36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
On Friday, I hobble through the lobby of the Charter Hotel toward the elevator for my meeting with Eoghan.
He’s so intense with me, I wonder if he’ll see it in my eyes how I got fucked last night. Heck, he might smell Johnny on me. A man that potent leaves a scent that no amount of coconut bodywash can erase.
Ow… Ow…
I’m walking like I rode a horse for ten hours straight.
Well, I sort of did. The guy was hung like one and even though he wasn’t inside me for ten hours, the damage is done.
The elevator door opens to Eoghan’s villa, and I walk in, pushing past the pain. Several steps into the kitchen, the smell of coffee hits me. My eyes flash on the brewmaster spout simmering drops into a full, steamy pot.
“Bless you.” I put the briefcase down on the raised counter and help myself to a cup.
“Good morning,” Eoghan’s thick, rich brogue greets me from behind.
My body twinges, half-wishing Johnny spoke with an accent. Because damn, that lilt gets me going.
“Good morning. I helped myself to coffee.”
“You can have anything you want, sparkles.” He hovers behind me.
I’d tell him what I really want right now, but I won’t be able to walk.
“Just the coffee.” I turn around and gasp. “What happened to your face?”
He freezes and fingers the three-inch vertical ragged scratch on his right cheek. “Rough night.”
Between my pussy and his face…
I giggle into my coffee. “Rough, how?”
He reaches for a mug. “Restless sleep.”
“I…slept great.”
Eoghan whips his head toward me. “Why?”
I bite my lip. I want to tell him so bad… But that’s mean.
“The new book I’m reading. It’s very…fulfilling.”
“Another book?” He sips the coffee. “What’s this one called?”
My brain scrambles to remember the next book on the list we’re supposed to read for this month’s meeting. I panic when nothing materializes.
“You wouldn’t know it. Guys aren’t into those kinds of books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Romances.”
“Odd, since men like me star in them.”
I choke on the coffee because he’s right. “How do you know that?”
“I have five sisters now, and I hear them giggling, passing around a paperback in the living room when we do family dinners once a week.”
“What do you mean, you have five sisters now?”
“My four brothers are married. We don’t use the term in-law. Their four wives and my sister, Shea-Lynne, are all my sisters.”
This tugs at my heart. “That’s…sweet.”
“Once you’re in our family, once you have my name…” He leans into me, his aftershave a dreamy fragrance in my nose. “You become one of us. We protect what’s ours. That includes the wives. Even more so.”
“How many brothers do you have? I caught on that Cormac had a twin.”
“Darragh is Cormac’s twin.” Eoghan looks around. “This is his villa. There are seven brothers total.”
The idea of six more of Eoghan in one room makes me dizzy.
“Your poor mom…” I laugh.
“Is very sick,” he deadpans.
Shit. Shit. Shit. “I’m so sorry.”
“MS. And it’s not looking good. Da is taking her home to Ireland soon.” He checks his watch. “And I want to be back in Astoria before she goes.”
“Let’s go through these files and come up with a plan so you can catch the next red-eye home,” I say and feel tears welling up at the thought of him leaving.
I drifted off to sleep thinking of what Johnny did to me. His dirty talk with a deep timbre, and no accent did the job.
But it didn’t melt over me, or left me feeling warm and cherished like Eoghan’s raspy brogue. The way his pitch lifts from his accent is so damn sexy. The idea of him back in New York kicks at my chest. But he and I can’t be together.
“I have a jet.” He adds natural sugar to his coffee. “It’s Kieran’s technically, but it’s at my disposal.”
“A jet? Here in Vegas?”
“No.” He shakes his head “The brat-pack all flew home after they dropped off me and Cormac.”
“And you would have been home already, too, if Daniel hadn’t roped you into helping with the Borgia case.”
“And because I was hoping you’d let me fuck that cunt again a few more times.”
My heart spikes and my center throbs with searing, sweet pain from Johnny railing me so hard. Something unfolds inside me. I should be shirking off these crude remarks. Smacking Eoghan.
But I… I like it.
Because I’m obviously a slut. Like Johnny said.
“Wait, so you would have stayed anyway if I said, let’s keep fooling around?”
“You’re adorable. Fooling around. I don’t fool around. I fuck until you’re screaming my name, shuddering around my cock. Or did you forget already?”
“It comes easily, doesn’t it?” I put down the mug and fold my arms.
Only without an object to scald his already marred face, which of course makes him look even more damn handsome, he advances on me.
His hips press into my skirt and holy moly.
“You’re…” I sputter.
“Hard. For you.” He grips my hips and moves his hands upward like he’s going to cop a feel. “So how about you lift that skirt and let me fuck you, so I can think straight for about an hour.”
“An hour,” I whisper.
“Then I’ll hold you down and fuck your face.”
The hard length of him presses into me, and I’m throbbing for him. But I… “I can’t… I’m sorry.”
He smiles and steps back. “Just testing you, sparkles.”
“What about…” My eyes stray to his suit pants and it’s like a boa constrictor behind his zipper.
“Do you want to see it again?” He fists his buckle. “He fucking misses you, sparkles.”
Yes.
“I told you I can’t. And I am sorry.” I get my shit together and hold my briefcase against my chest as if this Italian leather will protect me.
Leather. My safe word. It never came close to my lips last night. What is wrong with me?
Perhaps I should just leave the case files. I doubt Eoghan really cares about any of our notes. For all I know, he’s got an eidetic memory and has everything stored in his brain.
“I’m not sorry for loving how you felt around my dick,” he says so deep it coils through me.
“Thanks for reminding me.” I pull the strap over my shoulder. “I’ll be in your office, Mr. O’Rourke.”
I turn my back on him, secretly hoping he just pins me down and fucks me. Then I won’t have to feel guilty for wanting him inside me so damn bad.
Eoghan joins me in his office eleven minutes later.
Checking my watch, I say, “Is that a record?”
“For making myself come?” He brushes his rumpled brown hair off his forehead and sits in the desk chair. “Probably. I had a tasty mental image of your cunt to jerk off to this time.”
I shiver at his words but am stuck on the fact that he came in eleven minutes… Nine if I count the walk to and from the bathroom.
Screwing me he lasted… An hour? I forget. But he wore a condom.
Like… Johnny. Who also lasted about an hour. And also wore a condom.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask softly.
He stops futzing at the desk, and levels a stare at me. “You’d know if I was mad at you, sparkles.”
“H…How would I know?”
“I just beat off in the bathroom. Give me a chance to recover.”
“Never mind.”
“I looked at that Forsythe case you mentioned. It seems solid. I wrote a brief for Daniel to present to the court. I found a few other cases that cited this precedent where the judges ruled in the state’s favor. In all these cases, financials were presented showing the defendant could afford a lawyer and the ones who were fired submitted affidavits that they were let go with little to no notice and without cause.”
I take the brief, impressed it’s at least ten pages.
Then again, he went to Harvard, for crying out loud.
“Are any of the other cases in Nevada?” I glance up at him.
He leans back and crosses an ankle over one knee. He’s the Mona Lisa of male beauty. “Three of them. They’re annotated and cited on the last page.”
My eyes stay glued to him, his long legs, thick thighs, and a newly blossoming bulge in the crotch of his pants stirs my dirty mind.
“Eyes up here, sparkles.”
Shaking my head, I say, “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Okay, I’m not sorry. But I ignore him, or I’ll be drawn into another dirty talk debate and he’ll leave the room again. I want to get out of here. I need to change my soaked underwear.
“The ones in Vegas…” I fight to concentrate on this shitty case. “Any organized crime bosses?”
“Two.”
My heart pounds. I don’t have to ask him who. They’re referenced in the brief I’ll read later. “The third?”
“A politician.”
“Do you… Do you pull stunts like this in New York?” I ask, laying the brief on the edge of the desk.
“No.” Eoghan stares at me with a wicked grin. “We manage to kill any investigations before there is even an indictment.”
“And how do you do that?” I search for a reason to see the good in him, something that won’t put us at such stark odds in life.
“That’s my secret.”
My spine slumps. “The Borgias are dangerous. Ruthless.”
“So are we.” He crosses his arms.
I wait a beat. “And your brothers’ wives… They’re protected? I assume your family has enemies. I know how it works.”
“My sisters all work and have bodyguards.” He taps well-manicured fingers against the middle of the desk. “Astoria is a bubble. I know what we’ve built there couldn’t run as smoothly as it does in a bigger city. In Manhattan, crime families consist of hundreds of people. All sucking the money teat. All wanting a cut. More people means more points of possible failure. More people to piss off and turn on us.”
“It’s impressive how you knew exactly what Borgia’s intent was.”
“It’s ballsy and many don’t try it, most judges…” He stops. “Fuuuck.”
He Sitting down, he drags the folders back out. After opening and closing them, he pushes them aside. “Different judges.”
“I would have picked up on that.”
He steeples his fingers, smooth with no tats. Unlike many other gangsters I’ve crossed paths with, his brother for one. Eoghan is refined. Smoldering danger wrapped in an expensive suit.
When he catches me staring, he smirks and lays his palm on the desk. “One quick fuck before you go?”
“You lasted an hour last time,” I blurt.
His right eyebrow juts up. “Kept tabs on me? I guess you weren’t that drunk.”
I take note of the mark on his face. “How did you get that scrape?”
“Why?” His smile disappears.
“Did you…” My heartbeat picks up. “Did you get into a fight?”
Smiling, he says, “Worried about me?”
“No. The other guy.”
He barks a laugh. “I like you, Jillian,” he says with a dark and dangerous tone.
“You said that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“You didn’t answer me.” It has me wondering if Johnny has a scar.
That stitched leather mask looked and smelled new. Not worn.
For a second, I see a woman clawing Eoghan while riding him. In that chair. Fury blurs my vision. “Where were you last night?”
“Why?”
“You don’t have to lie to me. If you were with a woman and she got a little out of control—”
Eoghan dives across the desk, papers, photographs, plaques, pens, paperweights flying to the carpet. His humongous hands grab me by the blouse and drag me out of my chair until our faces are smashed together.
It boggles the mind how a man this large can move so quickly.
“You were out of control when I fucked you. Did you think for a minute to maul my face with your expensive gel manicure?” His warm breath fans my face with a sexy mouth, trimmed in dark scruff.
I can’t take it. I want his mouth on my pussy. His tongue in my ass. There I fucking said it to myself, no longer cringing at the word pussy.
“No,” I mutter.
“A woman did not scratch my face, Jillian.” His full wet lips move so seductively. “I’ve made it clear from the moment I touched you, I want you.”
“Why me?” I whisper.
“Because you bled on my cock. You saved yourself and then gave your virtue to me. No one’s done that. That means you’re mine.” He gently lets me go. “But… I have to keep my law license. It’s what I do for my family. What I was forced to be.”
“Forced?” My voice cracks.
“Take the brief to Daniel, Jillian. I’m on the edge of my control.”
I shake off that intense moment with him and stand up. With the briefcase in my hands, I say, “Thank you, Eoghan.”
“Don’t thank me, yet.”