And with that, I dipped my chin, and opening my mouth, raked my teeth down her bottom lip before I bit her. Hard enough to make her moan.
❖
Aoife
The sting of pain should have had me rearing back.
It didn’t.
It felt. . . .
I almost shuddered.
Good.
It had felt good.
The way he’d done it. So fucking cocky, so fucking sure of himself, and who could blame him? He’d taken what he wanted, and I hadn’t pulled away because he was right. My pussy was wet, and even though this was all kinds of wrong, I did want to feel him there. To have his cock push inside me.
Jesus, this was way too early for Stockholm syndrome, right?
I mean, this was . . . what was it?
It couldn’t be that I was so horny and desperate for male attention that I was willingly allowing this to happen, was it?
Fuck. How pathetic was I if that was true? And yet, I didn’t feel desperate for anything other than more of that small taste Finn had given me.
As a little girl, I’d watched Finn. It had been back in the day when his old man had been around and Fiona had lived with her husband and son. He’d beaten her up something rotten. Barely a week went by when Fiona, my mom’s friend, didn’t appear with some badly made-up bruise on her face.
I was young, only two, but old enough to know something wasn’t right. I’d even asked my mom about it, wanting to understand why someone would do that to another person.
I couldn’t remember what my mother had said, but I could remember how sad she’d been.
For all his faults, my dipshit stepfather had never beaten her, he’d just taken all her tips for himself and spent every night getting drunk.
Well, Finn’s dad had been the same, except where mine passed out on the decrepit La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, Gerry had taken out his drunk out on Fiona.
And eventually, Finn.
Even as a boy, in the photos Fiona kept of him, Finn had been beautiful.
I could see him now, deep in my mind’s eye. His hair had been as coal dark then as it was now, and not even a hint of silver or gray marred the noir perfection. His jaw and nose had grown, obviously, but they were just as obstinate as I remembered. Fiona had always said Finn was hardheaded.
When I was little, I hadn’t had a crush on him—I’d been a toddler, for God’s sake—but I’d been in awe of him. In awe of the big boy who’d been all arms and legs, just waiting for his growth spurt. Sadly, when that had happened, he’d disappeared.
As had his father.
Overnight, Fiona had gone from having a full house to an empty nest, and my mom had comforted her over the loss of her boy.
To my young self, I’d thought he’d died.
Genuinely. The way Fiona had mourned him? It had been as though both men had passed on, except we’d never had to go to church for a service, and there’d been no wake.
As kids do, I’d forgotten him. I’d been two when he’d disappeared, so I only really remembered that Fiona was a mom and that she was grieving.
We’d barely spoken his name because it could set her off into bouts of tears that would have my mom pouring tea down her gullet as they talked through her feelings.
As time passed, those little scenes in our crappy kitchen stopped, yet Fiona hung around our place so much it was like her second home.
One day, my stepfather died in an accident at work. The insurance paid out, Fiona moved in with us, and Mom had started scheming as to how to make her dream of owning a tea room come true. With Fiona living in, I’d heard Finn’s name more often, but the notion he was dead still rang true.
Yet, here he was.
Finn wasn’t dead.
He was very much alive.
Had Fiona known that?
Had she?
I wasn’t sure what I hoped for her.
Was it better to believe your son was dead, or that your son didn’t give enough of a fuck about you to contact you for years?
I gnawed on my bottom lip at the thought and accidentally raked over the tissue where Finn had bitten earlier.
“We’re almost there,” the man himself grated out, and I could sense he was pissed because the phone had buzzed, and whatever he’d been reading had a storm cloud passing behind his eyes.
“O-Okay,” I replied, hating the quiver in my voice, but also just hating my situation.
This was. . . .
It was too much.
How was it that I was sitting here?
This morning, I’d owned a tea room. Now, I didn’t.
This morning, I’d been exhausted, depressed about my mom, and feeling lost.
Now?
I was the epitome of lost.
A man was going to use me for sex, for Christ’s sake.
But all I could think was: did I still have my hymen?
God, would he be angry if he had to push through it?
Should I tell him?
If I did, it would be for my benefit, not his, and why the hell was I thinking like this? I should be trying to convince him that normal people did not work business deals out by bribing someone into bed.
But, deep down, I knew all my scattered thinking was futile.
I wasn’t dealing with normal people here.
I was dealing with a Five Pointer.
A high ranking one at that.
It was like dealing with a Martian. To average, everyday folk, a Five Pointer was just outside of their knowledge banks.
Sure, they thought they knew what they were like because they watched The Wire or some other procedural show, but they didn’t.
Real-life gangsters?
They were larger than life.
They throbbed with violence, and hell, a part of me knew that Finn was cutting me some slack by asking to sleep with me.
Yeah, as fucked up as that was, it was the truth.
He could have asked for so much more.
He’d have a Senator in his pocket, and to the mob, what else would they ask for if not that?
Yet Finn?
He just wanted to fuck me.
My throat felt tight and itchy from dryness. I wanted some water so badly, but equally, I wasn’t sure if it would make me puke.
Not at the thought of sex with this man—a part of me knew I’d enjoy it too much to even be nervous.
No, at what else he could ask of me, that had me fretting.
Was this a one-time deal?
What was the score here?
How could I protect my dad from the Five Points when . . .?
I shuddered because there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could even broach any of those questions since I wasn’t in charge here.
Finn was.
Finn always would be until he deemed I’d paid my dues. Whether that was tomorrow or two years down the line.
Shit, it might even be forever. If my dad hit the White House, only God knew what kind of leverage Finn could pull if my father tried to carry on covering up my existence. . . .
“We’re here.”
Something had definitely pissed him off.
He’d gone from the cat who’d drank a carton full of cream, to a pissed off tabby scrounging for supper in the trash.
“We’re going to go through to the private elevator, and I’m going to head straight down the hall to my living room. You’re going to slip into the first door on the right—that’s my bedroom.”
“O-Okay,” I told him, wondering what the hell was going on.
“You’re going to stay quiet, and you’re going to try to not hear any fucking thing I say, do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“You’d better,” he ground out, his hand tightening around his cellphone. “Coming to Aidan Donnelly’s attention is the last thing a little mouse like you wants.”
A shiver ran through me.
Aidan Donnelly was in his apartment?
Fuck, just how high up the
ranks was he?
Chapter Four
Finn
To say I was annoyed at the delay was an understatement.
I wanted Aoife underneath me the second I made it to my penthouse. Instead, I was going to have deal with my cranky boss—because guys like me answered to three people. The boss, the IRS—from time to time—and God himself.
Which meant even though I wanted to fuck Aoife more than I wanted my next breath, I had to deal with Aidan and whatever hissy fit he was going through right now, when all I wanted to deal with was my aching cock.
I felt like I’d endured hours of foreplay already.
Just the time spent with this woman had built to this moment, like a towering crescendo that had soared and soared, just waiting for everything to come tumbling down.
My skin felt taut, my body too hot as I helped Aoife out of the car. She was so fucking small and dainty that everything inside me wanted to protect her. I hadn’t felt like that about a woman since my mother, and there was no way I was thinking about that stupid bitch right now. Talk about a way to make my cock deflate.
Still, Aoife was fragile. Not just in body but in mind. I couldn’t say I’d broken her because I hadn’t. I guess I’d broken her will. But at least shit was straight between us.
I could have fucked her, enjoyed the fuck, and then revealed my intentions. Instead, I’d been relatively open and honest.
The only thing I hadn’t declared outright?
How long she’d be in my bed.
I couldn’t put a time frame on something I didn’t have an answer to.
If she was crap in bed, then I’d let her go after one screw. But if, as I suspected, things were awesome between us, no way was I doing away with my leverage. Not if these sparks between us could morph into an out-an-out inferno.
See, ironically enough, I liked Senator Alan Davidson. Or I had until this afternoon when I’d learned the bastard was schtupping my woman.
He was good for my business with his policies, and as such, the news of just how I was using Aoife for my own gain would never come to light.
Having a politician in my pocket would make me look like the golden boy in Aidan Sr.’s eyes, but I wasn’t tempted.
I made the man enough money to have his respect—more than that, I laundered nearly sixty percent of his capital with Conor’s help. We were both the financial brains behind Acuig, but we were a team. We bounced off each other, always had.
Aidan would love to have a Senator, one who wanted to rise to the White House, in his back pocket, but I didn’t want that.
It wasn’t that I had a conscience.
I didn’t.
Leverage was leverage, and business was business.
But I knew, in my gut—and I trusted my gut. It had saved my life too many times to ignore—that blackmailing a man like Davidson would go nowhere.
There was a reason I’d liked the dick before today. That reason? He was a career Army man, who’d served during Desert Storm and had served his dues to this country. Any man deserved respect for that alone. More than that, as a politician, he’d seemed inviolate.
Sure, every man had some secrets, especially after getting into the down and dirty game of politics, and I didn’t even begrudge the man for having a little something-something on the side. I only begrudged the fact it was this woman.
Possessive and stupid?
Sure.
Was I thinking with my cock?
Definitely.
Still, there was a reason Davidson was where he was. Until now, his reputation had been lily white. I was under no illusion that Aidan would want to get his claws into the Senator, but a guy like Davidson? He’d bite back. There was not a single doubt in my mind, no matter what Aoife thought, the politician would never allow himself to be manipulated into doing anything he didn’t want. So, no, I wasn’t about to use the Senator’s sticky side boo as a means of getting an in with the future President of the USA. I was too fucking smart to do that. Aidan, not so much, and the last thing I needed was Aidan and Aoife in the same fucking place.
Aidan resented the fact that none of his boys were married. It was a point of contention, one that we all narrowly avoided by never bringing the subject to his attention. But taking home a woman? Yeah, that would have him leaping down my throat, and no way in fuck did I want that conversation.
I was stressed as we walked down the darkened parking garage toward the elevator. In the background, the exhaust on Samuel’s beat-up car made a racket as he set off and headed home for the night—on the proviso that if I needed him, he’d be back here within thirty minutes. I always made that stipulation, but I rarely asked him to come back unless business with Aidan made it imperative.
Tonight, unfortunately, Aidan had brought business to me.
He said we had a problem, and Aidan’s problems were rarely things like a leaky roof or a bathroom faucet that was dripping and driving Magdalena, his wife, nuts.
I was hoping that whatever his issue was today, it would be dealt with after a half-hour’s conversation, one that was liberally lubricated with half a bottle of good Irish whiskey, then he’d fuck off home and I could, well, fuck.
The elevator whirred as we silently climbed the floors to the penthouse. I had private access to it, and that came as one of the perks of being the developer behind the building. I’d had the penthouse designed with my personal tastes in mind.
I said it was a perk, but it was one Aidan gave us.
This was my ‘bonus’ for hitting an all-time high almost five years ago—thirty million dollars in profit, and five laundered through the system Conor and I had drafted that year.
Conor had the other penthouse in the building’s twin across the way, and so far, only the two of us and Eoghan had been given such a bonus. I knew Aidan Jr. was pissed about that, too. As the oldest of the brothers, it normally figured that he’d be the golden boy and would receive all the perks first.
Not in the Donnelly household.
Everything was earned.
Every-fucking-thing.
Take Eoghan. He was the youngest. That was why his name started with an ‘E.’ The brothers often joked that their mother was so unimaginative, she’d named her children after the alphabet, but then, they also joked how it was fate that I become her sixth son considering my name began with the letter ‘F.’
Still, he might be the baby, but where wet work was concerned?
He made a Navy Seal look soft core.
It helped that he’d been through all kinds of military training. Back in the day, when he’d rebelled about becoming a part of his father’s ‘corporation,’ he’d headed out to serve his country, only coming back when he was dishonorably discharged.
See, Eoghan wasn’t like regular people.
In his own way, he was a decent man.
He knew the difference between right and wrong, but to him, right and wrong was skewed.
Take his battalion commander.
He’d been fucking one of his female soldiers.
Against her will.
So, what did Eoghan do?
Didn’t keep his mouth shut. Didn’t even report said battalion commander to the MPs. No, he blew out his knee caps. Five Points’ style.
Aidan Sr. had had to pull a shit-ton of clout to get Eoghan out of prison, and only by using a crap-ton of leverage and a fucking mountain of favors, had he managed to make it so.
In the end, it had been a worthy investment.
Uncle Sam had trained Eoghan to be one of the world’s best snipers, and lookie here, wasn’t that just a nice way to shore up his daddy’s empire.
Eoghan had earned his penthouse after killing a cartel leader down in Mexico. Or, that’s to say, he’d been paid to shoot the cartel leader, but he got the penthouse because he’d made it look like the Colombians were behind it.
Cue gang war in their Central and North American territories.
Cue a nice surge in our profits in the city.
“Remember
what I said?” I bit off as my floor approached.
I wasn’t really giving her much attention, but when I looked at her, I saw she was white as a sheet, and looking like she could either faint from fright or piss herself.
Disturbed by both prospects, I murmured, “Just go down the hall and slip into my bedroom. Ignore what you think you hear and forget about it. Do you understand me?”
She whimpered, but that wasn’t enough of a response for me. I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. When our eyes clashed, it was like. . . .
Fuck.
It was like I could hear my fucking soul sing as I drowned in the crystal pools of her eyes. It was like my heart was beating double time, and it wanted to soar out of my chest just to get some space.
I’d never felt anything like this before, and I couldn’t afford to feel it, either.
Some men might dream of meeting Mrs. Perfect, settling down, having two point four kids, and driving a people carrier.
I wasn’t one of those guys.
This was my life.
Violence went hand in hand with the expensive suits I wore. My life had a price tag. That wasn’t the kind of shit you brought a woman into. Not unless you were a selfish cunt like Aidan Sr.
I sucked in a shaky breath and pulled my hand from her jaw. Turning back to face the doors, I tried to get my breathing steady, my heartbeat back to its regular pace.
I wanted to screw her.
That was all this was.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Just screwing.
❖
Aoife
There was something about Finn’s temperament that had me on edge.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of going to his penthouse. I wasn’t thrilled by the knowledge that Aidan Donnelly was in there doing only God knew what.
But ‘not thrilled’ morphed into outright terror when I sensed Finn’s edginess.
Until that moment, Finn had been so cool, he’d made a cucumber look like grilled cheese.
He’d emanated it. Seemingly from his very pores. So collected, so rational, and logical that arguing with him had seemed ridiculous.
Screw You: A Screwed Duet (Five Points, Hell's Kitchen Book 1) Page 5