When I just kept on saying ‘thank you,’ his pistoning hips stopped. Before I could sob, he grated, “Say it, Aoife, say it. Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours!” I yelled.
“This cunt belongs to me, doesn’t it?”
“It does, it does.”
“Your tits are mine, aren’t they?”
“Only yours!” I wailed.
“I possess every inch of you, don’t I?”
I heard the shake in his voice, recognized it even in my panicked state of hunger.
“Y-Yes,” I told him, aware he needed the words, hoping that the sweetness of mine would induce him to let me come. That didn’t mean the words were empty, though.
As crazy as it was, I knew I did belong to this infuriating man.
At least, my body did.
“Marry me, Aoife.”
Those three words had my heart stuttering in my chest. His hips ceased their swift pace, and he began to rock into me gently, coaxingly.
For a second, I stared blindly at him. “M-Marry you?”
We’d known each other just over four weeks now, and when I said ‘known,’ I meant in the Biblical sense.
This man was so beyond closed off anywhere outside the bedroom that I knew nothing about him. Nothing at all.
Yet. . . .
I knew he loved watching me cook.
And when we weren’t in the bedroom, we were in the kitchen. He’d worked from there, getting a kick out of watching me as I prepared our meals.
He could kiss me as though I were the most precious person in his life, and then he could fuck me as though he hated me, as though the need I inspired in him was something he couldn’t handle.
I knew he spoke in his sleep, harsh words that had me waking up, wondering what tormented his dreams. Because, I knew, deep down, it wasn’t in relation to his work. Finn was too pragmatic to let that worry him.
He’d told me that the guy I’d seen being tortured that first night shouldn’t have messed around with Aidan.
That was how he saw it.
If you did what you said, if you kept your word, you were sound.
That was the Five Points’ code, and though it was beyond messed up, it was so simple that I understood his nightmares had a different source.
I knew he liked his coffee black but his tea milky and sweet. Coffee was for mornings, but on a night, when he was tired and didn’t want whiskey, I’d make tea together and we’d sit in the kitchen at the counter, him eating some of the dessert I’d made earlier as he told me things about his day and I talked about my bakery, my goals.
I knew he touched me like I was a queen, and that he enjoyed feeding me, loved bathing me, and after he’d fucked me raw after a long night, he’d tend to me as though I were his princess and he my prince.
No, I didn’t know this man. But I knew enough. I knew that I needed him as much as he needed me. This fire we created together, I knew it was rare. That was evident, because every time, Finn seemed stunned by the inferno we created together.
Maybe a relationship couldn’t be forged on sex, but this wasn’t just sex. This was everything.
He was a man who lived in a world of violence, a world of extremes, one I’d never understand but one that I’d been raised to accept, and I knew, point blank, he’d never hurt me. Ever. Not physically, anyway, and as long as I never lied to him, I knew that he’d hold me up like I was a delicate doll.
His to bend, not to break.
It was insane.
I knew that.
It was ill-advised, unwise, every synonym of stupid in the thesaurus, and yet, there was no whisper of a doubt in my mind, no hesitation in my voice, no question of what my answer would be as I told him, “Yes.”
His nostrils flared and relief made his ice-blue eyes warm for a fraction of a second. Then, his cocky side came out. I watched it happen, reveled in it. Burned for him.
He’d stopped thrusting, had stayed thick and hot inside me as I’d deliberated my answer.
Now?
He fucked me.
Hard.
Until I was screaming, until I was sobbing, until I was begging for more and pleading for less. He took me to the edge of ecstasy but didn’t let me fall over. He kept me there. Always there. With him, waiting, hovering, then, I felt it.
Deep inside, the second splash of his cum.
And like that, I was a goner.
Hell, who was I kidding?
I’d been a goner since the first day he’d walked into my tea room.
Chapter Eleven
Finn
Watching Aoife at the large dining table with my family had something settling inside me.
It was like I was finally calm, something inside me was able to rest.
It was crazy to feel like that.
At any moment, one of the dipshits could say something to hurt, offend, or terrify the crap out of her. It didn’t matter that no business was to be discussed while we ate the roast beef with thick gravy which Magdalena served us on Sundays. Such talk earned us all a slap around the head with her towel, but it didn’t mean it never fell from our lips.
Magdalena liked her, though. I saw that. She kept looking between me and Aoife, a sparkle in her eyes whenever our gazes clashed.
I hadn’t told them I’d proposed. Even if Aidan Sr. expected it, I didn’t say a word because I wanted to keep it to myself for a while.
Not a secret, just mine to have and mine to hold. Exactly like the woman herself.
I’d kept my hand planted on her lap all throughout dinner. My fingers tightening about her thigh when she laughed, the tips caressing her knee as she talked to one of my brothers.
They liked her.
I couldn’t blame them.
I did, too.
It was early to propose. We barely knew each other, but I knew enough to know I’d want her. Until I took my last breath, I’d need and want and crave this woman, and there was nothing and no one that would take her from me.
A wedding ring wouldn’t cement any of that, but it would stop anyone in the parish from fucking with her. It would keep her safe, keep her inviolate.
The women were never involved in business, but that didn’t mean it didn’t overlap from time to time.
Magdalena knew the extent of Aidan’s work but she knew none of the details, nor was she interested. He kept her safe, he provided for her and her sons, and she kept house for him and had a little business on the side that Aidan deemed ‘women’s work,’ and thus, acceptable. That was how it worked.
Aoife wasn’t like that. Though deep down, she was a traditional little thing, she wanted her own business, and I respected that. I didn’t want, nor did I expect, her to change because I knew, having her hanging around the house, bored out of her brains, wouldn’t be good for either of us.
For me, because I’d never want to get out of the penthouse. Thinking of her there, in what would become our space, would be enough to have me working from home every day of the goddamn week.
And for her, she was independent and she had goals and dreams of her own. Ones that I wanted for her, too.
Plus, that cooking of hers? Jesus, I wanted to hoard it to myself, but I was already working out three times longer than before to keep up with the fact I wanted to faceplant in her food. If she stayed at home, cooking only for me? I’d end up four hundred pounds.
So, no, we wouldn’t be like Aidan and Magdalena. We’d be like Finn and Aoife, and that made me happy. As happy as seeing how seamlessly she fell in around the table.
Sure, she’d been nervous at first. I thought she was going to start choking when Aidan Sr. greeted her with two ebullient kisses to the cheek, then as my brothers had greeted her with polite tips of the chin, knowing there’d been the promise of slaughter in my eyes if they approached her like Aidan had, I’d seen the state of play settle. . . .
They knew.
Knew she was mine, and I wasn’t about to let her fucking go.
After Ma
gdalena had bustled out of the kitchen, hugging Aoife then cooing at how pleased she was to finally meet her—finally, ha. I, myself, had only met Aoife four damn weeks ago—she’d taken Aoife into her sacred place, the kitchen, and that was that.
Any nerves she’d shown on the drive over—not many because I knew she was tired after what I’d put her through—had disappeared in the face of helping Magdalena. If Aoife got a hard-on for the penthouse kitchen, I knew she’d have loved Magdalena’s. I’d wanted to see her reaction to the room, but Aidan had dragged me over to his office with Aidan Jr. and Eoghan before the ‘no business over lunch’ rule was truly enforced.
The Colombians had figured out we were behind the killing of the Mexican cartel leader. Eoghan had earned his penthouse on that score. He’d shot the Mexican then made it look as though the Colombians were to blame.
It had taken them three years to figure it out, but it seemed like they were baying for blood.
There’d been a drive-by shooting at a Points-protected establishment, and some of the girls who stripped at one of our joints had been badly beaten.
Much as I felt for them, it was small stuff, but that was how a war started—with small stuff.
Unease made the delicious roast beef settle heavily in my stomach. I hadn’t cared before. I’d had no reason to. But now, I had Aoife to protect, and I’d protect her with my life.
There was no way I was living in a world without her in it, which made me as dangerous as any of those motherfucking Colombians.
“You don’t!” Aoife’s amused but outraged squeak had Declan snickering, as she knocked me from my thoughts of how to contain the threat to our territory.
“I do.”
I wasn’t sure what he’d done or hadn’t done, but I focused my attention on him—Declan wasn’t exactly a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Hadn’t been since he’d lost his childhood sweetheart two years ago. Trust Aoife to get him smiling again.
“What is it?” I inquired, my hand tightening on her knee as I asked to be included in the joke.
Aoife, wine glass in hand, tilted it at Declan. “He likes chain store donuts.”
Because her outrage had seemed more appropriate to something a little more worrisome than donuts, I had to laugh. Then, to Declan, I told him, “Wait until you try some of Aoife’s. She cooks like a dream.”
My fiancée’s cheeks bloomed at the compliment, and the happy sparkle in her eyes made my heart swell in my chest.
“Finn tells me you’re going to open a bakery?” Magdalena prompted, apparently deciding the two of us had made gooey eyes at one another for long enough.
I hadn’t told her that, and I frowned at her then a smug Aidan. Narrowing my eyes at the man who was like my father, I realized I’d been had.
He’d asked me about the woman in my life, knowing full well who she was.
He gave a carefree shrug, but the humor in his grin had me shaking my head.
“Yes,” Aoife replied, her excitement for her new venture evident. “I can’t wait. I’ve visited the store three times now, and I’m certain it’s the right place.”
“Where is it?”
“The old salon on Seventh,” I told Magdalena, answering for Aoife because I wanted her to know that I listened.
Aoife didn’t talk about her new venture all that much, not unless I asked her questions, and I made sure to—I wanted to know everything about this enchanting creature. I wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t think I’d be interested, or if she was hesitant to discuss it because she didn’t understand what we were to one another.
It was one of the reasons I had asked her to marry me. I wanted the prevaricating out of the way. I wanted the doubt in her eyes to disappear. I wanted to know everything about her. Nothing was too small, no fact too irrelevant. I wanted her to feel secure around me because, more than anything, I hadn’t forgotten about the Senator.
I hadn’t forgotten that on Tuesday, she’d be heading to meet with him at that goddamn hotel on the Upper East Side and before then, I wanted to know why.
I’d leave her with her secrets before we married, but after? No way. I wanted total disclosure even if that meant offering the same to her.
There was some shit that was safe from her. There was no reason for her to ask about my past, still, anything else she could ask and within reason, if it wasn’t about the Points, I’d tell her the truth.
She shot a look at me when I spoke on her behalf, and I knew I was right—she was shocked that I’d listened. Surprised I’d taken enough interest in her, thus far, to remember that.
The woman was lacking in serious confidence, but I had thirty years to rectify that so I wasn’t worried.
“On the corner?” Aidan Jr. asked, frowning.
“Yes.” I shot my brother a warning look.
“That isn’t one of ours,” Aidan Sr. stated.
Aoife’s eyes flared with concern, and I squeezed her leg again. “Aoife isn’t a part of the business.”
Magdalena snorted. “No, but she will be now, won’t she?”
When her cheeks burned pink, I gaped at Aoife. She’d known Magdalena less than a few minutes before she’d been bustled into the kitchen with her, and she’d told her we were engaged?
“I asked, child, I asked,” Lena told me, waving her hand as I shot her, then Aoife, disbelieving glances.
“I didn’t think it was a secret,” Aoife mumbled, ducking her head. Whenever she did that, it made me want to tip her head back, so I could bite her bottom lip. If we were anywhere but here, I would have done that, too.
“It isn’t. I just didn’t think the first person you’d tell would be Magdalena!” I wasn’t lying, either.
“Oh crap. Jenny,” she moaned. “She’ll be mad.”
Magdalena hooted. “It can be our little secret, Aoife. She needn’t know she wasn’t the first in on it.” Lena tapped her nose confidently.
Aoife’s smile was shaky but it was a smile nonetheless. “T-Thank you.”
“The way my boy was looking at you? I’d figured it out without you uttering a peep.”
I groaned at that. “Do we have to talk like this around the table?”
“Prefer we talk about it later during the football?” Lena retorted sweetly, and I rolled my eyes.
“Yes. These eejits wouldn’t be listening in like old gossiping hens.”
When my brothers snickered, I knew they knew I was right. They were listening in on all of this shit, and they were going to give me crap later.
I could handle it, and when they fell ass over tit over some broad, I’d make them pay, dole it out twice as hard.
That was brotherly love for you.
Aidan Sr., however, wasn’t to be swayed. “Finn, that isn’t one of ours.”
I huffed out a breath. “I know it isn’t, but it’s the best spot for what Aoife wants.”
“Well, buy it for her then,” Conor said easily, slouching against the comfortable, padded leather seat by hooking his arm over the back.
“Good thinking, my boy,” Aidan stated, beaming at him proudly.
“I-I don’t need you to buy it, though,” Aoife told me, her voice small, and I quickly squeezed her thigh.
“No. You don’t need us to buy it, but buy it we will,” Aidan Sr. told her, his grin wide and happy again, like Conor had just solved the problem that was world peace. “Think of it as our wedding present to you.”
When she gasped, I squeezed her leg harder until I felt her wince. I’d prefer her to wince at that, though, than to outright refuse Aidan’s offer. He was happy as a pig in shit now, but if she rejected the gift?
Fuck knows how the meal would pan out.
I tilted my head to buss her on the cheek, and as I moved away, I whispered, “Let me deal with this.”
Her nod was slight, so minute I knew no one else would have spotted it, and that she read the nuances in here so well came as a great relief to me.
I’d told her, on the way over here, that Aidan was vo
latile. Not that I needed to hammer that home. The man had a serious reputation, after all. But she’d understood, and had apparently surmised the way of it.
Conor, though he’d looked relaxed, had made the prompt to stop his father from going off the rails.
I tipped my head at him in thanks as I sat back in my seat. His lips curved to the side as he accepted my gratitude. He was a chilled bastard, but that was one of the reasons I loved working with him.
“Conor, you buy it for us,” Aidan ordered him. “Finn has other things to worry about now. Like the wedding.” He rubbed his hands together. “I want to be there when you tell Father Doyle.”
I groaned. “Seriously?” Jesus, I’d never felt like a teenager more than I did now.
Was this why men dreaded bringing their partner to meet their parents?
Having never done it before, having never even contemplated doing it before, I couldn’t say.
Aidan grinned. “Seriously.”
“You’ll need at least three or four weeks, Finn,” Lena informed me.
I frowned. “What? I’m not waiting that long.”
Aoife squeaked. “A month isn’t a long time.”
“It is for me.” Aidan would be pissed if I moved her into my penthouse without us being wed, and I wanted her in my goddamn bed every night. I shot him a look. “After what we talked about earlier, don’t you think it’s wise we get married as soon as possible?”
“And they say romance is dead,” Lena muttered, rolling her eyes and making Aoife laugh.
Aidan tapped his chin. “It’s the banns, son. It takes three weeks for them to be called out.”
“They’re not a requirement now, Dad,” Conor informed him.
“Maybe not to regular people, but since when were we regular?” Aidan drummed his fingers against the table. “You’re right though, son,” he aimed at me, confirming with his concession what I already knew—that the threat against us was very real. “Father Doyle won’t be happy about it, but I think the roof has a leak that needs fixing.” He shot Eoghan a look. “Arrange for that, would you, Eoghan?”
Screw You: A Screwed Duet (Five Points, Hell's Kitchen Book 1) Page 14