11. Callahan
ELEVEN
callahan
I didn’t expect to have fun with her in that ridiculously frilly bedroom.
I also didn’t expect to change my mind and go down on her, either, but I am full of surprises.
Fuck, she’s going to think I’m some kind of pushover when I’m anything but.
Cold, ruthless, a cunt of a bastard who’d cut your throat just as easily as look at you.
That’s me. I’m not a fucking teddy bear like the ones she had hidden away in her closet.
She veers between looking at me like I’m a good guy and a monster.
Both looks carry curiosity, want, lust, desire.
And that’s something that undoes parts of a man.
I should set her straight now.
Show her exactly who I am, in case she missed it when we met.
I don’t. Because… fuck.
The thing is, her father really is a dickbag, and to me it’s clear the love he has for his child is less than his love of power and money.
She knows it and doesn’t need me to pile on.
Even though I’m more of what her father is.
Actually, worse .
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she says, biting on the corner of her bottom lip, and as my stomach tightens, my cock stirs.
Her lip was unexpectedly plump, satisfyingly so, when I’d bitten it.
Lucie’s biting the same spot.
“Did you want to?”
She inhales, hands clasping each other.
“They’re my parents.”
“And they’re the ones who got you involved in this which is why you’re sitting here, opposite me in a limo, after apparently being deflowered for everyone’s enjoyment.” I frown.
“That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the, ah, roughing up of that particular flower, but it’s still attached. Not that they know it. But again, did you want to say goodbye?”
Those golden eyes narrow and her tits heave, nipples still hard.
Fuck, were they enjoyable, too.
I’d suck and bite them all day.
No. I wouldn’t. She has other things I’d busy myself with during that day.
“I mean, Lucie… it was all wrong.” I rub a hand over my eyes.
“We had to wait so the sheet could be shown. The help dangling it from the railing of the first floor for everyone to witness, like Simba being dangled over Pride Rock in The Lion King movie… that was a nice touch, though.”
“I wanted to see my sister, hoped she’d at least show up tonight,” she whispers.
“Gone, Lucie. Left you in the dust to take her place with me, didn’t she?”
“She didn’t know?—”
Lucie stops, the misery grows, and my smile broadens.
“What?” I ask silkily.
“That I’m younger than you both thought? And hotter?”
“Get your ego under control.” She looks out the window or, rather, at her reflection, since that’s what she’s going to see.
The bulletproof glass is extra tinted back here for privacy.
This isn’t, thank Christ, a party limo.
And we’re alone. My brothers are behind us in an SUV.
“Where’s the fun in that, Lucie?” I open the mini bar, then glance at her and make her a drink, the Dubious Joy as I’ve just dubbed it.
Jack and Coke. I hold it out until she takes it.
“Thanks. Is that manners?” she asks.
“I can’t quite tell.”
“I don’t have the kind of manners you mean. And no. Just have your basic little drink.” I pour my whiskey and take a long swallow.
“So you just wish you could have said goodbye to your coward of a sister, assuming she’d been there?”
“I have a brother, too,” she says.
“Where the hell was he? Not protecting you, obviously.”
“He’s only seventeen.” Her eyes narrow.
I somehow control my smile.
This is her, the real Lucie.
Trying to control her natural impulses and failing.
There’s no way she’s the obedient creature I’m betting her sister would’ve been.
Like her being in that shithole part of Queens, the badass virgin dressed like a hooker heading to a costume party.
She’s a fighter. She fought that asshole I shot, then fought against me to finally escape.
She’s not afraid to go after what she wants.
And she knows how to protect herself.
But she also can lose control if the right buttons are pressed.
Like her letting me do all kinds of filthy things to her in the park, her kissing me back.
Eye fucking me, practically begging for more.
I was going to give her a room of her own in my house, but now I’m not sure.
Besides, she’s mine.
I don’t want her thinking anyone else can touch her .
“Any of my brothers would have protected you, no matter their age.” I sip my drink.
“He’s at boarding school.”
“Now, is that where my mam went wrong? No boarding school for the likes of us.”
Did I know she had a brother?
I was probably told.
It’d have been in the dossier Torin put together.
It’s not important, like there being two sisters.
All I wanted was this, a marriage, the fast and short path to my goal.
Lucie is an unexpected delight.
That’s all.
I settle back against the leather seat.
“We could go back. I tried to spare you before. The sheet has been shown, and if we stayed, I’d guess your humiliation would be complete.”
“And you doing all that to me wasn’t humiliating?”
Is that what she thinks?
I don’t answer, just change the subject.
I can still fucking taste her and I lick my lips.
Deliberately. She almost spills her drink.
“Tomorrow I have a lot of work to do. But someone will be with you, always.”
“Don’t trust me?”
It isn’t what I meant, but she’s right.
I shouldn’t. I don’t.
“No.”
The limo pulls over to the side of the road a few miles down and I see Seamus jump out of the SUV behind us before I hear the knock on the window.
“Are you decent?”
I shove the door open and pull my bride to me as they pile in.
I slide my hand along her thigh and Torin just raises his brow.
“Clive, the long, scenic way back to the West Village.”
“Yes, Callahan,” he responds.
I lean back, closing my eyes .
“I’ve got to say that was fast up there. For you. I mean, a quickie on yer—ow!” Dec says as I snap my eyes open.
Seamus just shakes his head.
“Really, Dec, really, the lady in question is in the car.”
“And you might be my brother, Declan,” I say in a deadly tone, “but she was nice enough to let you tramp all over her pretty feet when you danced together, so apologize.”
He opens his mouth, and I look at him.
Whatever smart comment is on his tongue vanishes.
He gives Lucie a sheepish grin.
“Sorry, Lucie. I was ribbing Cal.”
I cut my eyes to her, the warning clear.
And she just stares back, then turns to Dec.
“I enjoyed our dance.”
For fuck’s sake…
“Not a word out of anyone.”
I need to talk some things over with Torin about tomorrow.
I have incoming shipments, a few skulls to smash, and warnings to be issued.
And I want to inspect the sex club I’ve just been given.
Not the one, Silk, that the Don had to buy outright and then hand over to me, but his.
With Silk, all he gets back is the amount I said I’d pay.
Call it a test. He asked for the impossible.
Kill Mitchum. He’s a small fry on paper, but the things Mitchum knew kept him protected.
Maybe he’d have ended up in the White House one day, who the fuck knows, but I eliminated that, went in where others refused, everyone else in this pissant town hedging bets, watching backs, playing the mafia and organized crime version of nice.
Fuck that. Chaos controlled is lifeblood.
And I like risks. I don’t give a shit about any of their politics.
Not at my core. There are enemies, yes.
But it’s a game of loyalty and betrayal.
I never betray. I’ll tell you to your face what I am and what I’ll do, and if someone doesn’t believe that?
Their problem, not mine.
And if I can keep thinking of work, keep thinking of my goals of being the top of my chosen pile, I won’t notice how she shifts against me, the heat of her flesh beneath my hand, how that satin isn’t much of a barrier.
Her thigh’s slender, muscled, but not obnoxiously so.
She’s fit slender, not diet slender.
I can see her working out, sweat trickling beneath her tits.
Maybe she plays something like tennis.
She might run.
I wouldn’t mind chasing her down, truly chasing, so she’s sweaty, lungs and legs burning, limbs like lead when I catch her.
I’d lick her the fuck all over, all that salt and perspiration, her pussy furnace hot.
Then I’d make her wetter, hotter, and I’d strip her bare, the heat of the room and passion and want mingling in the air.
I’d have her on her back, legs up, and pulled closer so she’s fucking spread.
That sweet, tight pussy.
Pink. Wet. But I’d take her ass, watch my pierced cock penetrate her.
And I’d do it slow at first, each piercing of my Jacob’s Ladder disappearing into her, scraping against her just so.
And then I’d go balls?—
“Callahan?” Seamus says, his voice jerking me out of my fantasy.
“Yeah?” I have no idea what they were talking about, but it’s not going to be anything to do with work.
Not in front of her.
Even if Lucie’s my wife now.
“I want pineapple on my pizza, but Seamus says no.” Dec nods at Lucie.
“What do you want?”
“She doesn’t want fucking pizza,” I say.
“I might,” Lucie says.
I turn to her. “You don’t.”
The others descend into a ruckus, and she leans in as we turn onto our leafy, West Village street.
“I might .”
This fucking woman .
Inside the brownstone, my brothers head to the common area and I lead her up to the third floor, my area.
There’s another bedroom and my study.
A small sitting room, a wet bar, and the huge bedroom.
“Is this where you bring your conquests?”
I raise a brow.
“This is where I sleep. Alone.”
She nods and looks so lost, it twists something in me, and I’m suddenly irritated.
I don’t fucking care if she looks like a lost little girl.
I just need her to keep the fuck out of my way and, on occasion, appear on my arm as the good wife.
My mood darkens, the goodwill vanishing.
“There’s another room?—”
“Is that where you take them?”
I stalk up to her, pulling one of the spaghetti straps off her shoulder, zeroing in on the sudden hardening of her nipples.
My mood pivots into one soaked with erotic overtones.
“Why are you so obsessed about my sex life?” I ask.
“I just married you.”
“And?”
“And…” She stops.
For a second I don’t think she’s going to go there; I don’t think she’s going to say it.
But she does. “And I wanted to know i-if you have a girlfriend.”
“If I had one, why the fuck would I feel up a girl in a park?”
“Perversions?”
“True, but I’m a little obsessive. If I had a woman, I’d be fucking her. Not fingering masked girls in a park.”
“Maybe you can multitask your obsessions.”
“Do you think you’re an obsession?”
“I don’t know, Callahan. I don’t know what you want or what I’m meant to do. Are you giving me my own room, or should I ask when our sex life will start?”
A ghost of a smile hits me.
I run a finger over that bare, soft shoulder, over a spatter of the palest gold freckles, like she’d once fallen asleep in dappled light, and that one spot got a lot more sun, and now she wears the evidence.
“Are we going to have a sex life?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers breathlessly, “are we?”
“I thought you might want to remain a virgin for your next marriage.”
Hope lights up her eyes.
“So you’re going to let me go in two years?”
For some reason that really pisses me off, and a savageness stirs.
“If I’m sick of you or if I choose to. We’ll see.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair. Me having to fuck you with everyone knowing so they can see your virginal blood isn’t fair. Girls like you taking it up the ass exclusively to preserve that virginity isn’t… well, okay. It isn’t fair to you. I like ass fucking, but… now that I think about it, I like options. I fucking love pussy.”
“You spilled yours. Blood.”
“My virginal blood? I don’t think I’ve been virginal since I was fifteen. Although the girl was age appropriate, if you’re wondering.”
“I’m not.” But she blushes fiercely.
“I’m a virgin in all places.”
I lift her chin with a finger.
“You told me there was a boy. I’m betting you gave him a hand job and he touched you, or knowing guys, got you to put his dick in your mouth.”
“Not answering that.”
“Well, two virginities out of three works for me.”
Or none of them.
Virginity doesn’t bug me.
Does it?
It never did.
Until now.
Until sweet, snarky, unexpected Lucie.
Suddenly I’m glad the majority of her virginities are mine .
The heat in the room slides around us, and my cock throbs with need as it swells.
There’s something about her, there really is.
The reason I saved her, why I chased her, why I obsessed over her.
And fuck, she’s not leaving this room.
“You’re mine, Lucie. Every fucking inch. You were since I laid eyes on you in Queens. When I killed that fucking prick for you.” I lean in, mouth to her ear, breathing in her sultry scent.
“And one day in the very near future, we’ll be having a conversation about who he was to you and why you were there. But right now, I’m going to shower, so go and eat pizza with my brothers.”
I step back because being too close to her is like that mindfuck of a moment when you give over control to the inner darkness, the violence.
When you pull that trigger and throw that first fucking punch.
She’s an explosion of all the lust and hunger there is.
“But—”
I put my finger against those plump, soft lips.
“Not right now. I’m not in the mood for lies and denials. When we talk about it, there’ll be truth. I like truth.”
“Okay, so why did you come after me?”
“You piqued my obsessive nature, my intrigue. You were a hot little mystery piece that didn’t fit, and those fucking legs are beyond distracting. I wanted you.”
She imitates a fish drowning on land, her mouth opening and closing like she wants to say something but can’t formulate words.
I slide a hand into her hair, taking a fistful and pulling her to me.
“You’ll be sleeping in my bed. Every fucking night. My wife, my rules.”
“Barbarian.”
I brush my lips against hers.
“Now you’re getting it. I’m a fucking cunt, too, like I’ve said. Go have pizza or Thai or whatever the hell they settled on.”
I let her go and walk away to the en suite.
“And Lucie? Get changed. Big, baggy, covered up. That’s an order. I’m taking a shower.”
When I’m in the bathroom, I strip and turn on the water, and then I get under it.
I’m hard and aching, and after washing, I let the water hit my face.
My hand grasps my dick, the other massaging my balls, both hands soaped up.
I slowly start to stroke my hardened cock, working the silver rods of the dumbbell piercings on the ladder, all nine of them, until I reach the tip and the curved dumbbell Prince Albert.
It’s a primer to getting off, a form of self-torture, and after, I jerk it a few times.
Then I go a little harder, rougher, until my cock’s straining.
Oh fuck. I can just imagine the damage?—
Shit.
Lucie.
I stop, switch the water to cool, then cold, thinking of my day tomorrow instead.
Not the violence or threats, but the boring shit, checking shipments, visiting my new sex club to go through the books and inventory.
Masturbating like I’m a fucking kid isn’t on my list of the evening.
Not in here. Not where she can walk in.
Not if she isn’t a willing participant…
When my cock deflates, I soap up again, then rinse, turn off the water and step out, reaching for my towel.
It’s not there.
But Lucie is.
And her shocked gaze is on my junk.
“See something you like?” I ask.