13. Declan
13
DECLAN
C ara didn’t stay in my room. After she scrambled upright, shoving her shirt and bra down so she could see, she avoided making eye contact with me. Without any energy to push her any further for the moment, I headed to the bathroom to clean up.
She left. I heard the door close while I remained in the shower, and I debated going after her.
My plan was to withhold her orgasms and make her tell me what she was talking about, but we’d both lost there. I got carried away by the lure of making her come with how perfectly she responded to my hard touch. And she had lost all ability to even speak.
Fuck that. Chasing her on the bed was one thing. Letting her think that she had power over me to make me come running after her was something I couldn’t abide by.
But she wasn’t off the hook. I planned to seek her out once more and demand to know what she was mumbling about.
Deal? What deal?
I had no grounds to trust her. Even if I knew her. Even if we weren’t strangers and unaware of all the details that made each other who we were, I had too rugged of a past to be able to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Erin lied to me and cheated on me. Her affair was bad enough. Carrying her lover’s baby was worse. All her lies and duplicity got her killed in the end. And that was an obstacle to my giving my father an heir.
Then Caitlin. She wasn’t any better. She had been my wife for a total of three months before she killed herself. During that time, she'd lied to my face and pretended that she was a woman capable of having this life with me. In the beginning, she’d shied away from me and my touch, claiming through tears that I was too rough with her. She'd manipulated me and convinced me that she was able to handle my brutality, though. I didn’t know how to be soft or delicate. I was a hard man, and I fucked accordingly. My dark soul only operated that way.
Caitlin told me that she was competent to be a Mob wife, but she wasn’t. She'd killed herself, too afraid to be honest about her mental health. I inquired about her health. Our private doctor asked about her wellbeing when he checked on her while tracking her fertility. When asked, she flat-out lied and gave no indication of a mental health issue. Had she been honest, I would have paid for the best help to get her the care she needed. But no.
Dishonesty was a similarity in the women I chose to be my bride.
If Cara was trying to be my third strike, if she had any plans to fuck me over, I had to learn about them now, not later.
Asking her about what deal she mentioned would have to wait.
Ian found me just after I’d dressed. The news he had to share wasn’t welcome.
At my scowl, he shook his head. “I know, I know. The timing is lousy.”
“I just got back from the city,” I told him.
“And I know you need to be here, near Cara.”
Not near her. In her.
“But the men are asking for you.”
I shook my head, sighing.
Our enemies always preferred to deal with me directly, and the Sullivan men knew better than to try to stand in my place. On one hand, I preferred this because I never minded being the one to kill our rivals and teach the idiots in the criminal world a lesson.
I thrived on violence. And I was good at delivering it.
But on the other hand, after the long week I'd had, I wanted a break.
So much for getting some fucking sleep.
I didn’t bother telling Cara goodbye. Conversations between us didn’t seem to go smoothly, and I didn’t think she needed to be told where I was. All I needed to know was that she would be waiting here for me while I saw through this newest episode of business in the city.
Over the next few days, I realized my wife was not only a presence at my home that I could return to.
She was also on my mind.
Every day and night that passed and I was kept in the city, my aggravation grew.
I still wanted to know what she was talking about with that deal. She made it sound like she’d only married me because of a deal. Our deal? I recalled shaking her hand after the claim that I’d let her go in six months. I wouldn’t. I’d never give her up. She would live and carry my baby.
Did she mean that she couldn’t take that many more months of me?
I imagined she might bore and tire of the isolation at the estate home, but I couldn’t trust her to know she wouldn’t run.
And at any rate, she showed me how much she wanted my company and my touch. So sexy and open, vulnerable and mine for the taking.
I couldn’t stop the memories of how damn good she’d felt. How sweet her tight cunt felt gloving my cock. How beautiful her cries sounded to my ears.
I would never tire of the pleasure of shooting my cum deep inside her, knowing she was mine. That she’d never been anyone else’s. Cara belonged to me, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
Not while I met with the Boyles who were acting like punks at my gym again. Not while I tortured a rat who thought he could help himself to a little more of the money we’d stolen.
And not while I tried to sleep at my place in the city, alone and turned on by her memory. Restless and full of the need to sink into her again and again.
And she thought I’d give that up? To surrender her to some sense of independence away from me?
No fucking way.
She’d come alive under my touch. She shivered and trembled for me as she broke apart with her orgasm. Even though she’d gotten to me, driving me with an urgent rush to come with her, I suspected that she needed my heavy hand. That she counted on my dominance to get off.
Like an experienced whore, not the na?ve innocent who’d recently lost her virginity, she took everything I gave her. She didn’t protest when I doled out the pain. Not once did she cower from my touch.
Instead, she seemed to beg for more.
“I can’t fucking wait,” I grumbled to myself as I got into my car.
The others could deal with cleaning up the rat I'd gutted. I had other plans on my mind now.
And they included pushing my wife. I’d give her more. I’d fuck her harder and try her limits.
Each time. Every time. I refused to give her little pussy a rest until she was pregnant.
Still, as I drove home, I wondered why . Why would she have ever agreed to marry me?
It no longer mattered, but I felt duped not knowing her reasoning. I didn’t have the patience or free time to get to know her. I lacked that diplomatic charm that Ian had. My brother was at ease speaking with others, but I preferred to let my fists talk for me.
“She hates me.”
I did hear her right when she muttered that bit.
“So, why?”
Shane Murray had to hold something over her to get her to marry me instead of Saoirse. As I wracked my brain on the drive to the estate home, I couldn’t figure out what.
The man was broke. He had money, or rather, he lived a lifestyle that suggested he was loaded, but he had no power. He had no chance of ever paying us back, and now that the thought of his debt was on my mind, I decided to alter our agreement.
That fucker should pay. He’d shirked on paying us back for years, and even though I’d taken his daughter in marriage, it felt like he’d changed the agreement too. I told him that his debts would be wiped clean, but that was because I thought I’d be taking Saoirse.
If Nora—and therefore Cara—was related to the Boyles, then Murray had essentially fucked me over.
“Not on my watch,” I growled.
Reaching for my phone, I called Ian and let it go on speaker as I drove.
“Put pressure on him.”
Ian didn’t question me, but he seemed reluctant to just jump and go like he usually did.
“He’s lying. Or hiding something. I know it,” I told him.
“But what does it matter? You’ve got Cara.”
I shook my head. I did. But at what cost? I couldn’t escape the nagging suspicion that there was a lot more at play here, and I might not enjoy the details of who was plotting against me and my family.
“All right.” He sighed. “I’ll send him the message about the debt still being owed. I mean, maybe offer him a discount or something…”
“Whatever.” I didn’t care.
“Are you heading home now?” he asked.
“Yes.” Time to make a baby. Once and for all.
“I was talking with Riley earlier,” he said.
“And?”
“She heard Cara asking Frank for her phone back.”
I rolled my eyes. “Tough shit.”
“I doubt it would do any harm to let her have it,” he argued.
“Are you going soft now, Brother?”
He huffed. “Compared to you, I’ve always been soft.”
“What does it matter? If I don’t have to worry about her calling someone to come pick her up, that’s one thing I won’t have on my mind.”
He chuckled. “Come on. Call someone to pick her up? Like any unannounced visitor would be permitted to drive close to the castle?”
He had a point, but I wasn’t so lax to give in.
Deep down, I suspected she wouldn’t run. I wouldn’t let her think that I’d changed my mind about her flight risk, but now that I had the impression she’d married me with the intention of sticking around for at least six months, I doubted she’d go back on her word.
She wanted to marry me for some reason. She saw a motivation in something, and whatever it was, I bet it would keep her married to me.
Maybe she wasn’t eager to run.
It wouldn’t kill me to give her that phone back.
But this was how I stayed balanced. In power, knowing she couldn’t thwart me.
“I’ll consider it. Later.”
For now, we had to focus on fucking. And I intended to, nonstop, until her belly would swell with my child. Knowing she could take my darkness and ante up to my need for being rough was just a bonus.