Chapter Fourteen
U sually runaway brides ditched their grooms before the ceremony.
My wife was more creative than that, though.
Gia wasn’t in an agreeable mood. I followed her at a careful distance, cloaked by the night. What a pitiful creature. Not a single woman in the entire fucking GS Properties building who wouldn’t be ecstatic to take her place, and here she was, making a spectacle out of both of us.
She wandered aimlessly through the frosty streets of New York in her tiny shorts and hoodie. It was relatively warm for February, but I still didn’t like her chances of catching pneumonia. If she knew I was following her, she didn’t give it away.
My wife of ten minutes peered into bars and restaurants longingly, eyes halting on couples walking with their hands entwined.
How unreasonable of her to be mad that I was late, considering my plane was stranded. Equally unreasonable of her to expect I wouldn’t take an important business call, as I’d taken board meetings while buried in women’s pussies before.
I couldn’t believe she made me succumb to stalking her in full wedding attire in the middle of the fucking night.
She was so much work, I briefly considered asking her for a salary with full health benefits.
Eventually, the streets converged, and she edged into Times Square, blending in with the crowd.
Smart girl , I thought with satisfaction. Gia knew she was a target, so she wanted to disappear. She purposely walked into a sea of tourists, bought herself an ice cream, and stopped to look at Broadway schedules in a well-lit corner of the street.
It was two thirty in the morning when she decided to call it a night.
She walked briskly toward the street, tugging her phone out of her hoodie’s pocket, likely to order an Uber. She lowered her gaze to the screen and stopped at the curb.
In a flash, a nondescript black sedan pulled in front of her, camouflaged by the darkness. No license plate. Tinted windows.
A burly man wearing all black charged out of the back seat. He balled her hoodie in his fist, pulling her into the car.
My whole world turned red.
I tore off toward them, ramming into his side with my shoulder, angling myself in a way that ensured I cracked a couple of ribs. He exploded with profanities, his accent unmistakably Irish, stumbling down the pavement.
Gia tripped backward while I straightened him by the collar, jamming him against the car. I could hear the driver inside speaking frantically on the phone, begging for instructions. The muscle man in front of me was middle-aged and pasty. No doubt a simple soldier.
I seized his left arm and twisted it until the sound of bone snapping echoed between the buildings, then grabbed the car’s door and smashed it into the injured area, handcuffing him with one arm trapped by the door.
He folded in two, delirious with pain. I kneed his chin, and his head snapped up. Blood gushed from his mouth.
I wanted only one thing more than breaking his spine in two. And that thing was for Gia’s clit to rub my nose as I ate her out, which was why I refrained from killing him right in front of her stunned eyes.
“Who sent you?” I grabbed him by the hair, tilting his purple, battered face to me. I already knew, but I wanted the admission.
If this beef was out in the open, Tiernan Callaghan wouldn’t be the only one doing the chasing.
The man pressed his lips together defiantly, chin trembling and dribbling blood.
I opened the door that clasped his arm, gaining momentum and slamming it again over boneless, torn flesh. He let out a piercing scream that landed nowhere.
“Let’s try again.” I tugged his hair roughly, ripping a few patches from his scalp. “Next time you don’t answer, I’ll amputate your limb clean from the rest of your useless body. Who sent you?”
“ Th iernan Callaghan!” He spat blood, falling to his knees, his arm still wedged between the car and the door. By the way he was slurring, I could tell he’d likely bitten off a part of his tongue. “Feck, who elth?” he lisped.
I wasn’t going to kill him. Tiernan was going to do it anyway for snitching. Instead, I used him as pigeon post.
“Tell Tiernan next time he comes for my wife, I’ll dismember every single person he ever cared about and send him their organs at random to piece together as a puzzle. Would you like that in writing?”
“N-no.” He writhed, trying to squirm away from the pain. “Goddamn your thoul to hell. Let me go!”
I opened the door again, shoved him in, and kicked it shut. I banged the roof. “Send word to your boss. Now .”
The car careened forward, leaving skid marks in its wake.
A soft whimper sounded behind me. I swiveled in its direction, finding Gia pressing her knuckles to her mouth. She trembled, her eyes wide and haunted.
I noticed for the first time that she was bleeding. He must’ve caught her cheek and split it open when he struggled to shove her into the car.
I instinctively put my thumb to the injured spot to assess the bruise. She sucked in a breath and recoiled.
It was a shallow cut. Barely even a scratch. That realization did nothing to calm down my hammering pulse.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
They fucking hurt my wife. My wife . Nobody touched what was mine.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” I asked tersely.
She shook her head, hands flying to my shoulders. I caught her waist, steadying her. She was hysterical, the waves of adrenaline still crashing through her.
“H-h-he,” she started but didn’t finish the sentence. Her fists crashed into my chest, a sob ripping from the depth of her lungs. I’d never seen her cry before.
“I know.” I pulled her by the back of her head to my chest, engulfing her with my entire body.
I wanted to protect her and kill her in the same breath. I’d never met a woman so insolent, so independent, so completely unmanageable, and fuck my life, but it made me want her even more. She was categorically unattainable, even after I put a goddamn ring on it.
“What you did to him…” Her eyes ran wildly in their sockets. “It was…it was—”
“Warranted,” I growled. “He tried to kidnap you.”
Gia was too gentle, too straitlaced to witness this kind of violence. I wagered she couldn’t hurt a fly. If she did, she’d probably usher it to the vet for medical attention.
She was shaking in my arms like a coin inside an empty tin. I clenched my teeth, my blood roaring in my veins.
“This is precisely why you need security,” I scolded her.
“Do you carry a weapon?” She tilted her face up to look at me.
“I am the weapon.” Guns were for pussies. And irrefutably less fun than good ole spine breaking. “You, however, need security. I’m calling Achilles right n—”
“I—I can’t breathe,” she muttered into my chest. “I think I’m having a panic attack. Distract me.”
“The hell I will. Reap what you sow. This could’ve ended in catastrophe,” I chided her. “Starting tomorrow, you will be surrounded with enough bodyguards to last a—”
She snapped her head up and pressed her lips to mine.
My brain short-circuited.
What the fuck was happening?
She is kissing you.
And you are standing there.
Scowling.
While her lips are moving against yours.
Her mouth was intense and pleading on mine, cold from the ice cream and the night. Sweet and exquisite and unbearably soft.
My mouth finally snapped into action.
The entire world crumbled around us like ancient ruins, and all that was left was the pressure of our lips on each other and the sound of her ragged, desperate breaths.
She opened her mouth, and the sweetness of it un-fucking-did me. Whatever scathing words I had for her were swallowed by her pretty, pliant lips. Our tongues met awkwardly, stroking and exploring one another for the first time.
Then she sucked my tongue into her mouth, and my knees fucking buckled. This wasn’t a kiss between two grown-ups declaring their intentions, but a teenager’s kiss, clumsy and desperate and all-consuming. With complete abandon.
It shouldn’t feel this dirty. This dangerous. We were adults. And married . But it hit different all the same.
My arms wrapped around her tighter, and she sank into my frame, melting into it. I drew the tip of her tongue into my mouth, sucking it, and she sighed and moaned, and there was not enough of her. Not nearly enough. Not ever enough.
My shaft leeched to my thigh, my cock erect and begging for space in my tight-fitting slacks.
Two minutes ago, I wanted her like I wanted the sun. An erratic, prideful desire to own something exquisite and special. Now, I wanted her like I did my next breath. In a dull, unrelenting despair that consumed me.
The kiss deepened, becoming more frantic and demanding. I threaded my fingers along her cheeks and temples, drawing her closer. I played dirty, capitalizing on her heat and confusion. I chafed the fabric of her stupid shirt and hoodie over her nipples with my chest, making them sensitive and raw.
Gia gasped, her hands roaming my body sloppily, frantically.
Precum gathered at the tip of my cock as I let her explore. She cupped my ass, ran her fingers along my back, my abs, my chest.
It was entirely possible I was going to die from desire.
A chance I was more than willing to take.
“Will you tell me your name?” she hedged, her lips moving over my own. “Your real name, so I know who I’m kissing.”
Her words were a bucket of ice water, drenching both of us. I ripped my mouth from hers, stepping back. “Stay in your lane, Gia.”
“Our lanes merged, you fool.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “When we said our vows earlier tonight.”
I stared at her from a safe distance, panting like I’d just run a marathon. Her lips were swollen and raw.
What the fuck just happened?
This wasn’t a kiss. I knew, because I’d kissed enough women in my life to file the experience under inadequate. Something I needed to do in order to hit the home run.
This was…this was…
“Come here,” I growled, rushing back to her, bending my head down, claiming her mouth harder and faster now.
She gasped when our teeth clashed, when our tongues shared the taste of her ice cream and my brandy once more.
Good.
Fantastic.
Fucking wonderful.
Was this a trick? A spell? What was her recipe for this…this…
“Your name.” Now it was her turn to end the kiss abruptly.
I glowered at her. “It’d take much more than a fucking kiss to make me tell you that.”
Growling, she glued her lips to mine. We kissed again.
No one was privy to my real name. That boy was buried right along with my past. My hand molded over her ass, the ass I’d glared at for years when I knew she wasn’t looking. Through shades. When I opened doors for her to meetings. When I berated her for no good reason at all.
“Bedroom,” I found my voice somewhere in the back of my throat.
She broke the kiss breathlessly. It took me a few seconds to catch up with that fact. My faculties were scattered like clothes on a teenage girl’s bedroom floor.
It took another two seconds to register the cold, metallic edge kissing an artery in my neck and the fact that Gia was holding the small pocketknife I took with me everywhere. She must’ve fished it out of my pocket when she roamed my body.
Her eyes danced like two flames, her gaze finding my own.
Joke’s on you, Apricity. Now I’m even harder.
“No bodyguards,” she said evenly. “You got us into this mess, you will get us out of it. You want me to be protected, you protect me. You’ve shown great capability tonight. Am I understood?”
I stared, mesmerized. I’d never been this attracted to someone. To some thing .
I couldn’t wait to fuck her. To watch this strong, beautiful woman taking my cock in her mouth. In her pussy. In her ass, maybe.
I was sick with want.
“Well?” She applied a little pressure with the knife, just enough to tease my skin but not to break it.
“I accept your terms,” I said coolly.
It was the first time I’d been blackmailed in my entire life, and I enjoyed it immensely. “But I will shadow you everywhere you go. Work. Gym. Your mother’s. No more avoidance, Gia,” I warned. “You’re mine, and you’re going to act like it. Am I understood?”
“Crystal clear.”
When I got home, I rushed to the office and closed the door. I could still feel her pulsating all over my skin. Her scent, her mouth, the knife.
I called Rebecca, the least useful creature in all of New York, other than maybe sewer rats.
“Sir?” she asked in confusion. “Is everything okay?”
Was it? A lot had happened in the last few hours.
Wedding.
Irish mobster.
Gia hurt.
Kiss.
Kiss.
Kiss.
I hadn’t been this affected when, two years ago, I mounted three Sports Illustrated models on top of one another and fucked them from behind simultaneously, slamming into a different hole each time.
“Cancel all my meetings for today,” I choked out.
It was a Friday, one of my busiest days, as I chased tail ends before the weekend rolled in. But I knew I wouldn’t be productive today.
I hung up, cracked open six math books, and solved equations and followed rituals the entire day to soothe myself back into breathing normally again. I needed to count sand grains and windows on skyscrapers and letters in thick books. I needed numbers to not feel twitchy and anxious and on edge.
Another one of Dr. Patel’s emails popped on my phone’s screen, as though he was reading my mind.
From: Dr. Arjun Patel, MD
To: Tate Blackthorn
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: Reschedule Meeting
Tate, please. You’re dealing with multiple issues. I can help.
I hit Delete.
I was beyond redemption.
I spiraled into my own pitch-black mind.