Chapter 37
Scarlett
Cormac’s usual calm and quiet movements through our apartment are now a wreck of clumsy and harsh door-banging in the front bathroom.
The sound of water running, followed by swearing, has me leaping off the sofa to go to him.
Seeing him in tactical gear, I blurt, “Where were you?”
His jaw ticks. “Out.”
“Obviously.” I scoff at the one word.
What was he doing dressed like that? He’s mafia. A doctor. A walking contradiction.
“Are you a contract killer for Griffin and your best friend, the enforcer?”
He looks up at me through the mirror. “No,” he says too forcibly for it to be a lie.
“Okay,” I say, but anxiety still rushes through my head.
I push my way inside the bathroom, briefly stilled by the blood splatter in the sink. It shouldn’t affect me. I saw blood every day on my shift as an EMT. I’ve done hospital rotations. But seeing Cormac’s blood, my husband, does something to me.
“Let me help you.” I start looking through the vanity cabinet for bandages and antiseptic.
I notice a smear darkens the collar of his shirt. His knuckles are bruised, and his hair is a mess. Not to mention his eyes are wild and unfocused.
“What the hell happened?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he rasps. “Go back to bed. Please.”
“Not a chance,” I argue. “You look like you clawed out of a grave.”
“I said go to bed, Scarlett.” He says my name like I’m a burden.
“Cormac.” I catch his arm and flinch at how his muscles turn to steel in my hand. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s not my blood.” His jaw flexes as if that’s supposed to comfort me.
I blink and catch my breath. “That doesn’t make me feel too much better!”
After he finishes washing his hands, our eyes meet again. I notice a bruise forming under one eye and a cut on the bridge of his nose. The tension in his shoulders is coiled so tight he might shatter if I touch him in the wrong spot.
“Sit,” I demand.
“I’m fine.”
“Sit anyway, damn it. I’m your fucking wife. You have to obey me, it was in our vows.”
That gets an eyebrow arching. “I don’t recall agreeing to obey you.”
“That was the idea.”
His nostrils flare like he wants to argue, but something in him falters. That moment of surrender hits him. When it just gets too exhausting to argue.
“Sitting.” He lowers himself onto the toilet lid, shoulders slumped.
I find what I need from the medicine cabinet, but I have to wonder why this one bathroom is stocked to the hilt, and his bathroom vanity in the bedroom is practically empty.
He’s arrived back here, hurt and bloody before.
And knew this was the best place to clean up, right by the front door and not drag blood splatter through the rest of the condo.
I learned things like this from being on crime scenes and listening to detectives.
I kneel in front of him. “Just hold still.”
“Holding.” His knees cage me in, so close my skin buzzes with awareness.
I use hydrogen peroxide to clean the blood from his knuckles and other places I see on his skin. “We need to burn these clothes.”
He shakes his head. “No one is looking for me, Scarlett. No one who can hurt us.”
“Whose blood is this?” I try to keep it light, but my voice trembles.
“Scarlett.” My name breaks out of him like a warning.
“You don’t have to tell me everything.” I wrap his hand gently with gauze. “Just…don’t lie to me.”
For a moment, he holds his breath. Then he exhales, slow and brutal. “I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing,” he admits. “Something I promised myself I was done with. Especially after we got married.”
“Were you out using?”
“No.” He oddly laughs. “That part of my life is over. I will never touch a substance again.”
There’s a cold weight in my stomach. “And can this thing you’re doing get you killed instead of the person who lost all this blood?”
His eyes lock on to mine, raw and exposed. “I didn’t think so before tonight. But yeah. It could.”
The truth is brutal. Before I can think better of it, my fingers brush his cheekbone where a bruise is purpling beneath his skin. “We’ll have to ice this shiner now and put makeup on it tomorrow morning before you leave for class.”
He stiffens. “Don’t…”
“Why?”
His throat bobs. “Because I don’t deserve—” He cuts himself off, jaw grinding as if he’d rather swallow glass than finish that sentence.
I cup his jaw anyway. “You don’t get to decide what you deserve from me.”
His green eyes darken like the ocean right before a storm. “You should be afraid of me,” he murmurs.
“I’m not.” I shake my head, barely breathing. “The only thing I’m afraid of is losing you.”
Something breaks in his expression. A crack splinters his resolve. It’s held too much weight. Everything he’s been trying to juggle.
“I’m fucking terrified of how much I want you.” Cormac leans forward, his forehead nearly touching mine.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, his grip tight to mirror the fire in his veins over what happened tonight. “Tell me to stop.”
I should. I may not survive this man.
“Kiss me,” I say, taking the same risk as him.
“This is a mistake,” he whispers, voice shredded.
“Probably,” I whisper back.
He growls a curse from his chest, and then…Good Lord…the man is on me.
His mouth crashes over mine, hungry, starved, and desperate. I gasp, grabbing his shirt to feel his heartbeat pounding against my palm. The muscle is trying to escape his chest, so it can bleed in my hands. He hauls me onto his lap, large hands locking around my hips.
My fingers tangle in his hair, and he groans into my mouth, deep and sinful.
Heat and thunder and need. Every line we swore we wouldn’t cross just got obliterated.
He carries me out of the small bathroom and into the living room. Heart pounding, I hear his measured steps against the wooden floor. He drops me on the sofa, his body covering mine.
Cormac’s hot mouth trails fire down my throat. My shirt, his UCLA T-shirt that I put on before I crashed here earlier, is shoved up until his hands find my breasts.
“Cormac,” I gasp, arching into him.
His breath is torture against my skin. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”
“I think I do.”
He stares, eyes molten, scared, and ruined. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“It’s already happening.” I look down. “You’re squeezing my tits.”
“Fuck.” He kisses me again, slower this time. Then he pulls back suddenly, breathing hard. “If I don’t stop now, I won’t stop…”
My pulse stutters. “Then don’t stop.”
“Do you want to be my proper wife or my whore?”
“Can I be both?” I’m not ashamed to admit I like it on the dirty side.
“Then turn around, grab the back sofa cushions.”
He positions himself behind me, his knees pushing my legs farther apart. My eyes slip closed at how delicious it all feels. His heat, his domination. My heart is a runaway train on a track with a broken rail, sure to crash. But I don’t hit the brakes.
Cormac’s fingers thread into my braid. With each loosened strand in my face, each wave against my shoulder, wisps land on my back, I’m unraveled and unfurled.
No man has ever touched my hair this way.
It’s sensual and erotic at the same time.
Each layer freed from the twist is meticulous and a metaphor for how my husband is unwrapping me.
Finally.
But I’m dying for him to just take me. God, I’m so impatient.
Delaying further, he presses his nose on my neck, holding a mess of curls in his fist. “Christ, how you smell.” He inhales me deeply.
I stifle a moan, but he hears it.
“No. Don’t hold back. Not anymore. We’re past that. I’m your husband. I get to hear what I do to you.”
“Yes, husband,” I say with a satisfied sigh.
“Good wife.” He grips the edge of my shirt and lifts it over my head with such painstaking slowness.
My nerves have thinned out. “Take me, Cormac. Take all of me.”
He undresses me until I’m completely bare to him.
“I just can’t take looking at you like this anymore. Naked, wanting me. I don’t deserve you. But I can’t resist you.” His featherlight touch trails up my thighs from behind my knees.
I whimper from the frustration, the tease. “Please…”
“I can feel the heat from your pussy each time we get close.” He breathes against my skin, setting off a bomb in my chest. “Are you wet and slick for me? Should I make you keep begging for it?”
“Whatever it’ll take to get you inside me,” I groan to him.
“You are in so much trouble.” With large hands gripping my hips, he raises my ass higher in the air.
My thighs press together, my clit needing friction. “Please, please just fuck me.”
“I have to lick you first. Make you come in my mouth.” Cormac smacks my ass. “Show me your cunt.”
I spread my legs. “Like this?”
“This is killing me,” he whispers in my ear. “You are so fucking gorgeous.”
All I see these days are a few extra pounds and tired eyes, but I love the way he sees me. The way he wants me.
“You are one naughty student. Look what you made me do?” He runs a finger along the seam of my pussy from behind. “So fucking wet.”
It’s embarrassing, I can feel myself dripping down the inside of my thighs as I writhe against his hand.
“You want my dick inside you?” he says, low and controlled.
“Yes, damn it!”
“Christ, wife. You’re going to be the death of me.”
Every nerve ending snaps to attention when Cormac’s wet, warm lips kiss down my back. I squirm with anticipation as he takes small nibbles on my skin. I jump, feeling a finger dead center on my clit.
“So fucking swollen,” he mutters into the back of my hair.
“Cormac, please. I need you inside me.” I look back. “I will start humping a pillow.”
He growls a laugh, and it takes my breath away because I don’t hear him laugh that often. For some reason, he’s happy.
That makes me happy. For now his demons have left him. Left me with a man who needs attention and love.
“You need to practice patience, wife. I want to wipe the memory of the last two times we did this because that’s not what this is anymore. Strangers fucking, or me making you suck my cock as punishment.” His words shatter me.
“But I love sucking your cock,” I push him.
“Brat.” He smacks my ass again, as if an ounce of pain is what I need to remind me he’s in control. “Now turn around.”
When I twist to face him, his jaw ticks. I’m sitting here naked, legs spread, begging him to fuck me.
I bite my lip, wondering what he’ll do next. He surprises me by kissing my mouth. It’s hot and urgent and sweet. Kissing means affection. Does he actually feel something for me? Not just blind lust that’s had him in knots for months.
I kiss him back the same way, so he feels that slight bit of hope that I do. That we are good for each other, and we can make this work. He told me his biggest secret, and I’m still here.
“God, this mouth,” he says, licking my lips.
“Back at ya,” I whisper.
“I need to be somewhere else,” he says, getting on his knees. Cormac yanks open my legs, and my hips tilt up so my pussy is eatable. His hot breath fans out along my center. “You are mine, wife.”
“Use me like I’m a real wife,” I say on a ragged inhale.
“I’m going to use you until you can’t walk.” His tongue dips into my slit. “Christ, that tastes good.”
My hips jerk up to meet his mouth. Cormac growls and groans while sucking on my clit like he feels my pleasure.
Euphoria jolts through me, and my world narrows to only this man eating me out. A finger slides back into my heat, and it all turns molten. No one has ever turned me on like this. Teased me.
Having a husband do me like this, licking me and finger fucking me, has the room spinning behind him.
My skin is on fire, and a storm of pleasure wrecks me. My spine shivers, and I’m in a climax free fall, needing it, but wanting to extend the pleasure. More. More. More.
“Cormac,” I cry out on a broken moan. “I’m coming.”
My nails dig into his scalp, that blonde hair thick and silky. I turn my head, eyes closed as I buck and arch into his mouth. The dance of his tongue and my clit in messy convulsions feels like all the stars have aligned.
I open my eyes, shocked to see I’m dripping off his chin. “Did I do that?”
“You fucking squirted on me,” he says, licking his lips.
“I’m not a squirter.” I control my breath and slow my heart, so I don’t code out on the guy.
“You are with me.”
I stare at this man who came out of nowhere. Now look at us.
He kisses my inner thigh, or he’s wiping my juices there, I’m not sure. “Was that good, wife?”
“You know it was,” I scoff.
His fingers hold my thighs so gently. I see his hands for the healing tools they are. Life-saving. Life-changing. He changed my life. Not just by hitting me with his taxi.
“I hope you’re not too wrung out,” he says in that gruff tone. “I’m in no way done with you.”