Chapter 5 Sean
SEAN
The hotel room is too quiet. Too sterile. Too fucking empty.
I stand at the window of the Langham, looking out over Boston's harbor, and try not to think about the fact that in twelve hours I'll be married to a girl I met once.
A girl whose terrified eyes have been haunting me since I walked out of her house twenty minutes after meeting her for the first time.
A girl I'm being forced to marry because I couldn't detonate a bomb with a woman and child in the car.
The irony would be funny if it wasn't my life.
My phone buzzes. Flynn, asking how I’m holding up. I ignore it. I've been ignoring most of his calls since I arrived in Boston. I'm not in the mood to discuss… well, anything at all. Not in the mood for his jokes about finally settling down or his curiosity about what the girl looks like.
Beautiful. She's beautiful. That's what she looks like.
And she's terrified of me.
I should feel more than I do about that.
I do feel more, actually, but I keep shoving it down, because if I let myself think about what’s really happening, what I’m being told to do, I’ll either tell Connor McBride to go fuck himself or spend the rest of the day in my hotel room trying to exorcise the dark, hungry desire that I feel every time I think too long about Maeve Connelly.
I’ve been trying not to. Trying to ignore my body’s reaction to her.
I’ve never needed to curb that kind of thing before.
Jerking off has always been a means to an end, a bodily need like eating or drinking, a release so I can focus on everything else that requires my attention, so that I survive my job.
Now, it feels like a desperate, aching need.
I couldn’t stop myself when I came back from that fucking godawful counseling session, my entire body throbbing from the moment that damned priest started talking about sex with my future bride right next to me.
I had half an erection sitting in a priest’s office, and that’s sure as fuck not something I ever expected.
Compassion, empathy, guilt… those are all emotions I’ve learned to turn off.
They're luxuries I can't afford in my line of work—made clear by the fact that the one time I gave in to them, I ended up in this fucking situation. So since then, since I was handed Maeve’s file, I’ve been doing my damnedest to turn them off.
Except they keep surfacing anyway, every time I think about her pale face and trembling hands.
Fuck.
Thinking about that stupid fucking counseling session still pisses me off.
As if sitting in a church office and lying to a priest will somehow make this forced marriage more legitimate.
I hated that fucking priest for going along with this.
For sitting there and listening to the bullshit excuse for answers he got, and not calling this whole thing off.
And then what? He’s a friend of the family, apparently, so he’s probably just trying to see Maeve through this. If he didn’t, they’d find someone else. Somewhere in Boston, there’s a priest corrupt enough to take this on without question, especially if Connor lined his pockets. I’m sure of that.
I had to force myself not to stare at Maeve the entire time I was sitting there. Not to look at her frail frame and think of things that make me ashamed beyond measure.
She looked like a bird ready to take flight, the entire time we were sitting there in that ridiculous meeting. Too delicate, too young for what's about to happen to her.
Sitting next to her felt like torture. I could smell the soft florals of her perfume.
See the way she twisted her fingers together over and over in her lap until I thought for sure she was going to give herself blisters.
I listened to the priest ask me questions about marriage and family and faith and sex that surely, surely he knew he wasn’t going to like the answers to, and wondered what Maeve was thinking the entire time, as the priest asked me what kind of husband I planned to be to her.
What kind of husband? The kind who was ordered to marry her. The kind who kills people for a living. The kind who's going to share her bed tomorrow night, whether she wants me there or not.
But I couldn’t say that, so I gave him the sanitized version: "The kind who keeps her alive. That's what I was sent here to do."
It wasn’t a lie. That is what the Council sent me to do.
Marry her, control her assets, keep her safe so those assets stay in the Council's orbit. Everything else is secondary. Truthfully, plenty of people in the world should fear me, but Maeve isn’t one of them, at least not when it comes to her personal safety.
In terms of what it will mean to be married to me… if I were her, I imagine I’d be terrified too, though it’s nearly impossible to put myself in the shoes of an eighteen-year-old orphaned heiress.
She looked like she was going to be sick when Father McCleary brought up the topic of our physical relationship. The moment I saw her go pale, something in my chest tightened uncomfortably.
Does she think I'm going to hurt her? Force her?
The thought makes my jaw clench. I've done terrible things—killed men, hurt people, destroyed lives—but I've never touched a woman who didn't want me. Never taken what wasn't freely given. I’d rather fuck my own hand for the rest of my life than ever force a woman, even if the thought of taking Maeve’s virginity makes me harder than an iron nail for some fucking reason.
But how the fuck is she supposed to know that? All she knows is that I'm the Wolf of Dublin, the Council's killer, and I've been cold and closed off every time she's seen me.
And she has to fuck me. Has to accept whatever I want. No one will protect her except for me, and I can see how that’s cold fucking comfort, given her circumstances.
It also raises the question of what the fuck I’m going to do if she tries to say no on our wedding night. I doubt Connor McBride is going to care very much about Maeve’s sensibilities. The marriage needs to be consummated. But what if she panics? What if she says no?
What the fuck am I supposed to do then?
My phone goes off again, and I finally answer it, knowing that Flynn is going to keep badgering me if I don’t.
“What the fuck do you want?” I answer with a growl, tossing back my whiskey and pouring myself another two fingers.
This room is on the Council’s dime, and I plan to ring up as big of a bill as I can for Connor fucking McBride to foot.
"Finally,” Flynn says with something that sounds like real relief. “I was starting to think you'd drowned yourself in the harbor."
"Not yet," I mutter, leaning my forehead against the cold glass of the window. "Though it's tempting."
"That bad?"
"Worse." I swallow the whiskey and pour more. “So far I’ve been mostly cooped up in this room drinking my sorrows away, in between getting fucking premarital counseling with a priest who thinks I'm the devil and a girl who looks at me like I'm going to murder her in her sleep."
"Are you? The devil, I mean. Could be a good new title if the Wolf bit gets old."
"Fuck off, Flynn."
He laughs, but there's sympathy in it, at least. "So the girl's really that frightened of you?"
"Wouldn't you be?" I force myself to sip the whiskey this time.
The idea of showing up drunk to my wedding has merits, but showing up hungover will just make this nightmare that much worse.
"She's eighteen, just lost her entire family, and the Council's forcing her to marry a stranger who kills people for a living.
I'm not exactly Prince Charming material. "
"No, you're more the 'brooding anti-hero' type," Flynn says with a chuckle. "Some women are into that."
I grunt. "Not this one. She's terrified."
"So be less terrifying." He makes it sound so fucking easy.
"How?" I demand, and I can practically hear Flynn rolling his eyes on the other end of the line.
"Christ, Sean, I don't know. Smile at her? Talk to her like a human being instead of a job? Try not looking like you want to set yourself on fire every time you're in the same room? Because I know you, and I can imagine exactly what your face probably looks like every time you see her.”
I don't answer. Can't answer. Because the truth is, I don't know how to be anything other than what I am.
I've spent my entire life perfecting the art of being cold, controlled, and lethal. I don't know how to turn that off. I have no idea how not to frighten a girl who looks like she’s the heroine of a novel where she’s been stuck in a tower since birth.
Not that it matters. She's not getting a choice in husband. She's getting me. Just like I’m not getting a fucking choice about my wife.
God knows I wouldn’t pick her, no matter what strange, libidinous switch she seems to have flipped in me.
"I have to go," I tell Flynn, tossing back the whiskey. This conversation isn’t going to go anywhere helpful, and I’m in no mood.
"Sean—"
I end the call and stare out at the harbor.
It’s raining again, and the weather matches my mood.
I know I’m not going to get any fucking sleep tonight, but what does it matter?
All I have to do tomorrow is show up, parrot the words the priest says to me, and drink my way through a wedding reception.
Then, hopefully, not be so drunk that I can’t consummate the marriage. Although, if my response to just being near her—hell, just seeing a picture of her—is any indication, I could be blacked out and somehow still manage it.
That hot, licking desire writhes up my spine at the thought of the wedding night tomorrow, my cock stiffening. I clench my hand around my glass and pour more whiskey, trying to ignore the insistent throbbing. The need to come.
I should get off. Maeve’s nerves won’t be soothed by me falling on her like a wild animal.
Hell, I should make sure I’m as wrung out as I can be before the wedding tomorrow.
But fuck if I can’t stand the feeling of shuddering guilt that comes with the force of every orgasm I give myself with her image swimming in my mind’s eye.
Tomorrow, she’s going to be mine. A punishment that the Council has given me, cloaked in terms that look like a reward.
She's a job. A duty. A cell I've been locked into. And I don’t know how to be what she needs.
Don't know how to be gentle or kind or patient.
Don't know how to make this anything other than what it is—a cage for both of us.
When I look at the clock some time later, I see that it’s three in the morning. Three hours until dawn, seven until the wedding. Until I become a husband, a word that I never thought would apply to me.
I toss back the whiskey and go to take a cold shower. Then a hot one. Then I stand at the window and watch the city sleep and try to find some answer in the darkness.
There isn't one. There's just tomorrow. Just the inevitable. Just a terrified bride and a wedding night I don't know how to navigate without hurting her.
I think about what Flynn said. Be less terrifying. Talk to her like a human being. But I don't know how. Don't know how to be anything other than what I am.
The sky starts to lighten, grey dawn creeping over the city.
My wedding day. The day my life changes irrevocably.
The day Maeve Connelly becomes Maeve Flannery, whether either of us wants it or not.
I should feel something. Dread, maybe. Or resignation.
Or anger at the Council for putting me in this position.
Instead, I feel nothing. Just the familiar emptiness I've cultivated for my entire life.
And beneath it, buried deep where I'm trying to ignore it, a dark anticipation that has nothing to do with duty and everything to do with the thought of wedding gowns and silent hotel rooms and bare skin, and the knowledge that tonight, she'll be mine.
God help us both.