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“There was a man,” I tell him, casting my mind back to that night. “At the cottage. All he did was grab my wrist and yap at me. And Darragh drowned him in the fucking lake. What do you think he’s going to do if somebody else actually marries me?”
Curse takes in a slow breath. His eyes go somewhere behind me, dark and distant.
“I’ll stay in Montréal,” Curse says, his gaze snapping abruptly back to my face. “After the wedding. I’ll stay with you and Sal.”
“What?” I snort. “You’re gonna hang around and be my chaperone after I’m already married?”
“I’ll take care of Darragh if it comes down to it,” he says. His tone is very neutral. Flat, even. Like he’s talking about the most mundane thing in the world.
My breath catches in my throat, a trapped gasp. A painful pressure. The image of it is stark in my mind. Darragh, down. Darragh, bleeding.
Even in my imagination, even after everything, I want to go to him.
I want to touch him.
“Yeah, well, if it comes down to it,” I repeat harshly, spitting my cousin’s own words back at him, “I’m not the one who’s going to be in danger.”
At least, I won’t be first on Darragh’s list. As much as Darragh will hate me for marrying someone else in his absence, he’ll hate Papà even more. I don’t think he ever really stopped hating Papà, to be honest.
Maybe he never stopped hating me, either.
But…
There was a moment… After we had sex…
When I was hitting him and scratching him and screaming at him.
When he caught my wrists in his tattooed hands and said my name. So, so softly…
He won’t have any soft words for me by the time all this is said and done.
And he won’t have any mercy, either.
Chapter 3
Darragh
In the snatches of space between waking and sleep, I’m fooled into thinking that she’s with me. I feel the thick silk of her hair dragging itself across my chest, feel her nails skim over me and then dig in deep. I hear her anger. Her moans. I fucking smell her. There’s gold glinting, just at the edges of everything, and I know with something close to desperation that it’s her eyes.
But no matter how fast I turn my head, I can never find her.
“It’s almost time.”
Rowan’s words drag me from that hypnotic place of near-sleep. I blink, my eyelids scraping like they’re made of sandpaper. My cock throbs in time with my heartbeat.
I shove myself out of my grandda’s chair, viciously bending my neck, trying to work the kinks out.
We’re in his office. It’s where I spend most of my time when I’m in his home, the townhouse on St. Stephen’s Green. Every moment that I’m not out in the city, combing the streets for signs of what happened and checking in on his many businesses – my businesses, now, since I was his sole heir – I’m here. Scouring documents, digging through drawers, and reminding myself that I don’t fucking believe in ghosts.
If I’m haunted by anyone, it’s by Valentina. Even awake now, I can still fucking smell her on me. I’ve been here for five days and showered as many times. But it’s still there.
The aching whisper of perfume. Of pussy. Holy and harrowing.
I’m probably going fucking crazy. And I wasn’t the sanest to start with.
“I’ve had an update from Tommy,” Rowan says as I stagger over to the window and stare grimly out of it. “She’s in Montréal.”
I stiffen.