24. Rowan
24
ROWAN
I stand in the dark bathroom for several long moments before I flip on the light, trying to catch my breath. The aftershocks of my orgasm are still coursing through me, my adrenaline high, and all I want is to go back out there and fuck my wife again. I’d be hard again in an instant if I so much as looked at her. I don’t seem to have a refractory period when it comes to her.
But I need some space. I need to think. And I know, when I go back out there, she will have left.
She doesn’t feel what I feel. At least, I don’t think she does. But she does want me. No matter how much she lies to me or herself, even in the heat of the moment, the way her body responds to me makes it clear.
A shiver runs down my spine, fresh arousal shuddering through me at the memory of how wet she was already when I stripped off her clothes, at how good her wet heat felt against the tip of my cock as I dragged it through her dripping folds. I feel my cock twitch and stiffen again, throbbing with renewed need, but I ignore it, heading for the shower instead.
When I come out, as I expected, Genevieve is gone.
I could go to her room. I could fuck her again. She wouldn’t tell me no, I know that. The more often I come inside of her, the more likely I am to get her pregnant, and that’s the goal of this. The only goal. It’s not pleasure, or intimacy, or anything but fulfilling what we both agreed to… and then that will be the end of it all.
My chest aches, thinking of never touching her again. Of all the things we will have never done together, things that I know I’ll spend the rest of my life imagining. Fantasizing about, dreaming of. I’ll be aching for my wife long after she isn’t my wife any longer.
I’m still rock-hard, eager for her again. I could take care of it, give myself a release at least, but I ignore it. I don’t want my own hand.
I want my wife.
—
In the morning, when I come down for breakfast, Genevieve is nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t take a genius to know that she’s avoiding me, but as much as I want to, I don’t go and look for her. I finish my breakfast alone instead, and then head to my office, intending to call Dimitri first thing and see what he might have uncovered about Chris.
I know Genevieve doesn’t want him dead. I know that for her, having lived a more normal life, that seems like a horrifying extreme. Even for me, having been raised in and around the mafia, the idea of taking someone else’s life isn’t something I’d consider lightly. I don’t have the taste for violence that others do, like Dimitri’s brother Alek. I’ve never been a violent man.
Not until the day I saw Chris strike Genevieve, and I discovered for the first time what it felt like to want someone else dead.
Now, he’s tried to kill her. My wife, the woman I love… the future mother of my child. I still don’t know if I’m fit to inherit all that my father has built, if I can handle the responsibility of everything that he wants to pass on to me, but I know one thing for sure.
I need to make sure that man can never harm Genevieve again, or I’m not fit for anything at all.
Dimitri answers on the second ring. “Rowan. How’s Ireland?”
“Bonnie, as always.” I sink back into my leather chair, rubbing a hand over my face. I’m exhausted from last night, and I try not to let it show through in my voice. “How are things in New York?”
I’m asking about more than just the city, and Dimitri knows it. “He covered his tracks well, Rowan. If he put out the hit on her, I’m not finding any evidence of it. Alek is talking to his contacts in the more… criminal part of the underworld. Someone he knows has a lead on a contract that was put out on someone that fits Genevieve’s description. But tracing it back to Chris?—”
“You don’t need to trace it back to him,” I bite out. “It was him. You know that as well as I do. Just tell me what I need to provide for you to pay out the contract, and what you need from me to put an end to that fucking asshole. That’s it.”
“We need to be sure it was him, Rowan,” Dimitri says patiently.
“I know it was?—”
“I agree with you,” he interrupts, his voice firm—the voice of a pakhan . It irritates me that he’s using that tone with me, speaking to me as someone below him, instead of his peer. But I’m not the leader of the Gallagher family yet, and it’s never irked me before the way it does now. “But think, Rowan. If we assume and it was someone else, then they’ll just send out the contract again. While we’re focused on Chris, the real culprit will still be going after Genevieve?—”
“Who the fuck could it possibly be, besides him?” I demand, and Dimitri sighs.
“Someone who wants to strike at the Gallagher family,” he suggests. “Someone who has paid enough attention to what’s been happening, bided their time, and knows that we’d assume Chris is the one responsible—the one with the motive and who has made threats already. Someone who could use him as a cover. We need to be sure , Rowan.” Dimitri pauses. “You’re in Ireland. She’s as safe as she could possibly be. Let your father and Alek and I handle things here.”
I run a hand through my hair, my jaw tightening. For all that I know, I’m helping to protect Genevieve by being here with her, by bringing her to Ireland and keeping her safe here, but being unable to do anything about the situation back in New York still makes me feel helpless. Relying on others to deal with Chris, instead of taking the fucking bastard out myself, makes me feel helpless.
“Just protect her,” Dimitri says, as if echoing my thoughts. “I’ll call you when we have more information.”
Genevieve manages to avoid me for the rest of the day. The manor house is large, with gardens and a greenhouse, and a library, as well as plenty of other rooms for her to lose herself in. I don’t chase her down, once it becomes obvious that she’s trying to avoid me, but I can feel myself getting more restless throughout the day, my mind drifting back to her again and again. If it were entirely up to me, I’d have kept her in bed all day today, and fucked her over and over until it was physically impossible for me to become aroused again.
So why am I waiting? I ask myself, as my frustration reaches a peak around dinnertime. The agreement is that during this one week, we’ll do everything in our power to make sure that Genevieve ends up pregnant at the end of it. That means sex. Lots of it. So why am I not doing exactly what I want?
The truth, I know deep down, is that I want her to want me of her own volition. I don’t want her in bed on a technicality, I want her there breathless, dripping, as desperate for me as I am for her. But that feels like an impossibility.
So I’ll take what I can get.
My mood is considerably worse by the time I come down for dinner. I see Genevieve already in the dining room, wearing a dark red silk dress with thin spaghetti straps and a floaty hem that comes down to just above her knees in the front and below in the back, her hair loose over her shoulders. Just the sight of her sends a jolt of hungry desire through me, and when a maid walks past me with a pitcher of water, I put a hand out to stop her.
“Sir?” She looks at me with confusion.
“I want privacy. Tell the rest of the staff to not come in until I call for someone. This room is off limits until I say otherwise.”
The maid bobs her head, quickly darting out of the room, and I turn, closing the heavy wooden doors to the dining room.
“Rowan?” Genevieve’s voice floats toward me, confused, and I pivot on my heel, crossing the room to her in three quick strides.
I reach for her waist, pushing the place settings on the table aside as I lift her up and set her on the edge of the table. She gasps, pushing at my chest, her eyes going wide.
“Rowan! This isn’t?—”
My hand fists in the thin silk of her dress, pulling it upwards as I feverishly undo my belt with my other hand. “Don’t worry, taibhseach ,” I growl, freeing my throbbing cock with one hasty motion. “I won’t kiss you. I won’t do anything you’ve told me is off limits. But the one thing I can do is fuck you, Genevieve, and you never said anything about there being restrictions on where .”
“Rowan—” She gasps, letting out a small yelp of surprise as I grasp the side of her calf, hooking it around my hip as I step between her thighs. “I?—”
“You don’t need to do anything, lass,” I murmur, reaching down to hook my fingers in the soft lace of her panties as I tug them to one side. “Except come on my cock.”
The feeling of her soft folds against my fingers as I pull her panties aside is the closest I’ve come to getting to touch her intimately with anything other than my dick. It’s pushing a boundary, and it’s all the more thrilling for that—especially when I feel the slick heat of her arousal on my fingertips as I tug the lace away.
A jolt of heat ripples down my spine, and I grasp my cock, angling it between her thighs before she can say another word. I don’t hesitate, thrusting into her the moment that I feel her damp folds part around my swollen cockhead, driving into her all the way to the hilt as she lets out a startled cry.
“ Fuck , yes—” I groan, my muscles tensing with the sensation of her wet heat enveloping my straining flesh. She feels so fucking good, like wet silk gripping me from base to tip, and I pull out until only my swollen, sensitive head is rubbing just inside her, feeling her clench automatically around me before I thrust in again, hard. “Take my cock, taibhseach . Take every fucking inch.”
I thrust again, and Genevieve sinks her teeth into her lip, her gaze defiantly meeting mine. The table shifts with each hard slap of my hips against her body, the china rattling, and I see her jaw flex, see how hard she’s fighting making any sound at all.
“It doesn’t have to be this hard, lass,” I murmur, the fog of need momentarily lifting as I see the stubborn expression on her face. “You could take pleasure in it, too.”
She shakes her head in one sharp movement, turning her face away, and it takes everything in me not to reach out and grip her chin, forcing her to look at me again. I want her eyes on me when she comes, want her to admit how much she wants this, too, but that seems like a desire that I’ll never have fulfilled.
One of many, when it comes to her.
Her hands grip the edge of the table, clinging to it as I thrust into her again and again, the sensation of her perfect, tight cunt too much to bear. I’m so close to the edge that I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to hold back, and at this angle, I can’t put pressure on her clit the way I’d like to. The sight of her on the edge of the table like this—her hair around her face and the shoulder of her cardigan sliding down, exposing her slender, pale shoulder—is driving me insane.
I make the mistake of looking down, and I’m gripped by the sight of her panties wrapped around my fingers, held to one side, her swollen pink flesh stretched tight around my thick, hard length. I see her arousal glistening on my skin, and my orgasm hits me before I can stop it—the thick vein at the top of my cock pulsing rapidly as my balls tighten and I start to come.
I groan through clenched teeth, my head falling back as I fill her with my cum, impossibly hard, throbbing with a pleasure that makes my knees nearly buckle. I feel like I can’t breathe for a moment, overwhelmed with sensation, and then I feel Genevieve’s hands on my chest, pushing me away again.
I stumble back, letting go of her panties, and she reaches down, tugging them back into place in one swift movement. I realize, then, that she didn’t come. There’s the shine of victory on her face, as if she’s achieved something, and she slides down from the table, her face a perfect, expressionless mask.
“I’m going to have dinner in my room,” she says calmly, walking away from me toward the doors, as if I didn’t just come inside of her. “I’ll be there if you decide you want to fuck me again, Rowan. It is what we agreed to, after all.”
She flings the doors open, striding out as gracefully as I’ve ever seen her, and I stand there staring after her, quickly tucking myself back in and fixing my clothing.
I haven’t done anything wrong. So why do I suddenly feel as if I’ve somehow hurt my wife?