Chapter 10
Cillian
Tonight is the charity gala—the biggest social event on Chicago’s calendar. Nora’s getting ready in the guest room, while I knot my bow tie in the bedroom mirror.
Every power player, politician, and shark in a designer suit will be there.
And my wife will be on my arm.
Finn arrives at seven to brief me on security. He leans against the kitchen counter while I check my cufflinks.
“The little wifey coming tonight?”
“Her name is Nora. And yes.”
“Is she ready for this?”
“She’ll be fine.”
Finn scratches his jaw. “You seem different. Less wound up.”
“Why would I be wound up?”
“I mean in general. Since she moved in. You’re sleeping better. Snapping at people less.” He smirks. “She’s good for you, boss.”
I don’t answer. He’s not wrong.
The stylist and her team have been with Nora for three hours. Three hours behind a closed door while I pace the living room and pretend to review security protocols on my phone.
She was nervous this morning. Picking at her breakfast, bouncing her knee under the table.
“This is a lot,” she told me when the team arrived with garment bags and cases of products.
“You’re about to walk into a room full of sharks. Let me armor you properly.” I kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you tonight. You’re going to be perfect.”
The bedroom door opens, and I turn—
And forget every word I’ve ever known.
Nora stands in the hallway wearing a floor-length gown in midnight blue. The fabric hugs her waist, skims her hips, and flows around her ankles. Her hair falls in soft waves past her shoulders. Her makeup is subtle enough to make her eyes enormous. Her mouth is full and dark.
She doesn’t resemble the girl I brought home clutching a garbage bag full of all her worldly possessions.
She looks regal. Like a queen born to stand beside me.
“Am I okay?” She fidgets with the fabric at her hip. “They said this color—”
I cross the room in three strides and take her face in my hands as I look down at her. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Her cheeks turn pink. “You don’t have to—”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean. You know that.”
I circle her. The dress dips low at the back, exposing the line of her spine, the wings of her shoulder blades. She’s gained weight in two weeks—healthy weight—but she’s still delicate. Breakable.
“Every man in that room is going to want you tonight.” My hand settles on her bare back, and her skin is warm silk under my palm. “But you’re mine.”
I pull her close and kiss her thoroughly, enough to smudge her lipstick, but I don’t care.
When I pull back, her eyes are glazed. “Don’t forget that tonight.”
The ballroom is a sea of tuxedos and evening gowns. Chandeliers sparkle overhead, refracting across hundreds of faces—and over half of them turn when we walk in.
The whispers ripple through the crowd as we pass.
“That’s Cillian O’Rourke.”
“Who’s that with him?”
My hand never leaves Nora as I guide her through the crowd. She holds herself straight, chin up. Good girl. Stand tall. Don’t shrink. You belong here.
She does. Whether she believes it yet or not.
I introduce her a dozen times. “My wife, Nora.” The men linger on her neckline. The women catalog her jewelry, her shoes. I catch every glance, every calculation.
As a financier named Calloway compliments her dress, his gaze drops well below her collarbone. I step between them without a word, and Calloway remembers he has somewhere else to be.
“You’re scaring people,” Nora murmurs.
“Good.”
She almost smiles. I count it as a win.
At one point in the evening, I see Patrick Sullivan heading straight for us.
He’s in his mid-twenties and struts around with the kind of confidence bred from inherited money and zero consequences.
While a senator corners me with a handshake and a campaign pitch, Patrick asks Nora to dance. When she looks at me with a pleading look, I nod, not wanting to disappoint her.
Worst decision of the night.
The senator’s mouth keeps moving. I don’t hear a single word. My focus tracks Patrick’s hand on Nora’s waist, the way he leans in to speak against her ear, the way she holds herself stiff and rigid.
Then she flinches.
He said something that made her flinch.
I’m moving before the senator finishes his sentence. I tap Patrick’s shoulder mid-song. “I’m cutting in.”
“We’re mid-dance—”
The look I give him could strip paint from walls. “I wasn’t asking.”
Patrick drops her hand and retreats without another word. The boy is smart enough to obey.
I pull Nora against me—one hand on her waist, the other folding around hers. She collapses into me, tension draining from her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing important.”
“Nora.”
She hesitates, then shrugs. “He was just flirting…I guess.”
“What did he say?” I repeat the question, enunciating every word.
“He asked if you were keeping me satisfied. Whether I might…be up for variety.”
Every muscle in my body locks. I look over her head and find Patrick across the room. He meets my eyes, sees my expression, and goes white.
He should be afraid.
“Are you alright?” I ask her.
“How much longer do we need to stay here?”
“We don’t need to stay a second longer. If you’re ready to leave, then we leave.”
As the driver I hired for the night pulls away from the hotel, Nora sits beside me quietly in the back seat.
“I’m sorry if I—” she starts.
“I told you never to apologize for yourself. You did nothing wrong. He did.” My hands are fisted on my thighs. “I should have broken his jaw for speaking to you that way.”
“But you didn’t.”
“You wanted to leave. You come first.” I don’t tell her that I have every intention of following through on that threat.
She reaches across the seat and slips her hand into mine. I grip hard enough that she should pull away. She doesn’t. She holds on.
The penthouse is dark when we return. I flip on a lamp, loosen my bow tie, and run a hand through my hair.
I can hear her behind me. The whisper of silk against skin. The tap of her heels on the hardwood. I stare at the window, my reflection staring back.
“Go to bed if you’re tired. I’ll be in shortly,” I say, not moving.
“I’m not tired. In fact…”
I wait for her to finish her thought, but when she doesn’t, I turn.
Nora stands in the center of the living room—midnight blue silk, flushed skin, every fantasy I’ve ever had made flesh.
She crosses to me, brave and deliberate, each step a choice.
She stops a foot away, and I read her eyes.
Not fear. Not resignation. Something I’ve been waiting fourteen nights to see.
“All night, all I could think about was how good it felt to be on your arm. To be your wife. And I couldn’t wait for you to bring me home and make love to me.”
I go rigid. “You understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying I’m done waiting. I’m ready to consummate this marriage properly. I want this to be real.”
“It is real.”
“Then make it real. All the way.”
I search her face for doubt, for obligation, for the people-pleasing instinct that drives her to give what she thinks is owed. I find none of it.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
I lift her the way I carried her across the threshold. She wraps her arms around my neck, presses her mouth to the hinge of my jaw, and my careful iron-willed restraint snaps clean in half.
In the bedroom, I set her on her feet by the bed. “Turn around.”
She does. I find the zipper of her dress and draw it down—inch by inch, vertebra by vertebra—watching skin appear beneath midnight silk. The dress slides off her shoulders, catches at her hips momentarily, then pools at her feet.
She’s wearing lace underneath. Navy, almost black. My mouth goes dry.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
She shivers. Goosebumps spread across her bare back.
I strip off my jacket, bow tie, and shirt. Her eyes move over me—muscle, scars, the body of a man who fights to survive.
I lay her on the bed. Kiss her deep and thoroughly while my hands caress what the dress hid—the curve of her waist, the dip of her hip, the weight of her breasts in my palms when I unclip her bra.
“We go at your pace,” I tell her. “You’re in charge.”
“I don’t know how—”
“You don’t need to know how. Tell me what you want.”
“You. I want you.”
I worship her. No other word fits. When I take one nipple into my mouth, she arches off the mattress, her fingers knotting in my hair, and a sound tears from her that will live in my head until I die.
I work lower. Kiss her stomach, her hip, and drag her panties down her legs.
She tenses. “What are you—”
“Trust me.”
The first stroke of my tongue and she cries out—raw, shocked, the sound wrenched from a body discovering pleasure it didn’t know existed.
I take my time. Tasting her sweet arousal.
Learning her rhythm. I work on building her higher and higher until she’s shaking, thighs clamped around my shoulders, my name a broken chant on her lips.
When, finally, she climaxes against my mouth. I bring her down with soft, unhurried strokes of my tongue before pressing my lips to the inside of her thigh.
When I look up, her eyes are blown wide. Her chest heaves.
“We’re not done yet.”
I shed the rest of my clothes. She watches, and I catch the nervous flicker—my size, my scars, the reality of what comes next.
“We’ll take it slow.” I settle between her thighs, bracing my weight on my forearms. “And if you want to stop—”
“I won’t want to stop.”
I reach between us, work her open with my fingers. She’s wet, soaked, but I take the time anyway, reading her face for anything less than sheer hunger.
“Look at me, Nora.”
Her eyes lock on mine—hazel, luminous, full of a trust I haven’t earned and probably don’t deserve.
I continue to hold her open as I push the head of my cock inside her. Her eyes go wide. I enter her slowly, controlled and agonizing, inch by inch. She gasps at the intrusion, the stretch, and I freeze—every nerve in my body screaming at me to move.
“Okay?”
“Don’t stop.”
I push deeper. She grips my shoulders, her nails scoring my skin, and the bite of pain grounds me. I bottom out and hold—both of us breathing hard, foreheads pressed together.
“You’re mine now,” I murmur. “Every part of you.”
“I was always yours.”
I move. A measured roll of my hips that draws a moan from deep in her throat. She wraps her legs around my waist, and the angle shifts, and—
“Oh my god,” she gasps.
I focus on that spot. Building a rhythm off her breathing, her sounds, the way her body tightens around me. She’s close. I can tell from the grip of her, the way her hips meet mine with increasing urgency.
“Come for me.” My voice is gravelly. “Let me feel you.”
She comes with my name torn from her lips, and the force of it drags me over with her. I bury myself deep and orgasm harder than I ever have, her name a groan ripped from somewhere primal.
I collapse beside her, pull her against me. We lie there wrecked, shaking, breathing each other’s air until she falls asleep against me.
I don’t sleep.
I lie in the dark with her heartbeat under my palm and think about the world outside this room—my mother’s ambitions, the Sullivan insult, a family that hasn’t yet fully accepted her.
This brave, battered, unbreakable girl has become my reason for living. I don’t think she realizes that yet. And I don’t think she understands yet that for her, I will do exactly what I vowed on our wedding day.
I will forsake all others.