Chapter 28
Callahan
I DIDN’T EXPECT MY viper to carve her name into my side or for me to like it as much as I did. Blood dripped down my stomach as I tried my best not to succumb to the woman who’d caused it.
I stared at her biting her lip, trying to contain what she felt. Did she think I wanted her to bottle it and hide it from me? I wanted all of her always, every mean bone in her body along with the vulnerabilities and soft spots to go with it.
“You know these women mean nothing?”
She tried to look as if she hadn’t noticed. I was supposed to be focused on who had hurt her. Who had tried to take her life. Whatever had happened on the footage my brother had shown me, because it was clear she was lying through her teeth.
But her vulnerability and jealousy were all I could focus on in the moment.
“You’re right to mark me, Viper. Your name belongs on me. No one else’s.”
She cleared her throat. “Sorry. I didn’t notice—”
“Bull. Don’t hide your truths from me when they’re all I want, Viper. Give them to me even if they hurt.”
She chewed her cheek for a moment before she huffed, “Fine. I hate them. Each and every one of those tattoos,” she said softly, but with bite.
“You have other women’s names permanently written on your body.
Even she has a spot there.” She poked at the last name on the list, one that she hadn’t dragged her blade across.
I wasn’t focused on any of the names, though.
I frowned at her voice sounding so small when she should have felt like the queen of them all.
I took the knife from her slowly and held it up as I said, “I was young, stupid, and drunk when I got their names inked.” I brought the knife down on the last name and dragged it across Demi so that instead, Jas was underlined.
“Not sober and completely obsessed like I am with you now.”
I grabbed her and hauled her thighs up so she could wrap them around me, so that I could feel her body pressed to mine and hold her.
I devoured her mouth, and she met my lips with the same amount of passion.
My viper didn’t want to hurt me, but she did want to ravage me in the same way I wanted to ravage her.
Damn, I’d missed the taste of her, and I’d had that mouth within the last hour. I ripped my lips from hers to tell her, “You’re driving me wild in my own home, in my own town, in my own damn head, you know that?”
“Me? I’ve done nothing that wrong. I haven’t even been at your house this afternoon—”
“This afternoon, you left our house, and I still smell you in every corner of it. I wonder what you’re doing, who you’re talking to, if you ate enough before you left. I contemplate calling you, but instead I rush my brother to the club just so I can see you, and it’s barely been a damn hour.”
“You wanted a Ruiz as a wife. What did you expect?” She was smiling at me a little, biting her lower lip.
Instead of throwing her on the bed, I placed her down gently on it, way softer than I would have normally. Her wounds concerned me, and she saw my hesitation.
“Don’t you dare find your conscience now, Knight.”
“It was lost out at sea the moment you stabbed me in it, Viper.” I chuckled. “I’m just putting space between us so I don’t fuck you to death, okay? Those cuts are—”
“Almost healed. Don’t worry about them.” She grabbed my belt and started undoing it. I pushed her hands away, though, because she was on a mission to have me drop that subject.
“I’m more than worried. I want names. I want to know who did this. Who hurt you?”
She glanced away. “Or we could, you know, enjoy ourselves instead?” She tried one last time. “No need to wait now.”
I shook my head, realizing now what she’d said. “You wanted the wedding moved so that these would be healed.”
She didn’t deny it. “And they mostly are.”
“And we still have a few more weeks until our wedding night. We can wait until then.”
Her eyes narrowed, like she knew she might not be getting out of telling me what happened. “Why wait when you didn’t wait with those women?” She lifted a brow and then glanced at the names on my abs. Damn, she wasn’t going to get over those stupid tattoos for a while.
I hooked my arms under her knees and pulled her closer to me. “I’ve had a lot of women in my life. I’ll admit that. But none of them come close to the brilliant mindfuck on my life that you are, Viper.”
“How romantic.”
“It’s not meant to be romantic,” I growled. “I’m supposed to not care at all about you, and yet I’m considering begging you to tell me who hurt you and forego sleeping with you even though it’s all I’ve thought about since we signed on the dotted line.”
“You don’t have to. Take me now,” she said with hooded eyes.
I groaned and glanced at her stomach. “Jasmina, you were badly injured—”
“Oh stop. I just injured you.” She waved off my concern and shoved me back so she could stand before me, dropping her skirt and panties and then moving to take off her sports bra.
She stood in front of me completely naked, hands on her hips and an eyebrow raised.
Then she sauntered over to me and traced her small fingertips over the inflamed scratches she’d made.
The blood coated her fingertips before she brought them to her mouth and sucked on one, humming.
Somehow seeing her enjoying how even that part of me tasted had me rock hard.
“Viper …” I warned.
“Sorry that I cut you,” she said, grabbing my belt buckle again. “Let me make it up to you.”
I hummed and pushed a strand of her hair behind her ears.
“That knife play, I’ll take with you any day.
You understand?” My hand went to her stomach, and she didn’t flinch away this time.
I rubbed my large hand over her in the gentlest way I could.
I leaned in and closed my eyes, feeling the raised wound marks, feeling how her body quivered, feeling how she must have hurt that day.
“Baby, I can’t accept someone hurting you like this.
I can’t. I don’t care who accepted it before or if you accept it now. I need to know. Please tell me.”
“Callahan, it’s—”
I didn’t want her to console me, so I cut her off. “Please. I’m begging. I can’t accept this, Jas.”
She chewed her cheek, and I let the seconds tick by.
It might have been only that, or maybe it was minutes.
Maybe a whole hour. I opened my eyes to stare into her gray ones and read the emotions she would let me see.
She was scared. I could see it. But she finally murmured, “I don’t accept it either. ”
She admitted it for me. To me. And I hope because of me. Because she knew she could actually trust me.
“Fuck, baby.” I dragged out the word because I knew how much it still hurt to hear her say it out loud. “You didn’t agree to someone touching you this way, then?”
“No, Callahan. Obviously, I didn’t. You may call me a viper, and I know that I’ve hurt you—”
“You can strike and hurt anyone you want, Jas. If they do it to you, they die.”
She scoffed. “That sounds ridiculous.”
“I mean it. Tell me what happened?” I took a breath and told her, “I saw the cut on your lip the day I came to get you. I went digging, Jas. I know there was a break-in already. So, what’s the story?”
She chewed on her cheek before she crossed her arms over her chest now and murmured, “Does it really matter, Callahan? Monte was going to look into it. I’m sure he did, but there’s more important matters.”
“More important?” My hands went to her hips so that I could pull her close. “I’m going to be your husband. You’re the most important matter, and you should have been that to your family too.” Even if I wasn’t going to be, didn’t she know that it still mattered?
“But you’re not really supposed to be my ally.”
“That’s what a marriage is.”
“For two years.”
I growled, “Yeah? Or maybe I’d keep your little stubborn ass forever.”
She searched my eyes to see if I was serious, to see if it was a joke.
It wasn’t, I realized, and maybe she did too at the same time, because she murmured, “Show me you will, then.” She moved again to undo my slacks, and this time, I let her. “Let me have you now. Let me feel in control for a moment, even when I haven’t been.”
I couldn’t stay strong when she asked me like that. “In control of what, Jas? You’ve been controlling me since the day you walked in here.”