Jaded Soul: A Standalone Irish Mafia Romance

by Fox, Nicole

Cillian fixes me with a glare cold enough to send shivers racing down my spine. “Saoirse…”

  “You just said it yourself: you don’t have the men. You don’t have time to wait. The Kinahans are coming. Every man counts.”

  “You are not a man.”

  “And thank God for that,” I snap. “I’m way more useful.”

  I can tell he wants to laugh, but he manages to hold back. “Do you even know how to fire a gun?”

  “Point and shoot.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I can learn.”

  “In twelve hours?”

  “I’m a fast learner.”

  “Saoirse,” Cillian growls, running a frustrated hand through his hair, “I’m not risking you in a fight that has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me?” I repeat furiously. “I know you don’t mean that.”

  “What—”

  “Do you really think that Tristan isn’t going to be with the Kinahans when they show up here?” I demand. “You remember Tristan, don’t you, Cillian?”

  His eyes are hard, angry. He starts to talk, but I cut him off.

  “In case you don’t, let me jog your memory. He’s the man who’s going to drag me back to that prison he calls a home and rape me every time he wants, just to prove a point.”

  Cillian flinches violently at that one. It’s harsh, physical pain.

  But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to stop.

  I pull up the sleeve of my right arm and thrust the scars in his face.

  “You asked me if I did that to myself,” I continue. “I didn’t. This is what he did to me. Every time I talked back, every time I fought back, he’d give me a new scar. I have a body full of them. You wanna see the rest? Or maybe it’ll wait for another time. Because if I get started on the full tour, we might be here a while.”

  “Saoirse…” There’s so much emotion on his face now that I can’t quite keep up with all of it. “He’s never going to touch you again.”

  “I know,” I growl fiercely. “I won’t allow him to. Because I’m going to fight him right alongside you.”

  His eyes grow stubborn again. “Or how about you let me fight him and you can—”

  “So I can stay locked up in my tower until you come to rescue me? Grow up, Cillian,” I say. “This is the twenty-first fucking century.”

  One corner of his mouth twitches up. But he manages to fight the smile.

  “This is not a game, Saoirse,” he says soberly. “This is real life. It’s war.”

  “Great speech. I’m still going to be there.”

  His jaw hardens into a perfect square and he balls his fists up tight.

  But unlike with Tristan, I have no fear that he’s going to throw a punch or try to hurt me.

  I’ve forgotten what that’s like. To feel so safe with someone that, even in the face of their fury, you feel absolutely untouchable.

  “Why do you have to be so… so…”

  “So what?”

  “Infuriating!”

  I flinch back. Not because of the volume. But because of the emotion that underpins it.

  It’s not fury. Not quite. It’s something different. Something more.

  We stare at each other. Two caged lions circling and circling and circling. Not sure whether to fight or fuck or something else altogether.

  I take a deep breath. He does the same.

  “You can’t fight them alone, Cillian,” I whisper.

  “Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try.”

  “For fuck’s sake!” I cry, throwing my hands up in the air. “Can you really be that stubborn?”

  “I’m quite good at it,” he throws back at me. “Almost as stubborn as you are.”

  “How am I being stubborn?”

  “Because you’re still here! Because you won’t fucking leave!”

  “I lost you once, Cillian O’Sullivan,” I rasp. “I won’t lose you a second time.”

  He stops short and stares at me for a moment.

  I turn away from him. I can’t handle the heat of that gaze. Not ever. But especially not right now, when everything is teetering on a knife’s edge.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he says softly. “It’s just that sometimes…”

  “Sometimes what?”

  “Sometimes, I swear it’s like you’re in love with me.”

  My heart is hammering hard, giving me advice that I’ve never truly listened to. It would be so easy to refute him, correct him.

  Me? Love you? Not in a million fucking years.

  But the feeling of impending doom seems to put things in perspective suddenly.

  Does my pride really matter in the face of death? Will I regret it if Cillian dies with my lie ringing in his head?

  You promised yourself you’d stop being a coward. You promised.

  So I raise my eyes to his and keep the promise I made to myself.

  “That’s because I am in love with you.”

  I can see the shock in his beautiful blue eyes. The shock of a man who denied himself a dream because it hurt too bad to even imagine it.

  It makes me smile. An actual, honest-to-goodness, albeit one that’s still deciding whether to be happy or sad or scared or something that doesn’t yet have a name.

  “I never stopped,” I add. “Not for a moment. Part of me never left that roof.”

  Cillian just continues to stare at me until I shuffle on my feet and look away.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I demand. “For God’s sake, say something.”

  But he doesn’t.

  For once in his entire goddamn life, Cillian O’Sullivan is silent.

  Maybe it’s because he said everything he wanted to say thirteen years ago. And since the moment fate brought us back into each other’s worlds, we’ve been pretending that what we felt that night didn’t happen, or that it was somehow not real or not valid.

  This, though? This heat, this tension between us?

  It proves that it was real. It proves that it was valid.

  It meant something.

  It mattered.

  Somehow—I don’t know when it happened—he closed the gap between us and our bodies are pressed up against one another now.

  There’s no uncertainty or trepidation. I’ve said my truth and it feels good.

  I know one thing for sure now: no matter what happens between us, I’m not going back to Tristan.

  My father is safe and away from him, which means the power he has held over me all these years is gone.

  Do I still fear the man?

  Yes. Of course. Fear’s not the type of thing that just goes away at the snap of a finger.

  It lives inside your body, and even if your mind tells you there’s nothing to be afraid of, your bones remember.

  But things are different now.

  “I wish I’d been a virgin when we met,” Cillian says unexpectedly.

  I do a double take. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do,” he replies. “I’ve slept with a lot of different women, Saoirse. But none of them—not even one—has meant anything to me.”

  I want desperately to believe that.

  “You don’t believe me?” he asks, reading my mind again. “Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m not telling you the truth.”

  I shake my head. “Not every woman you were with could have been horrible.”

  “They weren’t,” Cillian says. “In fact, a few were wonderful. They just… weren’t you.”

  My hands snake up his chest and I run my fingertip along his jaw. “I’ve missed you so much, Cillian.”

  “I’ve missed you, Saoirse.”

  And then I silence him with a kiss.

  He removes my clothes gently, carefully. I remove his in the same way. Then he scoops me up in his arms and wraps my leg around his waist.

  We stumble to the bed and I fall back as he climbs on top of me. His cock presses against my thigh as he starts kissing
from my ear to my neck.

  He takes his time, moving slowly back down my body until he lands on my nipples. He sucks them both, one at a time at first and then together.

  My legs start to quiver as I moisten under his tongue. It’s been so long since a man has gone down on me. And then I realize that the last and only man to ever go down on me was… him.

  I’m about to tell him that, but then he kisses the inside of my thigh and I gasp.

  He pushes my legs apart and settles between them. I look up in time to watch his head dip down. A second later, a pulse of pleasure weaves through my body as his tongue runs up and down my slit.

  I moan. I call out his name. I clutch the sheets on either side of the bed.

  He grips my thighs hard as he pushes his tongue inside me and starts exploring. I arch my back the deeper he goes, but my eyes pop open when his tongue circles around my clit.

  “Oh God…” I gasp. “Cillian, oh God…”

  He ignores me and keeps going, eating me out until my body is trembling. I feel like I’m just one giant nerve ending, sensitive to every tiny scrap of friction.

  It doesn’t take long to send me tumbling over the edge. “Cillian!” I cry out as I come on his face.

  I’m racked from head to toe with trembles that intensify more and more and more. The seconds stretch like eternities.

  Before I can fully recover, he’s rising above me, settling over me.

  I feel his cock at my entrance. I’m so wet, still recovering from my orgasm, that it takes only the slightest bit of pressure to help him slip inside me.

  I clamp around him, my hands falling against his muscular chest as he starts thrusting gently. He does it so fucking slow that my eyes roll back in my head.

  It’s madness to be lying here, wrapped up in each other, when there’s an army about to descend on the gates in no time at all.

  But I can’t find it in myself to be scared right now. It seems neither can he.

  Maybe we both feel like we deserve this.

  After everything we’ve been through… After everything that was stolen from us…

  Maybe we’ll be allowed this little piece of perfect.

  “Saoirse,” Cillian groans, in my ear, “you are the only one I’ve ever wanted.” He raises his head off my shoulder and looks straight down at me.

  Our eyes lock. Neither one of us looks away.

  And, without blinking, he fucks me slowly, deeply, passionately. He fucks me to another orgasm.

  He tells me I’m beautiful. I’m perfect. I’m amazing.

  He doesn’t say he loves me. But he doesn’t really need to.

  I know he does.

  It’s in the eyes.

  54

  Cillian

  A Little While Later

  I look back at the closed door, hoping Saoirse will sleep for a little while longer. In fact, a part of me wishes she’d just sleep right through the battle.

  Theoretically, I could lock her in right now, but I respect her too much to do that to her.

  And anyway, knowing Saoirse, she’d probably bust out through one of the windows and scale down the walls by herself. Ma would kill me if the stained glass got fucked up.

  When my phone starts ringing, I pick up without really looking at who’s calling.

  “What’s up, zhopa?” says the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Artem,” I breathe in relief. “Wait a second—who the hell are you calling an asshole?”

  “You know damn well who.”

  “Pot, meet kettle.”

  “You might be right about that,” he laughs. Then his voice darkens. “Anyway, I’m hearing some disturbing reports coming from your part of the world. Something tells me that it’s too big a coincidence to have nothing to do with you.”

  “No faith in me,” I mutter.

  “When it comes to you staying out of trouble?” he asks. “None at all.”

  I laugh, but it sounds stilted and hard. “I’m fine,” I say. “Things are fine.”

  “Cillian…”

  “I’m serious. I’ve got everything under control.”

  Mostly.

  There’s a second of silence and I hear some major static on the line. “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “Sorry. Traveling,” Artem explains.

  “Where to?”

  “Don’s council meeting. We’re hashing out some land disputes. The damn Turks think they can just take whatever they want.”

  “Keeping shit interesting, huh?”

  “I always do.”

  I hesitate a moment when I hear a sound come from the room Saoirse’s sleeping in. Nothing follows, so I relax again.

  “You’d tell me if something was going down, right?” Artem inquires.

  I wish I could. Hell, I should.

  What would be the point of telling him though?

  There’s nothing he can do from there. He’s halfway across the world, dealing with problems of his own. And as much as I’d like to have my best friend by my side, I can handle this shit. I can do what must be done.

  “Of course,” I lie smoothly.

  “Good man,” Artem says. “How’re things with Saoirse?”

  And just like that, despite everything, I smile. Because I can’t think of her and not smile anymore.

  The irony is that I don’t know how long we’ll be able to hold on to this for. To this idea of us. Of her and me.

  It seems like whenever we’ve entered something resembling a truce, that the world comes along and derails it all.

  “Things are… progressing,” I reply evasively.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I finally feel like I’ve come home.”

  “Jesus,” Artem breathes. “In the Old Country for no time at all and he thinks he’s a fucking poet now. Does that mean you’re never coming back to L.A.?”

  I don’t expect the question. Which is probably why I answer honestly. “Let’s see how today goes.”

  “Brother, I get the feeling you’re not telling me something.”

  “I’m telling you exactly what you need to know,” I tell him, repeating words he’d said to his men a hundred times in the past.

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “You know I can’t help it.”

  “That’s because you’re an asshole.”

  I chuckle. A second later, the door opens and Saoirse steps out of the room.

  She looks at me with wide eyes, wondering what’s changed since she’s been asleep. She knows better than anyone that your entire life can shift in a matter of minutes.

  “I’ve got to go, brother,” I say. “Take care of that beautiful family of yours.”

  “I will. Take care of yourself.”

  “I always do.”

  When I hang up, Saoirse walks into my arms. I pull her close to me and drop my face into the comforting hollow of her neck.

  Her hand wraps around the back of my neck as she strokes my hair gently. “Any news?” she murmurs.

  “I have scouts placed a few miles off from the castle. Still no sight of the Kinahans or anyone else. But they’ll be here sooner or later. That much I know.”

  “Where’s Kian?”

  “He’s downstairs,” I reply. “He’s kinda peeved you drugged him, so steer clear.”

  She smiles as though my brother’s annoyance is the least of her concerns. “I can take a grumpy Irishman,” she says. “I’ve had lots of practice in that department.”

  She pulls away and fixes me with a stubborn look. The kind of look that I’ve learned signals trouble is coming my way.

  “You wanna teach me how to use a gun now?”

  Bingo. “No.”

  “Cillian…” she says with a tired sigh.

  “Saoirse, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Then don’t treat me like a child,” she snaps, the fire flashing dangerously in her eyes.

  “I’m not—”

  “A helpless woman th
en. A damsel in fucking distress.”

  “Hey now, don’t make this about gender,” I say. “I’ve always been a feminist.”

  “Then why—”

  “The future is female.”

  “But you—”

  “Girls run the world.”

  “Cillian!” she yells in exasperation. But she doesn’t quite manage to suppress the laugh on her lips either.

  I stop and give her a wide grin. Then I lean in and kiss her softly on the forehead. “I just want you to be safe.”

  “I’m with you,” she says softly. “Of course I’ll be safe.”

  Her trust humbles me and I curl my arms around her body.

  “But it’s my choice to be here,” she continues. “So I’d appreciate it if you just accept that. And respect my right to choose where I go and what I do.”

  I don’t like it. Not at all.

  But I recognize the plea in her eyes.

  She trusts me. And now she’s asking for the same thing in return.

  She’s been with a man who has controlled every aspect of her life for the last thirteen years. She doesn’t need more of the same.

  “Okay,” I reply heavily. “Let’s go down. I’ll teach you to shoot out in the courtyard.”

  With a triumphant smile, she grabs my hand and we walk down together.

  * * *

  Kian is by the massive main doors with a few of the staff. He looks much better, but there’s no way he’s ready for a fight.

  “Well, well, well,” Kian says, eyeing Saoirse and me suggestively. “What a pretty pair the two of you make.”

  Saoirse blushes slightly, but she doesn’t let go of my hand.

  The table behind him is heavy with all the weaponry we could find. Some of these guns look like they haven’t been fired since electricity was discovered.

  But a gun is a gun. I’ll take anything I can get right now.

  I can see Saoirse eyeing them pointedly.

  “So…” Kian says, glancing at her and then at me. “Saoirse’s come down to wish us good luck?”

  Her eyes flit to him and she narrows them dangerously. “Actually, I thought that’s why you came down here. To wish us good luck.”

  He laughs. But when she doesn’t even crack a smile, he stops abruptly.

  “Wait,” he says, looking at me in shock. “You’re letting her fight?”