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“I … um … of course I care if you die.” “Why?” he challenges. “Because you won’t have anyone to insult anymore?” Do I do this? Do I go ahead and try it and see what happens? What’s the worst that can happen, you embarrass yourself a little more? Give the poor man a break, Reyna. He’s not asking you to donate a kidney! I take a breath to steady my nerves. Then I reach up, thread my fingers into his hair, and say softly, “No. Because I won’t have this gorgeous face to look at anymore.” He licks his lips. His breathing goes ragged. And I swear to God, that monster dick between us just twitched.
“Or this beautiful hard body to make me feel so safe and protected.” The groan that escapes his lips is low and guttural. His eyelids drift shut. He rasps, “I don’t even care if you’re lying. That’s the hottest fucking thing any woman’s ever said to me.” “I’m not lying. I’ve never felt safer before than I do right now, here with you. My gorgeous, masculine, badass Irishman who I haven’t stopped thinking about since the day we met.”
Then, a moment later and sweetly hesitant: “You like me?” And she calls me an idiot. My sigh is a huge gust of air. “Aye. I like you. But then again, I’m a glutton for punishment, so there’s that.” “That’s such a weird phrase. ‘Glutton for punishment.’ What does that even mean?” “It means you love what hurts you.” A delicate shiver runs through her body. Burrowing closer to me, she whispers, “Don’t love what hurts you, Quinn. Whatever hurts you doesn’t deserve you. You’re made for so much better than that.”
“You’re a privilege I don’t deserve, but I’m going to spend the rest of both our lives trying to be worthy of you.”
I say gruffly, “I want you to live with me. I want you to sleep with me. I want you to shower with me, feed me, and fuck me every night and four times on the weekends.” “Aha! I knew you were going to make me cook!” “Really? That’s what you got out of all that?” “No,” she says softly, smiling up at me. “I got the other stuff, too.” “And?” “And … it was all very nice.”
Something in his tone sounds an alarm bell in my mind. I don’t know the cause, but suddenly, without warning, he’s upset. I say gently, “I don’t think you’re a monster.” There’s a brief pause. His voice comes even lower this time. “But you don’t know me, do you, lass? You don’t really know me at all.”
She smiles sweetly at me. “It’s only got space for one more. I was saving it for yours.” She opens the door and gets out. After she’s gone, Kieran looks at me in the rearview mirror. “I really like her.” “That’s because you’ve got the common sense of a carrot.” “Just because ye don’t know how to handle her doesn’t mean I can’t like her!”
Everybody else just stands there, stunned. Until one of the Italian soldiers says under his breath, “That bitch needs to be put in her place.” Scalding heat rushes up my neck and burns my ears. Every hair on my body bristles. I say loudly, “Did you just disrespect my wife?” When he smirks at me, I pull out my gun and put a bullet in his head.
“Let me have this moment of happiness before you destroy my will to live, please.” When I blink, taken aback, he says, “That was a joke.” I chew my lip and play with a button on his shirt. “Don’t joke about your will to live. You’ve said some things in that regard that worry me.”
So this year, Quinn was so devastated by the woman under his protection being kidnapped and impregnated by the Russian that he took the drastic and life-altering measure of agreeing to an arranged marriage with a stranger in response. He was in love with her. He’s still in love with her. That’s what this morning was about. His mood change, his silence, his inexplicable scowls. He married me and made love to me and woke up with me, a stand-in for the woman he actually wants. I feel sick. Foolish, ashamed, and sick to my stomach.
“Remember what you said to me when you first asked me to set up the meeting with Caruso?” “No, what?” Declan chuckles. “You said, ‘There’s nothing like new pussy to get over the old,’ you cold-blooded bastard.” That feels like a knife plunged through my solar plexus. I don’t wait to hear the rest. I turn and walk away, cursing myself for being so foolish as to let him in. Women can never trust men. They only want to fuck things or break them.
“She likes you, you know.” Heat creeps into my cheeks. I say gruffly, “You think so?” “Aye. Dimwit.” “How can you tell?” “The way she looks at you. The way she speaks to you. The way she told her own kin to fuck off when they tried to get you to leave the meeting.”
“Ach, be quiet. You’re wound up again. I should’ve forced you to take some time off.” “I already had time off after the whole debacle in Russia, remember? And I’m wound up about that damn dream, like I told you. I haven’t dreamt of Shannon in years.”
don’t think this needs to be said, but Reyna isn’t Shannon. She can take care of herself.” “It’s my job to take care of her now!”
“Like you were honest with me about being in love with another woman?” That feels like a slap across the face. “What the hell does that mean? Who am I supposed to be in love with?” “Riley.” From the front, Kieran lets out a low, astonished whistle.
Keeping my voice low though I’d like to shout at her, I say, “I’m not in love with anyone else. I’ll answer any questions you want me to, but first you need to understand that fact. I was infatuated with Riley, yes. I wanted there to be something between us, yes. But there wasn’t. I never even kissed the lass. Never touched her. She was under my protection, and I fucked it up so badly, she ended up shot. By me. Accidentally, but nevertheless, it was my bullet she took. So you’ll have to forgive me for being more than a little fucked up over that, Reyna, but I’m not in love with her. She’s not
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“That’s why I was upset. Not because I’m in love with someone else. Because I’m responsible for you now. And if something happens to you, it will be the end of me.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you for telling me that. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard, but I’m so glad I know.” His voice cracks when he says, “Why?” “Because what I want more than anything is to know you. The real you that you keep hidden under all those smirks and that awful macho swaggering.”
I’m thirty-three, childless, with no career or work experience. I was raised in an environment of shame and fear by people who didn’t love each other. All I’ve ever known from every man who was supposed to care for me is violence. I’m jaded, cynical, and broken in so many places, there’s not enough glue in the world to put me back together. And I’m starting to have real feelings for a man who might be even more broken than I am.
My voice low, I continue. “But I meant what I said when I told you I wanted to know you.” He lifts his head. Our eyes lock. A swell of emotion tightens my chest. “I like you, Quinn. You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re kind. You’re protective. You’re also completely unhinged. What happened with you and Riley is still fresh. You’re still processing.” He growls, “I wasn’t lying when I said I’m not in love with her.” “And I believe that. But you can still be fucked up over someone even if you weren’t in love.” After a moment, I add softly, “Like I would be if this pretend marriage of ours doesn’t
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I don’t have to speak the language to understand what they mean. You’re beautiful. I worship you. You’re mine.
“Say it. You want to have my children.” “Quinn—” “How many? Tell me.” “Can we please—” “If you think I’m letting you out of this room before we finish this conversation, you’re bloody mad.” I say through gritted teeth, “Fine. If you must know how many fantasy offspring I’d like, the answer is five.” His blazing eyes flare wide. In an elated, astonished whisper, he says, “Five.”
“You want my children.” I cover my eyes with a hand. He pulls it away and insists, “You want me to get you pregnant.” I groan. He laughs, and it sounds crazed. “That’s why you begged me to come inside you, baby. You want me to knock you up.” “What I really want is to go back in time to before we had this stupid conversation.”
If a man could be killed with a look, I’d be dead a thousand times over. I can’t remember ever feeling this happy in my entire life.
He says, “Antivenom.” “Am I supposed to know what that means?” “I have a severe allergy to spider antivenom. I was bitten by a spider when I was ten years old. The bite was bad, painful and swollen. My mother took me to the hospital, and they gave me antivenom. I would’ve survived the bite just fine, but the antivenom almost killed me. I went into anaphylactic shock.” “Why are you telling me that?” “So both of us know something about the other that no one else does. So that you don’t feel like I have something to hold over you. And so you know I trust you with my life.”
His voice drops and his eyes shine. “Now ask me what the only thing was that saved me from dying of anaphylactic shock.” My heart pounds painfully hard. I whisper, “Epinephrine.” Holding my gaze, he nods. I shut my eyes and bury my face in my hands. Then his arms are around me, pulling me close. Into my ear, he says, “We should name the first baby Epi.”
Declan regards us with his eyebrows raised and a look of incredulity on his face. “What the bloody hell is wrong with you two?” Quinn growls, “This woman could be carrying my child. If you want to get to her, you’ve got to go through me first!”
“And is a mighty fine liar, to boot. Why wouldn’t they want you in charge?” “Oh, I don’t know. My vagina?”
He just realized that if I’m capo, there’s no need for me to legally marry him at all. We don’t need a marriage license to make the contract valid. If I’m the head of the Caruso crime family now, I’m free to negotiate my own contracts without selling my body as an asset to anyone. I’m free to walk away from this non-marriage and still get everything I want. I’m just … free.
I want to remember this moment. I want to brand every thought and feeling into my memory, so if I ever think things might have changed for me, if I ever make the mistake of having hope again, I’ll look back and feel myself burning to the ground and turn away from that hope because it’s a lie. It’s always been a lie. There’s no hope for me. There’s only misery.
“Feeling sorry for yourself.” “With all due respect, boss, piss off.” He chuckles and claps a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’re falling in love with your wife.” “Fallen, past tense. It already happened. And she’s not my wife.” “Everything’s so black and white with you. Try looking at the shades of gray once in a while. It’ll do you a bit of good.”
“But just so we’re clear, Quinn, whatever happens next, I want you by my side. Marriage license or not, contract or not, head of the Cosa Nostra or not, I want you.” I laugh softly. “You and your superior gladiator seed with which I’d like to make babies.” He groans. He hugs me harder. Then he whispers into my ear, “Five of them.” “You ready for that?” “I’ve been ready since the first second I laid eyes on you.” “Good answer. Time to kiss me now, Quinn.”
I have to laugh at that. I see many, many years of heaping praise on my Irishman in the future. “I’m happy that we’re here together. I’m happy I’ve made three amazing new friends. I’m happy that my mother hasn’t sexually assaulted the handsome young butler you arranged to wait on her.” Quinn says, “Yet.”
