30. Tell Her
Chapter thirty
Tell Her
Eoghan
“ Y ou need to tell her,” Dairo said, before he turned around and opened the door, walking out across the hall to his own room. The same room he had grown up in.
I held onto Kira for dear life. She hadn’t said a word and hadn’t pushed me away. I was afraid to see horror in her eyes. Would she hate me for bringing her here? Would she hate me for bringing her into this world of madness? Would she be afraid of me, the way Aoibheann was afraid of my father? The way I was afraid of my father.
The secret was out now. At least this part of it. The rest of it? The blood oaths, and medieval feudalism? That would have to come later. But surely, it would be more acceptable, if she could just accept my father.
“I need you to understand a certain… madness that might run in my family,” I choked out, my head still in the confines of her throat, my eyes landing on the beautiful skin of her neck.
I took in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her gorgeous hair as I tried to put words to all that I had kept from her. The world I had kept from myself by hiding away in the city, and staying far, far away from Mourningkill.
“What do you mean? Do you have literal skeletons at your big house? Is there going to be a guy walled up in your basement with a cask of Amontillado?” Her hand came up to stroke my hair. I chuckled at the slight comfort.
A good Edgar Allan Poe reference would always be appreciated.
“Aye, there very well may be.” I tried to laugh, but winced.
My father likely did wall someone in the basement. A Russian informant who had been turned by us, but then fed information back to Yuri Vasiliev. A double agent. He had been taken to the basement to be tortured, but never came out. Not as a corpse to be delivered as a message to Yuri Vasiliev, or in many trash bags to fertilize the woods on the property. He simply disappeared. The next time I went down those stairs, there was fresh mortar on the wall. So, I could only guess…
“But I doubt anyone would spare the good booze to kill someone in the Green household.” I hoped she thought I was sarcastic. Afterall, I was telling the truth. I could still look her in the eye and be honest about who I was, and what I knew. I had never lied to her.
She pulled out of my arms, and I was too tired to hold onto her. Even if she did run from me, where would she go? The guards outside, and the distance to the gate would make her easy prey out there. And I was the beast that would keep her safe.
Because I had brought her here, and it was my fault.
But she made no move to run, her high heels clacking on the wooden floor. She was slowly perusing my room, staring at the paintings that hung against the dark green wall. She stopped at one - the painting I had made years ago, long before the face of Kira Kekoa crossed my path. But now that I re-examined it… the figures in the painting looked vaguely like us. The skin color was wrong on Kira, but the wild black curls were right. So was the curve of the woman’s figure - shapely, and full. Just like everything about my wife.
“This one is so… complex,” she tilted her head one way, then the other, as if a different angle would give her a new perspective. Maybe it did. “It looks like he’s forcing the kiss on her, because of how he’s holding her face, and her body language. But if you look at her lips and eyes…”
“She wants it.”
Her eyes turned to me, as she smirked. “The old fantasy of wanting something you shouldn’t, and someone forcing it on you.”
I quirked a brow, “Is that a fantasy of yours?”
She snorted. It was an honest reaction, and I liked it. I liked her in this room, surrounded by my paintings. Maybe all the rest - the mafia life, my insane father, and all the blood oaths could wait. Just for now, in this moment, we could be us.
“To be forced into something I’m denying myself?” Her eyes did something peculiar. They cut away, down to the floor, her smile vanishing for a moment as her voice went soft. “Hardly.”
My Muse was lying. Maybe to herself. Maybe to me. But I couldn’t blame her for any of it.
I’d take her lies if it meant I got to taste her.
I leaned in, pulling her hair over one shoulder to have access to that gorgeous throat. That pulse point. The lovely little lines that drew the blood from her heart to her head. How I envied that pathway. How I loved that scent.
“What about this madness that you were mentioning?” She swallowed hard, and I watched her throat move. I took my finger and traced the lovely ridges of her trachea. Every line was made to complete perfection.
“It’s an obsession.” I placed my lips gently on her neck. The one place that truth always appeared. “I thought that it had skipped me, but I realize that I suffer from it now.”
“Obsession?” She shivered but didn’t move away from me.
“Yes, I am rather obsessive in love.”
“You seem obsessive about everything.”
“I’ve been reasonable with women until now.”
“What do you mean?” She was shivering, her hands balled into fists.
“I’m obsessed with you, Kira Green,” I confessed outright, because I wasn’t ashamed of it. I wasn’t ashamed of the madness that was going through me. If I had known this was how it would be, then I wouldn’t have fought it my whole life. Not that it mattered, as the madness existed for her, and her alone.
“You said your father became a monster when he was…” She blinked, as if trying to get the fog out of her eyes. “You said he was crazy for your mother, and became a monster when he…”
“I could be your monster, if you let me.” I was already a monster, even before I knew her. I had been born in my father’s image, and he was a beast without the calming hand of my mother. She was the witch that could control him. “But as you can see, I am a monster, made in my father’s image. A curse I will never break. But I swear… I will be a good man to you. I swear it. I swear it!”
I came to my knees in front of her and wrapping an arm around her waist.
“I’ll be a good man to you, Kira.” At least I hoped I could be.
Her hands came to my hair, stroking it tenderly. With my cheek against her abdomen, her loose hair curtained around me in the most beautiful black waves. Her floral scent, like the sweet pea orchid, surrounded me with its comfort.
“You don’t like being here.” Her statement hit the mark. I avoided this house like the plague.
“I hate it here,” I confirmed. “I seldom come here except when I am summoned. After we leave, I hope to never have to bring you back. We’ll live in the penthouse in Manhattan, if you like. Or we can find a place if you want to start fresh. Hell, I could buy your building, if you wanted to stay at your flat…”
She laughed, lightly. “I think your penthouse will do just fine, Eoghan.”
I squeezed her closer, holding her to me. “Good.”
She hadn’t run away after meeting the disaster that was my father. She was here. She was making plans with me.
That was a comfort.
“Husband,” she groaned, as I heard the rumble of her belly.
“Hungry, love?” I asked, pulling away to look up at her from between the valley of her luscious breasts.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Deli meat and sandwiches are fine but hardly filling…”
I liked her appetite. I liked her voice. I liked the fullness of her figure and every curve of her hair. She was a woman created exactly for me, and I had fooled her into becoming my wife. Could I fool her into being handfasted to me? Could I make her think it was something that wasn’t medieval and strange?
More importantly, could I do it without lying to her? Without uttering a falsehood to my sweet muse.
“I’ve had some clothes delivered in the closet,” I said, nodding my head to the adjoining door. “You can’t wear a black dress like that. You’ll look like the help.”
I came to my feet and cupped her face.
“I need them to see you as the future lady of the house.” I ran my thumb over her cheek, staring down at her full lips, and feeling the hunger building in my gut again, as my cock throbbed behind my zipper. “Will you let me dress you, Mrs. Green?”
With the painting of the kiss behind her, I felt a sense of prophecy, as if this moment was something that had been shown to me in a vision years ago.
“Will you take no for an answer?” she asked, her eyes fluttering closed with lust.
I leaned down to kiss her and she slightly turned her head away. I grinned, feeling the tug of joy on one side of my lips as I recognized the game we were now playing. We were the couple in the portrait, and she knew it.
“I will take no for an answer… if you mean it.” I grabbed her chin in my hand, turning her face to kiss her, my tongue conquering as she moaned. “Just say the word.”
I meant the safe word. A blush crept up her cheeks, and I was delighted to see the flush beneath her warm, tanned skin.
She played her role beautifully, trying to pull away, but still giving in when I sucked her tongue in my mouth. Her hand came up to wrap about the nape of my neck. Then she pulled it away, as if realizing that she was giving in to something she should deny herself. I grabbed her face in my hand, keeping her mouth locked on mine as my hand delved down to lift her skirt and cup her gorgeous, full arse.
She stiffened, then gasped, her body pulling away and drawing me closer at the same time. A beautiful contradiction, showing me the depth of who she was. It was magnificent. The resistance. The fight. A kink I didn’t know I had, but now that I did, it was consuming.
Like an endless hunt, where I coaxed my little prey out, tempting her to show me the wanton desire I knew her body was capable of.
I pried my lips away but didn’t try to let go of her. Why would I? Why would I ever place space between us when there need not be?
“We don’t have time,” I lamented, placing a kiss at the base of her throat, feeling her pulse against my lips. “Or I would take you right here. I would take you on every surface, until you were nothing but a heap of used and sated lust, filled to the brim with my seed and growing my child in your belly.”
She gasped, and I chuckled.
“I will keep you ripe with children,” I swore under my breath. “Or I’ll die trying.”
“That’s one hell of a threat, Eoghan.”
“No threat,” I chuckled, nipping at her clavicle. “A promise.”
I stepped away, and felt cold when I did so. I allowed the space between us to grow just for a moment, as I ran into the closet, to pry out a black dress, covered in green lace. I pulled some emerald green high heels from a row of shoes and came out with them in my hand.
She stood still as I worked around her, slowly unzipping her black dress and letting it fall to the ground, kissing her bare shoulder. In nothing but her bra, her panties still missing from when she tried to search for them this morning, I got a glimpse of the glory of her body. I knelt behind her, running my fingers along her curves, the backs of her thighs, to the curve of her glorious calf and her delicate ankle.
I slipped her heels off, one at a time, offering her my shoulder so she could balance herself. Then I placed the new shoes on each delicate foot, feeling like the humblest, most loving servant. I rose, taking the dress and slipping it over her head, and letting it fall over her body, hiding the glory of her form. A form that belonged to me. A sight that was for my eyes alone.
I gloried in the intimacy of zipping up the back, her hair tucked over her shoulder as the dress formed to her curves.
What a privilege to be a husband, and to be a servant to the most glorious wife. In all my days, I had never felt more right and more important. Not seducing and taking… but in serving the woman who deigned to let me call her that precious word: Wife.