Page 4 of While You Sleep

“You left your glass with him.” His dark gaze moved over my face, and I shivered, visibly. “You shouldn’t do that. You need to be more careful.”

He’d been watching me, not just while I danced? I opened my mouth—

“Soph!” Fiona rushed up. “We’re leaving…” Her head tilted back, looking up at the guy standing beside me. “Hey there.”

He nodded.

“I have to go,” I said to Mr. Green Eyes and inwardly cringed again. The guy was most likely just trying to get back to the bar after using the men’s room, or god, trying to go to the men’s room, and I was acting as if we were in some Shakespearian tragedy. Parting is such sweet sorrow!

His mouth curled up on one side. “Okay,” he said.

My face erupted again, the flames burning my cheeks.

Thankfully, Fiona saved me, grabbing my hand and tugging me away.

Steve and Brian were waiting by our table, and Brian took my hand when we reached them, but I couldn’t stop myself from turning back as he led me from the bar.

Mr. Green Eyes was right there. He’d followed after us—and he was still watching me.

* * *

Cillian

Sophia walked away with the preppy-looking fuck who’d kissed her earlier, and the urge to stop them, to grab him by the throat and gut him in the middle of the pub was harder to resist than it should be.

I walked out onto the street as her friend and the other guy split off, getting into an Uber. Sophia lived close, a couple blocks away, and I wasn’t surprised when she and her date headed off together in that direction. I followed, hanging back, sticking to the shadows.

The floppy-haired fuck still held Sophia’s hand like she belonged to him.

That wouldn’t do. Not at all.

The beard had worked. I’d grown it when talks of an alliance had heated up, in case she recognized me. She hadn’t. Not surprising. The few times I’d been in the same vicinity as her, she hadn’t noticed me among all the men in the room, it was like I was part of the furniture. Probably because she kept her gaze averted and her head down. Wise in a room full of predators. I didn’t mind, it was the way I liked it. I stood back, preferred to observe. If people didn’t see you, they didn’t see you coming.

My gaze slid over Sophia. She was short, hips rounded, belly soft, natural tits, you could tell when she moved they were all her. Her body, the imprint of it, how it felt pressed into mine while I held her sleeping, thrashing body, was a constant. Her blond hair was a little wild from dancing. I knew how soft it was, and my hand curled, imagining thrusting my fingers into it and fisting it tight.

When she moved out of her family home twelve months ago and Seamus asked me to get intel on her, it didn’t set off any alarm bells. He liked to have that kind of info at his disposal, especially since her father was the new head of the Brennan family. It made sense. The Brennan and O’Rourke families had conducted business alongside each other for over thirty years, each backing the other’s endeavors when necessary, while carefully not stepping on toes or tipping the balance of power. Each had their own particular business interests, and with the two families working as closely as we did, the Irish owned half of Chicago.

But Seamus had grown wary of sharing—he’d been looking for a way to tie the families together in case Callum Brennan got any ideas to fuck us over. Seamus had finally gotten his opportunity when Brennan fucked up, encroaching on our territory, and the end goal was now pushing him out and taking over completely. Brennan owed Seamus, and Seamus had made his move this weekend.

I’d had to stand by and do nothing while a deal was struck. Sophia didn’t know it, but if things went the way Seamus and her father planned, my piece of shit half brother, Adam, would be marrying Sophia Brennan, my precious sleeping beauty, in six weeks’ time.

I was older than him by eight months and had just as much of Seamus’s poisonous blood in my veins as he did—only my mother had been the mistress and Adam’s had been the wife. No one spoke of it, and the old man had never claimed me or my brother Declan as his, but we did share a surname—my mother had been canny enough to put his name on our birth certificates. Seamus told everyone we were the poor cousins from Ireland, but everyone knew the truth.

I was the oldest son.

Sophia should be mine.

When they reached her building, her date was definitely hoping she’d invite him up, but she stopped at the door. Of course she did. She wouldn’t trust preppy yet, not enough to fall asleep beside him, to be that vulnerable. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he leaned in and kissed her again.

Cold steel touched my hand. I’d gone for my gun without even realizing it.

Sophia’s eyes were squeezed shut, and she was kind of pulling back, but he leaned into her more, his hand roving up her side, going for his target, her chest. I gripped my gun tighter.

She pushed at him and lifted her head, a shy laugh bubbling from her lips. The asshole was panting, thimble dick stiff behind the zipper of his trousers, eyes wild. I understood his reaction. He wanted to fuck her, badly, but good girl that Sophia was, she’d make him wait. Either that or she just wasn’t that into the desperate gobshite.

They exchanged a few more words, and he loped off.

She watched him go for several seconds, looking flushed, then turned and rushed inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.

---