Page 3 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)
Darragh
I n 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.
“What the fuck is she doing in Montréal?” I ask, spinning away from the drenched scenery outside to face Rowan fully. He’s already dressed for the funeral, his long red hair tied neatly back, his bulky body encased in a black suit. I’ll have to put my suit on soon, too.
I only brought the one. The one I was wearing that night.
“Not sure yet. But Tommy said she’s been spotted at a wedding dress boutique with her mammy and her cousin.”
And just like that, I feel alive for the first time in fucking days.
I picture my pretty little pet trying on white dresses for me and something savage splits me open. I don’t know if it’s happiness – I don’t even know if I’m capable of that, especially today of all days – but it’s hot and bright and it makes my fucking dick hard.
I don’t have time to jerk off to thoughts of my angry fiancée wrapped in silk and white lace. Don’t have time to take my cock in my hand, to dig the nails in, and pretend it’s her.
Cold shower it is.
I leave Rowan in my grandda’s office, heading up the narrow stairs to the bathroom on the second floor.
On my way into the bathroom, with its black and white tile and shower, I pass a familiar door.
The door to my old bedroom, where I slept from ages fifteen to eighteen.
I went in there a few days ago. It looked exactly how I fucking left it.
Same single bed, same faded blue wallpaper, same stupid framed quote that one of grandda’s mistresses gave to me on my sixteenth birthday, incorrectly attributed to Oscar Wilde.
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
Clearly, that advice never quite sank in.
In the bathroom, I strip, then get into the shower. The water is so much softer here than in Toronto. Even on the coldest setting, it feels oddly like a caress.
It makes me think of Valentina. Valentina in the fountain. Valentina soaked under the sprinklers of that club. Valentina sprayed by cold Georgian Bay in that tiny white bikini with its little red ribbon.
The ribbon that I took.
The ribbon I have with me now. I’ve had it on me ever since I took it from her. Had it in my jacket beside the ring when I saw her last. As I blink freezing water from my eyes, I can see the red edge of it poking out of the pocket of the pants I discarded on the floor.
I wash myself with Grandda’s soap. Same one he’s been using as long as I ever knew him. When I step out of the shower, I smell more of him than of her. But I know the effect is only temporary. By the time I try to close my eyes tonight, it’ll be Valentina overwhelming my senses once more.
I use his razor, too, shaving along my neck, cheeks, and jaw. A tiny nick bleeds scarlet ink. Scarlet like Valentina’s sweet pussy streaking blood along my cock.
I never should have let her talk me into using a condom. What I wouldn’t fucking give to have let her stain my skin.
But there will be plenty of time to fuck her raw. Plenty of time to get her juices all over my bare cock – or her blood, if she’s on her period – when she’s my wife.
I wipe the blood, smearing it more than cleaning it off. I pull the ribbon from the heap of clothing on the floor, twirl it between my fingers, and stalk naked from the bathroom. Rowan is still in the office when I get there.
“Where’s my suit?”
He tips his head towards the small closet in the room. “Got it cleaned, too.”
I freeze, jaw working.
Must be the lack of sleep. Or maybe the lack of proximity to Valentina. Because suddenly, it’s taking everything I’ve got not to turn around and break Rowan’s nose.
Of course he got my suit cleaned. He’s done shit like this countless times before. I can’t go to my grandda’s funeral a rumpled fucking mess, smelling like sex and sweet Sicilian pussy. It was the correct thing to do.
And I’m fucking seething over it.
The suit looks perfect. Pristine. Like my last night with her never even happened at all.
I put it on, hating the feel of the fabric. I clutch the silken surface of the ribbon in my hand the entire time.
Instead of donning a proper tie, I slide the ribbon around my neck, below the collar of my shirt, and tie it there.
Like a weird, skinny bowtie.
Or a noose.
“I’ll go bring the car around.”
I’m not sure if I answer Rowan or not. By the time I turn around, he’s gone. I move to follow him, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from an office shelf as I go.
I don’t even know why I bother. I don’t drink from it as Rowan drives us to the church. I just hold it, like the weight of the glass with the liquid inside actually means something.
We’re early, but there are already vehicles in the lot and little groups of people beneath umbrellas waiting to be let in for the service. I ignore them all, and not one of them attempts to speak to me as I walk by with Rowan. In fact, most of them recoil.
Despite the clean suit, I must be quite a fucking sight. Tall and tattooed. Bloodshot eyes and blood-stained throat. Carrying a bottle of booze like I’m about to club somebody with it.
If anyone gets too close to me right now, I probably will.
It’s a short walk from the car to the big, wooden door of the building, but Rowan and I are soaked by the time we step inside. My hair is plastered to my skull. I scrape it back from my face with my free hand.
“Darragh?”
Ahead, a short man wearing glasses and a brown suit is standing beside a priest. I recognize him at once, even though I haven’t seen him in years.
He was Grandda’s lawyer, and was one of the only people in this world Grandda trusted.
He’s the one who called Rowan with the news, and who put this funeral together.
“Murphy,” I grunt.
James Murphy says something quiet to the priest, who nods and then departs.
“Come on, then,” Murphy says, sighing and adjusting his glasses. “He’s in the other room.”
Not sleeping has turned my brain into fucking soup, because I almost ask him, “Who is?”
But all at once, I know exactly what he means.
My grandda’s corpse is waiting for me.
Murphy eyes the bottle in my hand. He looks like he might say something about it, but holds his tongue and leads the way.
Our wet shoes pad damply over old, burgundy carpet towards a large set of closed doors.
Rowan goes ahead of both of us, yanking them open and checking to make sure nobody’s hiding behind the casket with a gun ready to blow my head off.
He turns and nods back at me, and we all head into the main area of the church.
It’s old. Musty. The pews are worn. The casket is straight ahead.
I’m not afraid. Wouldn’t last long in my line of work if I were scared shitless of a lifeless corpse. Usually, I feel some sort of satisfaction when presented with the dead. A soothing of the soul – if I’ve got one, that is.
And it’s usually because I’ve killed them.
I walk down the aisle between the pews, and in that moment I swear to myself that I’m not marrying Valentina in a fucking church. In a hotel, in a garden, standing in my own fucking grave, I don’t give a shit. But not in a place like this.
The aisle seems to stretch on forever, and yet suddenly, I’m with him. The casket is open, ready for viewing. I refused to hold a wake at his townhouse, so they’ve put him on display here.
I stare down at his greyish face, barely warmed with what has got to be a layer of makeup meant to imitate life.
I don’t even realize I’m speaking until I hear my own rasped words in the room.
“When I’m dead, don’t put me on display in a fucking box.”
I blink, and suddenly I’m the one in the casket.
I wonder what Valentina would do.
Would she cry over my corpse?
Or fucking spit on it?
I blink again, taking a moment to scrunch my eyes shut. When I re-open them, it’s Callum Gowan lying there once more. Not me.
He looks older than when I last saw him. Smaller. Or maybe I’m just bigger. He’s dressed in a suit not unlike my own. His hands are peacefully folded, one over the other, on top of his stocky chest. They’re hands I’m much more used to seeing curved into fists.
Fists that have taken my consciousness, fists that have bruised me, made me bleed.
The fists that fucking made me.