassuming to the naked eye. But so sharp. And oh, that bite.”
I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant.
His lips fastened over mine.
We both stilled, holding our breaths. Tiernan was the first to put his hand on my face, snaking his other one around my waist, drawing me in.
It was cautious and exploratory. Like treading into a foreign body of water. At first, it was so soft, I second-guessed its own existence. A tentative brush of the lips. A breath that passed between us, where I couldn’t tell who inhaled and who exhaled.
But then he applied more pressure against my mouth, and the decorum and elegance my mother taught me all flew out the window as I pressed all of me against all of him and opened my mouth, darting my tongue to trace his lower lip.
It was plump and warm. My toes curled inside my shoes.
His deep groan of surrender echoed inside my body. His mouth opened over mine, his hand sliding into my hair. He tugged on the elastic holding my hair in a ponytail, letting the yellow tendrils fall across my face, deepening our kiss.
It felt like slowly drifting into a sweet dream while slightly drunk on the finest wine. Our tongues touched for the first time, and fireworks exploded in the pit of my stomach. All my blood rushed between my legs. I clawed at his chest, rising on my tiptoes, demanding more.
His mouth became frenzied, greedy, nipping and biting and kissing and tonguing. We kissed for a few minutes before he ripped his mouth off mine, staring at me feverishly, a stunned glint in his eye. We were both panting hard.
“Shit.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “Fuck.”
My heart bottomed out. Did I do something wrong?
But then he grabbed my face roughly and kissed me again, even more wildly.
I locked my arms around his neck, moaning into his mouth.
He hoisted me up to wrap my legs around his waist, pressing me against the cubicle wall.
I could feel the thuds of gunshots popping against my spine each time someone took a shot in the range, and the vibration seemed to hum in a tiny, secret place in my core.
Wild and fast like my heartbeat. My husband tasted so good.
Like coffee and mint and absolution. His cock was nestled in my opening through our clothes, pulsating against it.
I pulled my mouth from his, gulping a quick breath, and released my hands from around his neck to sign, “Do you think we’re doing it correctly?”
“Don’t fucking care.” His teeth caught my bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth. “I want more of it.”
We kissed again. This time our tongues danced together, and I dished it as good as he served it. I was putty in his hands. Hands that knew how to shoot the same target down to the millimeter. Hands that killed, tortured, and destroyed many lives.
Hands I knew would never hurt me.
My husband. My protector. My macabre fantasy.
Rubbing my breasts over his torso, enjoying the friction against my nipples, I traced the tip of my tongue along his lips, and then kissed him more deeply. He groaned against my mouth, sucking my tongue ardently.
The fabric of my shirt teased my skin, begging to be ripped.
It took everything in me to tear my lips from his, and I only did that because it felt like I was wetting myself. My underwear was damp, even though I didn’t feel like peeing.
I pressed my palms to his chest, and he immediately set me down, releasing me from his hold. But whereas I was panting like a rabid animal fleeing a predator, he appeared to be unaffected, save for his swollen, pink lips and the erection in his slacks.
“Okay?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You look terrified.”
My cheeks flamed with heat. “Something happened.”
“Yeah. No shit.”
“Not that…”
He wiped his lower lip with his thumb, searching my face.
“I think I had an accident.”
God, this was excruciating to admit. But what if that meant something was wrong with the baby? I knew nothing about childbearing.
“You think it was an accident?” he repeated dispassionately. I felt him retreating back to his usual sullen mood. “Well, we don’t have to do that again.”
“No. Not the kissing part. I…I think I wet myself.” I felt my eyes glass over with unshed tears. How humiliating. How utterly unbearable that this was how my first kiss had ended. “I hope it’s not blood. My panties are all wet. I need to check.”
He stared at me. In disbelief at first, then with something else altogether. Hunger, delight, and amusement.
I had a feeling he wanted to laugh again, and that made me furious. Even if he didn’t want this baby, that didn’t mean he needed to be happy about it. I pushed off his chest, scowling.
“This is serious. Where’s the restroom?”
“Gealach.” He scooped me up by the waist, spinning me once as though I was a child, in a moment of heartbreaking gentleness. “Nothing’s wrong with you. We got a little carried away and your body—your smart, healthy, functioning body—got itself ready in case we were going to have sex.”
“What do you mean?” I glowered. He put me down.
“Nothing is wrong with the baby or with you. Your body self-lubricates when it gets turned on, because your brain tells it you’re about to have sex. It’s natural.”
“Oh, thank God.” I collapsed against the wall, crossing myself. “I thought something was seriously wrong with me.”
“Get used to it, Gealach.” He pushed forward, leaning down to capture my mouth with another kiss. He held my face up, so I could see his lips when he spoke. “You’re going to be very wet for me, very often, and you’re going to love every fucking minute of it.”
_______
A few minutes later, we were in the lobby with Jace, who was hunched over a pile of paperwork.
Tiernan watched as Jace stamped his concealed-carry permit. Then my husband quietly slid my ID across the counter to Jace and jerked his chin toward it. “Process this one, too.”
Jace froze on the other end of the counter. His eyes landed on my birthdate, and his throat bobbed with a swallow.
“She’s, uhm…” He coughed into his fist nervously. “Not twenty-one yet.”
“You saying I can’t math, lad?” Tiernan raised a perfect eyebrow.
Jace rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Wh-what? No, man. Not at all. My bad. I’ll get that permit handled straight away.”
When we got into the car, I decided to needle him again. It was my favorite new pastime.
“Why wiseass?”
“Mm?” He twisted his Rolex on his wrist.
“My nickname. Why did you call me wiseass the first time we met, on the fountain?”
The night you almost killed me; I didn’t complete the sentence.
“Because,” he said slowly, “calling you hot ass didn’t seem appropriate at the time.”
I grinned as I stared out the window, watching the scenery wilting as we left the pretty parts of New York and entered Hunts Point.