Page 23 of Irish Brute
“They’re innocent women, Braiden. They don’t deserve to be caught up in your fucking gang war.”
“You’re right,” I say. And then, before my agreement goes to her head: “Theydon’tdeserve it. Just like you didn’t deserve Russo showing up at your apartment a week ago. Like your cousin didn’t deserve to have a gun shoved up her snatch. Like your parents didn’t deserve to die in a fire of their own.”
“How far does it go, then, your eye for an eye?”
“Until the blind man who started it is fucking dead.”
She doesn’t have an answer for that. I see her test a few things, but every one of her fancy law school arguments brings her back to the same place. Antonio Russo is an animal. All her pretty logic won’t change that, all her careful laws. He’ll fight to own everything, everyone.
But I’ll get there first.
“Come on,” I say. “You’ll feel better after you eat.”
“Eat?” she asks, like she’s never heard the word before.
“Breakfast. Fairfax should have it on the table by now.”
“I don’t eat breakfast.”
“You do now.”
“I don’t?—”
“House rules,” I say. “Don’t bother arguing.” I turn toward the door. I’ll need to get her palm scanned, so she can access the safe room in an emergency. But for now, the electronics remain a threat. “Unless you’d rather stay here a while longer.”
The line is back between her eyebrows. “House rules,” she says. “You think you can get anything, just by saying that?”
“I know I can.”
“So do house rules override what we negotiated? You canhouse ruleme into giving up my job at the freeport?House ruleme out of my bedroom? Into your fucking bed?”
She’s working herself up, her voice ratcheting higher, like she’s forgotten everything she ever learned about winning arguments in court. A good man would assure her that our contract still stands, that she’s got all the protection she ever bargained for.
But I’m tired and I’m hungry and I haven’t been a good man for years. So I drop my gaze from her face to her chest, where her tits rise and fall as she fights to catch her breath. When I’m back to meet her eyes, she’s all sparking fury, like a cat forced under a tap for a bath.
“I told you before,” I say. “I’ve never forced a woman. But your current tone makes me think I should turn you over my knee.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Question my honor one more time, and there’ll be consequences. But for the record—that’s something you lawyers like to say isn’t it?”
She glares, not bothering to reply.
“For the record,” I continue. “I don’t need a rule to get you in my bed. You already married me, of your own free will. And before much longer, you’ll decide to let me fuck you. You’ll take my cock down your throat and let me come between your tits. I’ll fill your cunt and take you up your sweet little arse. You’ll begme to hold you down, and plead with me to tie you up. I’ll make you come so hard you’ll think you’ve gone blind, and when you can breathe again, I’ll fuck you back to a place without words. You’ll be terrified I’ll hurt you and petrified I won’t, and every time you come again you’ll thank God for the day you became my wife. And none of that—not one goddamn second of it—will be because of a fuckingrule. It’ll be because you’re girl enough to beg me for what you really want, and because I’m man enough to give you what you really need.”
The entire time I’m speaking, I watch her. Her eyes grow wide. Her breath hitches in her throat. She starts to swallow but she can’t. She wants to slap the filth from my lips, and then she wants to devour it.
She’s an American girl. She hates the word cunt, hates that I use it, hates when I say that’s what I’ll claim. But her entire body is shouting that her cunt’s already wet for me, that she’s longing, she’s aching.
I jam my right hand into my pocket to keep from shoving it up her wedding gown now. I want to smell her. Taste her. Forget about the fucking world outside this safe room by burrowing inside her.
But I’m a man of my word.
I’ll wait.
Besides, she has to eat her fucking breakfast.
“Your choice,” I say, already knowing what she’ll do. “Breakfast, or the rest of the day here in the safe room.”
