CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Ava
I ’ve killed yet another person.
“We have to get you out of that dress,” Griffin says, but I barely hear him over the blood rushing through my ears.
“Lola and Lucia were going to help me get undressed and into a pantsuit I laid out for the grand exit.”
“I’ve sent them home with your aunt. You don’t want young girls to see this.” He tightens his hold on my hand. “I’ll help you.”
“Where are my brothers?”
“I sent them home, too.” Griffin runs a hand through his hair. “With a warning. You’re my wife. This is a Keller problem, and I will protect you. I will deal with this.”
“Was I wrong to give the order to kill the mother?” I ask, only showing my doubt to him.
“She wants you dead. An eye for an eye.” Griffin kisses my blood-stained knuckles. “Did the garrot hurt you at all?”
I scoff, “Like someone can choke me.”
“That’s my girl.” He grips my chin. “Look at me. How’s your head? How’s your heart?”
I press a hand to my chest, my breath escaping in a slow rush. “I feel...”
“Yeah?”
“I used my survival instincts from RAVEN.” Putting this incident in that perspective, my heartrate slows. I’ve been here before. The rush of the kill building to a fever eventually cools and calms. “But...will this be my life forever? I can’t—”
Griffin stops me with his mouth. “We’ll just avoid large crowds until the threat is eliminated. In retrospect, this was one huge fucking risk.”
I look down at my bloodied dress. Damn, I loved it. “Not much of a princess, am I?”
“Thank fucking God for that. I’ll take the real you any day,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t want to let me go.
“I want to go home,” I mutter.
“We’re going, baby. I want to get you out of that dress first. Do you want me to send it to someone to clean up?”
Yes , pops into my head. It’s the wedding dress I wanted. But if we’re getting a divorce, it will be discarded anyway. For now, I choose ambivalence and play the shock card. “Um, sure.”
“Anything, baby.” Griffin kisses me. “Anything for you.”
He takes my hand and steers me to the private elevator to return to the villas.
“Oh God, your brother-in-law’s hotel,” I shriek.
“Shane and Connor are handling it. It’s not your fault,” he assures me with a powerful look of pride.
In the villa, I numbly move through the rooms and let Griffin undress me. He sticks my dress in a black plastic bag that showed up out of nowhere.
“Where’s your suitcase?” he asks.
I point to the closet. We stayed here in the hotel last night. After a rubdown with a warm washcloth, Griffin helps me dress into the pantsuit.
Feeling a touch better, I get a look at my husband. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you changing?”
“There’s no time. I’ll have this suit burned.”
My breath hitches at how easily he’ll discard his wedding suit. But I guess he’s thinking more practically than emotionally.
Within ten minutes, I’m fully dressed and staring at the empty suite. The ball gown is already gone. I assume Aunt Helena got rid of it hours earlier. The box with her veil is also gone. She and the girls had come up to collect their things before the garrot-wielding guy tried to kill me.
I’m more thankful than ever that I didn’t ruin her veil with my reckless behavior. All I had to do was yell out, duck, and that man would have been riddled with bullets.
No, that’s not me, that’s not who my brother saw years earlier. A Zervas killing machine.
But I’m a Quinlan now.
Damn, I don’t think I want to leave.
***
W E GET BACK TO THE townhouse well after one a.m. Zeke, Ace, and Bourne retreat to the wardroom, and I’m glad they weren’t eliminated.
Outside the door to our bedroom, Griffin turns to me. “I didn’t plan a honeymoon. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t think about it since the marriage isn’t supposed to be...”
“Real?”
“Right.”
When we step inside the bedroom, Griffin stalks toward me, removing his jacket. “Are you okay? I want to fuck you. I waited seven years to feel like this again.”
“I... I waited years, too. I haven’t slept with anyone else, Griffin.”
He stills at my confession. “Why?”
“Lack of opportunity. But I was lazy. I’d had the best sex of my life with you. I wanted to remember sex that way.”
“Oh, baby. I can do a lot better than that frenzied car fuck a couple of weeks ago. Or riled up in the shower getting it out of my system.”
“I’m counting on it.” I twist my wrists around his neck and let him kiss me. “I want to forget what happened tonight.”
He kisses me with a hot and demanding mouth, dazzling me with his firm lips and a devilish tongue. Hard. Punishing. Possessive. Everything buzzes inside me, shooting pleasure right to my core. Killing a man should have had me curled into a ball.
I feel alive. Adrenaline rushes through my veins, and I feel like a superhero who could stay awake for days.
Griffin has kissed me plenty, but this assault on my mouth feels different. We’re married. That brutal, City Hall wedding to get even with me, aside.
I like how this feels. Belonging to Griffin. Being his. It’s so primal. And I want more.
We kiss while undressing, clothes flying everywhere. I’m frantic and desperate to be naked. To feel every inch of my husband’s warm skin on my bare body. Piece by piece, every stitch falls to the carpet. His suit, my pantsuit, my bra, my panty, his briefs.
He spins me around and his warm cheek rests on my shoulder while he cradles my breasts in brawny palms. Thick fingers tug at my nipples, sparking them to rise up, long and stiff.
“I knew I’d ruin you for another man,” Griffin whispers in my ear. “Now I’m here. Let’s make up for that lost time.” His hands run down my body, and between my thighs, finding my clit. “Open. God, still natural. I love it, my little furry animal.”
“You’re sick.” I laugh.
“Sick enough that I think of you every waking minute. This won’t be quick. I will be thorough.” He increases the pressure on my clit, pulling a cry from me while his teeth graze my neck. “Kiss me, wife.”
I turn back to face him, and our mouths come together again. Griffin lifts me and I wrap my legs around his waist. He carries me across the room and brings us both down on the bed together. We never break the kiss.
“I have more condoms. I’ll wear one.” Griffin situates himself on top of me.
I run my hands over his perfect broad chest, sculpted shoulders, and rippling abs. Even though he’s Irish, his tawny skin looks rich and feels warm with a faint dusting of golden hair. There’s a sexy trail of soft coils from his chest down to his stomach. I reach down between his legs and close my fingers around his massively hard cock.
“Yeah, jerk me off. Are you wet for me?” He strokes my mouth.
“Wrong lips.”
“Open.” He probes my mouth with his index finger. “Make it nice and wet.”
I swirl my tongue around the tip, and when he removes it, he drags it down my body, right to my aching center. Two fingers rub my clit while Griffin penetrates me with dazzling blue eyes.
“I have to be inside you.” His heated gaze smolders with lust.
He gets off the bed and walks to his nightstand stark naked. Facing me, he tears open a condom wrapper, and with shaking hands, rolls it over his long, thick erection.
Climbing back onto the bed, he pulls me toward him and lines up his cock with my entrance. “I can come inside you now.”
He enters me with one harsh thrust. It stings for a minute, but I’m so damn wet.
“Christ, yes. I’m going to stretch you, rough up this pussy, make you sore. I’ll be fucking you a lot, siren.” Griffin slides out and slams back inside with the start of a punishing fucking rhythm that blanks out my head.
I climax in a matter of seconds.
“Oh fuck, you’re so tight when you come. You’re killing me.” He pumps in and out of me faster but then stops to go slow and gets even deeper.
My head sags back, my hips pressed into his to feel everything.
“Look at me, siren.” Griffin’s fingers close around my throat. “Watch me as I fuck you and squeeze the breath out of you. Live on the edge with me.”
With only small pops of air, I get dizzy, but fuck, the shock to my system is like a hit of gasoline on an already raging fire.
Griffin pumps me so hard my tits bounce with each thrust, bringing me to a place I’d never been. Not even with him. Did he save this for marriage? This kink that only a wife bound by law would get?
I gasp for air.
“You got this, siren.” Griffin’s hungry gaze while fucking me, sends me over the edge again. But I’m learning my husband won’t let me go with just a couple of orgasms. He wants all of me. He wants to wreck me. My clit is so sensitive, but he turns up the pressure, fucking me harder.
I cry out, moan, whimper, and drool.
“You like how hard I fuck you, tough girl?” he taunts. “I will destroy this tight cunt and put you back together so you only get off from me. I will make a mess of you with my cum and clean you up. Fuck you like a whore in my bed and bow at your feet in public as my queen.”
God, all the dirty talk. Where’s he getting the air? I can’t even say anything. I can’t keep up with this insane thundering of my heart.
But I don’t want him to stop. I waited seven years for this.
“Breathe for me now.” Griffin lets go of my throat. “I want to hear you.”
He slows down, dragging every inch of his cock in and out of me.
“God, I love how you fuck me,” I rasp, my throat sore. “I am tough. Give me the worst side of you. I can handle it.”
Turbo-charged sensations fire through me.
“The worst, huh? Somewhere between ruining you and saving you?” He seals our chests together and fucks me at a slow, maddening pace. “Be careful what you wish, baby. You don’t know what I’ve been through the last seven years thinking I’d never see you again.” Raw angst chokes the words from his throat.
All while he locks gazes with me.
I go boneless right there. Crying out, I come in a rush, my center shuddering and tightening around his cock.
“Fuck, look at you coming for your husband.” He grunts and pumps, head thrown back. “God, it’s too much. Damn it.”
I feel Griffin’s cock pulse inside me. He roars, emptying his seed into that condom. I’m surprised the damn thing didn’t break. Then he holds me, his head buried next to my ear. His breathing sounds so rough and heavy. As my eyes adjust, all I see is his slick skin.
He said we wouldn’t have sex. Now look at us. Can I walk away when it’s time? My heart aches, loving how it feels to be so full of him and warm. If I was na?ve to think I could keep my hands off him, and ignore his dirty talk, filthy promises, and the rough feel of his hands on my skin, what the hell else was I wrong about?
Would I rather be right?
Or in love?