Chapter 46
46
brAIDEN
F airfax holds up three neckties for my approval. I choose the darkest green, so deep it almost looks black. He drapes it around my neck and starts to tie the knot, but his phone buzzes in his pocket.
After he reads the text, his sigh is more indulgence than exasperation. “Aiofe can’t find her tights,” he says.
“Go. I can manage this on my own.”
The look he gives me drips with doubt, but he heads for the door. Pausing on the threshold, though, he looks back. “Your father would be proud of you,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say, knowing that’s Fairfax’s most effusive praise. “Now, go. The last thing we want is to keep the archbishop waiting because one little girl can’t find her tights.”
The door is almost closed when I hear Fairfax speaking to someone in the hallway. His voice is hushed, but I can’t miss the urgency in his tone. Before alarm can spike my blood, Samantha slips into the room, closing the door behind her. She turns the small button in the knob, locking us in.
I suspect my grin is somewhat ridiculous as I take a step forward. “You know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the wedding dress before the ceremony.”
“What? This old thing?” Samantha grins as I study her with blatant approval.
I offered to fly in any designer she wanted in the world. I said we could postpone the ceremony if her dress required hand-made lace and individually stitched seed pearls. I told her she could have a train as long as the church’s nave.
But she insisted she didn’t want a traditional white wedding gown. She had one for our first wedding, and we both know how that ended up. So Samantha’s wearing an outfit she already owned.
The hem of the skirt brushes the floor. It’s made out of yards and yards of black silk, covered with gigantic flowers. Fairfax is the floral expert in my household, but I recognize tulips. All the blossoms are in shades of gold and pink and purple, and they’re gathered together by a wide purple belt. Like all of Samantha’s favorite skirts, this one has pockets.
Her top is all black. The front is demure enough to satisfy the archbishop. But the sleeves and back might have him rethinking his priestly vows—they’re made out of a fabric so sheer Samantha looks naked.
It’s the outfit she wore to a party at Thornfield, back when she thought she had to compete with Fiona for my attention. Madden cornered her in those clothes. She almost left me, wearing that kit.
But she decided to stay.
“You’re gorgeous,” I tell her. And I’m not just talking about the sweep of her hair in some complicated knot, or the cosmetics that make her eyes look huge, or the shine of her lips. Everything about her is beautiful—her body and her brains and her bravery.
I love that I can make her blush with two simple words. I love that her laugh snags something deep inside my chest. I love that I have a wedding gift for her, something I meant to give her after the ceremony, but now is even better.
“Close your eyes,” I say.
I watch her automatic refusal, her instinct to do what she wants, when she wants. And I watch her shut down that response. A patient smile quirks her lips, and she closes her eyes.
The box is on a chair, covered by the garment bag that held my tuxedo. I haven’t wrapped it. Haven’t shifted the contents from the bare-bones container my man delivered a few nights back.
I heft it onto the table, watching a line appear between Samantha’s eyebrows as she processes the sound. She wants to peek. She wants to be in charge. But she waits until I say, “Go on, then. You can look.”
The box is made of heavy corrugated cardboard. It’s the width of a sheet of printer paper, the length of a legal-size one, the depth of a standard file folder. It’s fitted with a lid, and a label covers one end: EVIDENCE. SIGN LOG BEFORE REMOVING.
No one signed the log. Not my man, who liberated the box from lock-up. Not the file clerk who accepted an especially heavy envelope to look the other way.
“Is that—” Samantha starts, her voice breaking with disbelief.
I don’t answer. I only gesture for her to remove the lid.
There’s not a lot to show for eleven years of investigation. Most of that time, though, was spent ignoring three deaths on a mountaintop, overlooking a crooked sheriff, forgetting a young woman’s greatest mistake.
Philadelphia’s Detective Tarrant came up with photographs of the crime scene. There are interviews with a handful of witnesses. Attempts to track down next of kin for a long-buried John Doe.
Samantha looks up from the debris, barely shaking her head from side to side. “I—” she starts. “I can’t believe you—” And then, after swallowing hard: “Thank you.”
I nod, because it’s as much a gift to me as it is to her—a guarantee that no prosecutor will ever come after her for the horrible choice she made that night.
“But…” she says, staring at her clasped fingers as she trails off.
I have to touch her then, because she’s sad, and because she’s beautiful, and because she’s mine. My finger curls beneath her chin, forcing her to look up at me. “But what?”
“Detective Tarrant…” she finally says. I can tell how much she hates what she’s thinking. “He wouldn’t just keep physical notes. He has electronic files that can be used against me. He has computer records.”
“Had.”
“Had?”
“He had electronic files. He had computer records.”
Understanding widens her eyes. “You paid to delete them too? But there have to be backups, offsite storage, cloud?—”
“You think Cole Wolf didn’t think of all that when he volunteered to go fishing?”
“Cole...” She trails off, and I watch her test half a dozen questions about her former freeport client. She settles on the most surprising news I’ve given her about the hacker genius. “He volunteered ?”
“When I told him it was a wedding present.”
Her eyes are shiny, but she nods. Finally, she says, “It’s a lovely gift.”
“For the bride who has everything.” She smiles at that, so I figure it’s safe to go on. She’s no longer in danger of ruining her makeup. “No prosecutor can build a case against you now. Everything that happened that night—you can put it behind you forever. We’ll burn this all tonight. At home.”
“Thank you,” she says. “I…” And then she meets my gaze. I capture a glimpse of something soft in her expression, something shy, but she settles on a wicked grin. “I have a gift for you too.”
She shouldn’t be giving me gifts. But I step back and wait to see what she has in mind.
“The last time I wore this skirt,” she says. “I left some business unfinished.”
That gives me a notion where she’s going with this. Clever piscín . I settle my hands on my hips. “You did, did you?”
“I tried my hand at poetry, but I didn’t quite match the high quality of rhyming from you and the others.”
“It’s a skill we Irish have,” I boast, not quite hiding a grin.
“I’m not good at making things up on the spot, but with a chance to think a bit… I think you might like what I’ve come up with.”
“Let’s hear it,” I say.
She squares her shoulders and raises her chin, the very image of pride. And then she recites:
“There was a young lawyer in Philly,
Who fell for a man, willy-nilly.
Her one need was blunt?—
His cock in her cunt,
And that’s why she screamed out so shrilly.”
I understand what it costs her to revisit that night, when she embarrassed herself in front of me. In front of Fiona. In front of all the Fishtown Boys.
And I know what is takes for her to use the word—cunt. She’s always hated it. Always found it ugly.
It’s the word I used against her, the sharpest weapon I could throw. But she’s claiming it now. Making it hers. That’s the same thing she’s done with the Fishtown Boys, merging her life with mine.
So I don’t laugh, even though I think she means me to. Instead, I hold her gaze as if we’re already upstairs, already standing in front of the altar. I say, “Not bad, for a first offense.”
“Oh there’s more,” she assures me.
“Go on then.”
She swallows hard and strikes another pose.
“Samantha’s learned all of the rules now,
End-of-day, wear a skirt, not her black trou.
Her one need’s still blunt,
Your cock in her cunt,
Till she loses her words, all but ‘Wow, wow.’”
I fight the curl of my lips. “I’m not sure about that last line. And the middle’s a little repetitious, after your first effort.”
“More personal, though. Your instead of His. ”
“I noticed that,” I say gravely.
She asks, “Want to hear one more?”
“Of course.”
She stares directly in my eyes.
“After wife number one and your harsh rule,
I moved from our room to the house-pool.
My one need is blunt,
Your cock in my cunt.
Right now. Make me put on my sub jewel.”
“House-pool?” I ask.
“Poetic license.”
“I sense a certain theme in your writing.”
“Thank God,” she says.
I step forward and settle my thumb against the seam of her lips. “You want me to add more rules to your life. Harsh ones.”
She bites me.
I pull her close, doing my best not to ruin her hair. Her lips open under mine, and she’s laughing as our tongues meet. She slips her hands under my jacket, easing her palms under my suspenders.
But I wasn’t joking about rules—not entirely. She’s my sub. I’m her Dom. I’m the one in charge, even here, even today, in these last few minutes before our wedding.
I force her arms to her sides and turn her around. Shoving her against the wooden table in the corner, I snap out an order: “Hands flat.”
She obeys so quickly I’m forced to smother a laugh. I cover the sound of my smirk by sliding down my zipper. “Feet spread,” I tell her, nudging her ankles apart.
Her fingers stiffen on the table. She starts to say something, but she stops. From the set of her jaw it was an objection, a clarification, a rule she wanted to superimpose over mine. But she swallowed it, remembering that I’m in charge.
She deserves a reward for that.
It takes both hands for me to gather her skirt, but I can hold the yards of fabric against her back with just one fist. Looking down between us, I realize she isn’t wearing panties.
“In a church?” I ask, running my palm over her bare arse. “Aren’t you afraid of attracting lightning bolts?”
She trembles as I slip a finger inside her. She’s slick. Soaked. Looking over her shoulder at me, she says, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
I add another finger, and she gasps. “What do you want, piscín ?”
She answers without hesitation. “Your cock in my cunt.”
“Such a mouth on you,” I tease, giving her another finger.
She moans, clenching tight around my hand.
“What do you need, piscín ?”
Another immediate reply: “Your cock in my cunt.”
I curl my fingers inside her. “I could make you come right now. Right here. Like this.”
She closes her eyes. Bites her lip. But she doesn’t tell me what to do.
I see what it costs her. I feel her determination in every muscle of her body. She wants to be fucked, but she knows not to ask.
So I tell her: “Or I can give you my cock in your cunt.”
I shift the fabric of her skirt so I have room to maneuver. I pull my hand out of her soft, wet heat. I tease her opening with my cock, just enough to give her warning, and then I drive in, hard and fast and deep.
She cries out at the weight of me.
No. She cries out in pain.
I look down at the place where we’re joined. Her skirt is bunched to the side. I’m staring at the gauze of her top, at the barely-there fabric ghosting across her back.
I’m ready to see the tattoo at the base of her spine. I’ll never say I love it. But I love her , and Russo’s ink is part of her. It will always be with us.
Except I’m wrong.
The tattoo is gone.
But that’s not right either.
The tattoo has been transformed .
The medusa head in the center of her mark has been shaped into an intricate Celtic knot, each snake woven into the artwork. The bent legs have turned into shamrocks, three-leaf flowers arching around the knot. The outlines are in black, but the lines are filled with bright green ink.
“Samantha,” I breathe.
I saw her back four nights ago, when we were at the Four Seasons for the Grand Irish Union. She hadn’t covered up the old work then.
“Don’t stop,” she begs.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
That’s a lie. We both know it is.
But she’s my sub. And she’s armed with her safeword. And if she’s giving me this gift, I’m not about to throw it away.
So I close my hands around her hips. I shift my weight, easing part-way out of her body. And then I give her what she asked for, what she needs, what we both need, until we’re panting and grunting and groaning together, eyes closed, bodies merged, my cock in her cunt, exactly the way my queen deserves.