Chapter 14
KATE
Ihurry into Three Oaks, doing my best not to drop anything in the lobby. I have a bouquet of daffodils—Granny’s favorite flower—and I stopped to buy a tin of the Berger’s cookies she loves. I picked up a box of Barry’s tea as well, the Gold Blend she’s drunk since she was a girl.
I always bring Granny gifts. It’s the least I can do, since Mam saw her squirreled away in this depressing “senior health center”.
Granny deserves better than a windowless basement room that saves Da all of one hundred bucks a month.
But my father went along with the decision.
He said it was too depressing to deal with nurses coming to the house, with physical therapists and occupational therapists and all the other staff Granny needs to keep her well.
I offered to pay the difference. When that didn’t change Da’s mind, I threatened to withhold my monthly payment for the support of the Canton Crew.
But in the end, Granny told me to save my breath.
She agreed to the transfer. She said it would keep the peace for Da, and Mam has the right to run the house as she sees fit.
Granny is the fiercest Lynch of all. She’s loyal and brave and willing to sacrifice anything for the clan. She’s the true reason I hand over my Red Cap earnings to Da. If I could be one tenth the mob princess she was growing up, I’d be guaranteed a place in heaven.
Poor Granny. There’s nothing wrong with her mind.
She’s still fluent in English and in Irish.
She balances her checkbook monthly, on paper, because she doesn’t trust “those feckin’ computers”.
She reads The Baltimore Sun every morning, first page to last, and she can accurately recite every meal she’s eaten in the last week.
Granny’s mind is fine. But her body’s giving out.
My grandmother had polio as a girl, and she’s still paying the toll.
Her leg muscles are so weak that she uses a wheelchair if she has to walk more than two or three steps.
Her diaphragm and chest muscles have shrunk too, so it’s hard for her to breathe.
She needs weekly ventilation therapy, and she carries two rescue inhalers.
Her jaw and throat are compromised, so she has trouble chewing food, and she’s prone to choking if she isn’t careful.
Even her beloved knitting leaves her exhausted.
I miss the woman I traveled with all over Ireland, the woman who showed me off to relatives, who taught me what it truly means to be a Lynch. Now, pausing in the hall outside her room, I try to fake a smile. I’m lousy at pretending, but maybe she won’t be able to tell.
Knocking twice with just one knuckle, I turn the doorknob. “What’s the craic, Granny?” I call from my side of the door, forcing a little laugh that probably makes me sound like a serial killer.
“How many guesses do I get?”
My body recognizes the voice before my brain does. Adrenaline floods my veins, pumping so fast I go light-headed. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and my palms feel like I’ve dragged them through cold porridge.
Wolf.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I already know the man will stop at nothing to get what he wants—and he wants me to answer his calls, to respond to his texts. He didn’t build his Lone Wolf empire by letting people ignore him. Da’s Sunday deadline hangs over both our heads, only forty-eight hours away.
I force my feet to move into the room, even though it feels like I’m dragging a sledge of concrete blocks. My gaze automatically goes to Granny’s armchair. She’s supposed to be sitting there, a blanket across her lap and a cardigan over her shoulders because she’s always freezing.
She isn’t in her chair.
A quick glance shows she’s not in the jacks either; the door’s wide open, which she hates.
And she’s not in her bed, which is easy to see, because Cole Wolf is sprawled against her pile of pillows, his shoes on the blanket that’s folded across the bottom of the bed with military precision. Granny would hate that too.
I’ll kill him. I’ll get a knife, get a gun, get whatever it takes. And I’ll be sure he hurts, for a long, long time.
“What the fuck did you do to my grandmother?” My voice is very low; it sounds like one of those recordings of tectonic plates shifting, just before an earthquake.
“Nothing.” He sounds amused. “Or nothing like what you’re thinking. I had her transferred to a room on the third floor. It gets some actual sunlight, and it has a view of all three oaks.”
I feel my face flush. Now, more than ever, I wish I’d kept fighting Da about Granny’s living quarters.
I tell Wolf, “Granny is the wisest woman I know.” My words are nearly sub-sonic. “And you say she just went along with your plan, no questions asked?”
“She asked questions. She asked who was paying for the change, and why.”
“What the fuck did you tell her?”
“I said I was taking care of everything as a favor to you. In gratitude for your kind words and sweet disposition.”
I glare. “What did you really tell her?”
“That it’s what I’d want someone to do for me.”
I look around the room. The walls have been stripped—none of Granny’s photos are left, not the plain wooden cross her own da carved, nor the painting of St. Brigid.
Now that my brain is starting to function again, I can see that her closet door is open too, and all the hangers are bare.
The framed snap of Breagha and me is missing from the top of the dresser.
“How did you know I’d come here?” I finally ask. I feel exhausted. Resigned.
“You’re a Red Cap Raider, and you have to ask?”
The tattoo on my thigh throbs, worse than it ever did when I got it inked. I flush, thinking about the fresh cut I made Monday night. The bruises Wolf gave me have faded during the week, but they’re still visible to anyone looking closely.
Of course he’s looking closely. I feel like I’m pinned under a microscope. “We’re both good at breaking into records,” he says. “But I don’t feel the need for blackmail.”
“And you think I do? Get up out of that!” The Irish protest is thick in my throat.
“Just a little Bitcoin on the side?”
“What the actual fuck?” He’s making no sense. “Did someone drop you on your head?”
He stares at me without blinking, and all the air goes out of the room. “Do. Not. Lie. To. Me,” he whispers, each syllable a fully formed threat.
I feel terrycloth belts knotted around my wrists and ankles. I feel his leather belt landing squarely on my clit. I feel his teeth scrape my nipples.
I allowed all that. I consented. He measured out his power, his anger at my slapping him, his shock at discovering my Red Cap tattoo. He controlled himself.
But he’s raging now. I read the narrowing of his eyes, the tight set of his jaw. He’s holding back—barely—but if his fury slips loose this time, I’m not sure either of us will survive.
Still holding his gaze, I say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t ask for Bitcoin or any other dosh. I didn’t try to blackmail you.”
I want to be furious with him. He’s spent the past three days stalking me on my phone. He just accused me of trying to extort money. As far as I know, he’s still taking under advisement Da’s offer—Canton Crew millions and me.
He’s my enemy.
“You didn’t send the email,” he finally says.
I hate the rush of relief, knowing I’ve passed his idiotic test. I hate that my head feels light, like he’s just untied his terrycloth bonds. I hate that he’s bigger than me and stronger than me and I have no hope of ever escaping him.
And I hate that I like all of that too—even a teeny, tiny bit.
I’m Kate Lynch. I have a mouth that scares off half the Canton Crew. I talk back to my mother, my father, to anyone who thinks they’ll tell me what to do. I have to say something to Wolf now, bleed off some of the energy sparking just beneath my skin.
So I snort like none of this matters and I say, “You’re a wolf, lying in my granny’s bed. Is this the part where I say my, what big ears you have?”
He pauses a moment before he obliges: “The better to hear you with, my dear.”
He isn’t just quoting a silly fairytale. He’s reminding me that he’s spent the better part of the week trying to speak to me. Trying to talk about Da’s offer.
That’s why he’s staring at me with those stalker eyes. That’s why the gold flecks look so bright. He found me and now he’s trapped me and there’s nothing I can do to escape.
But I try to buy a little more time. “Wh— What big eyes you have,” I say.
He sits up on the bed, swinging his legs over the side so his feet settle on the floor. He knows exactly what I’m doing—delaying the inevitable, the same as I did in Boston. A sudden flutter between my legs makes me bite my lip. His eyes narrow like lasers.
“The better to see you with, my dear.”
It’s like he can see straight through my hoodie. He somehow knows my nipples have turned to stone.
When he stands beside the bed, he’s taller than I remember. Broader across the shoulders. He moves with an easy confidence, like he’s used to covering long distances with his pack of fellow wolves.
Instinct makes me back away, one step, two, three, until my hip finds the door. Impossibly, it’s still ajar because I was so astonished to find Wolf here.
He matches my moves like we’re dancing. When I’ve run out of space to retreat, he reaches behind me and pushes the door closed. He takes the daffodils, which I’m clutching like a broken dagger, and places them on the tiny side-table where Granny used to keep her photo of Grandad and Da.
I shift the tin of cookies, raising it between us like a shield. Still pinning me with those feral eyes, Wolf adds the tin to the table, and the box of tea too, because my fingers have forgotten how to obey me. How to keep me safe.
When Wolf’s hands are empty, he cages me against the door. Heat radiates off his body, rising from every inch of him. He plants one hand beside my head and uses the other to pluck at the cords hanging from the neck of my hoodie.
My gulp is audible. If he just shifted his hands… If his palms found my tight, aching nipples… If his fingertips pinched and pulled the way he did in Boston…
“My,” I whisper, and I have to lick my lips because they’ve gone completely dry. “What big hands you have.”
He doesn’t go for my tits. No. He reaches into my sweats. He traces the landing strip I’ve left down my mound, and he dips two fingers past my soaked folds. “The better to feel you with, my dear.”
Groaning, I let my head fall back against the door. I close my eyes and sink a little toward the floor because my knees have forgotten why they’re here.
Flicking his thumb against my clit, he leans into me. He sucks my left earlobe between his lips. I feel the tip of his tongue, hot and hard, and then his teeth, sharp enough to make me yelp.
“My,” I say. “What big teeth you have.”
He shifts his fingers inside me. He tongues the pulse point in my throat until I squirm, and then he scrapes his canines along my jugular. “The better to eat you with, my dear.”
I sag against him, giving him my weight. My body remembers everything we did in Boston, how he drove me to a second orgasm, just his mouth on my tits when I was too raw for him to do anything between my thighs.
I want to know everything that wicked mouth can do. Yes, I want him to eat me, to suck my clit, to fuck me with his tongue.
But first, I want to taste him. I want to touch him. He tied me up last time, before I had the chance.
I reach between us and my fingers scrabble over his belt buckle. For just a moment, I wonder if this is the same one he used on me. The thought does something funny to my throat, and I hiccup before I get back to business.
Buckle.
Button.
Zipper.
Cock.
I reach through the fly of his boxers, and he’s waiting for me, hot and hard. I trace the length of him with a fingernail, following one raised vein, and he makes a sound that isn’t human.
“Fuck, Kate,” he groans, staggering back a step, which gives me more room to work.
I close my fist around his length, stroking all the way to the end, where a silky drop of fluid waits. I shift my wrist, ready to—
A knock pounds on the door behind me. “Ms. Lynch?” someone calls. “Are you in here?”
The doorknob starts to turn.