I want to believe him. I want to think that somehow, this disaster could turn into something bearable. But I know better. I know what I am, what I've done. And I know that no innocent girl deserves to be chained to a killer for the rest of her life.
“Bloody romantic,” I mutter, as the waitress sets down another beer, her eyes fully on Flynn. Flynn, without a scar carved through half his face, with his boyish good looks and ever-optimistic attitude. Flynn, who somehow hasn’t been hardened by this life the way I have.
The waitress barely looks at me. She’s not the kind of woman who flirts with me. The ones I take home are the ones with a taste for danger, the ones who look at me and want me because I offer a thrill, or because they think they can fix me. The first I can satisfy, but the latter is impossible.
Flynn laughs. "Says the man who's never had anything more than a one-night stand in his life. Hell, Sean, when was the last time you got laid?"
"That's not relevant."
"It's completely relevant. You're wound so tight you're about to snap. Maybe having a wife will be good for you. Maybe she'll loosen you up a bit."
"She's not a therapy session, Flynn."
"No, but she's apparently going to be your wife. Might as well try to make the best of it." He claps me on the shoulder. "Look, I'm not saying this isn't fucked up. It is. But you're stuck with it, so you might as well try to find something positive in the situation. And having a beautiful woman in your bed every night? That's pretty positive, if you ask me."
I don't answer. I can't tell him that the thought of Maeve Connelly in my bed fills me with equal parts guilt and that dark, unwanted arousal that I’ve been fighting ever since I opened that folder. That even now, just the mention of taking her to bed has my cock thickening against my thigh, swelling with need.
Maybe I have gone too long without a good fuck.
We drink in silence for a while, watching the crowd, listening to the band playing music that barely registers with me. The noise isn’t doing much to quell my thoughts. Eventually, Flynn finishes his second pint and stands.
"I've got to go. Meeting a lady friend in an hour." He grins. "Some of us know how to enjoy ourselves."
"Get out of here," I say, but there's no heat in it.
He hesitates. "Sean. For what it's worth, I think you'll do right by her. You're not the monster you think you are."
Before I can respond, he's gone, disappearing into the crowd.
I sit there for another hour, drinking slowly, thinking about everything and nothing. Eventually, I pay my tab and head home through the rain-slicked streets of Dublin.
—
My flat isin a low-traffic part of town, rougher but perfectly suited for my tastes. I don’t need to worry about violence when no one is going to fuck with me, and it’s not as if I bring homewomen I need to impress. It’s small and mostly bare, with just the needed furniture. There are no personal touches, nothing that would suggest who I am or where I’ve been if I were to have a visitor. I’ve never seen the point in trying to make it a home. I rarely eat here, rarely do more than sleep and work out, and sometimes watch something on the television or read on the couch. I don’t need art on the walls or throw pillows on the sofa.
Just a place to stretch out and enough space for one man. I never intended for there to be anyone else in my life.
I drop my keys on the counter, pour myself another whiskey I don't need, and walk into the bedroom, shucking off my jacket as I go. The folder sits in the middle of my bed where I tossed it, atop the cheap black bedding, mocking me.
Against my better judgment, I reach for it and open it again.
Maeve Connelly stares up at me from the photograph, her blue eyes wide and soft. I can’t help but wonder where the photo was taken. She’s looking at someone, her lips curved up slightly, but her eyes look empty. As if she’s performing happiness for someone rather than actually feeling it.
There are other photos in the file—surveillance shots taken without her knowledge. One shows her walking through Boston Common, her red hair caught by the wind. Another shows her at what looks like a funeral, her face pale and drawn with grief, her frame even more slight, swathed in black.
She's beautiful. That's undeniable. But she’s also so fucking young. Twenty years my junior, an age gap any decent man would shrink at.
Something indecent curls through my gut again as I look at her photo, that arousal building in tandem with the warmth of the alcohol in my veins. My self-control is somewhat loosened by the whiskey and the beer, and I can feel that hungry desire taking full advantage of it, my cock at half-mast as I flip awayfrom the photo in an effort to quell the guilty need that looking at her makes me feel.
In any other situation, I wouldn’t look at her twice. She looks fucking breakable, the kind of woman I’d never approach and who would never approach me. But I’ve been ordered to marry her. Ordered tofuckher. And that knowledge, the knowledge that she’s going to be mine, that I’m under command to take her to bed and take her virginity, slide my cock into her and fuck her until she’s full of my cum, stirs something in me that I’ve never felt before. A hungry, possessive desire that feels dark and borderline ravenous.
I shove it down, determined to master myself. I’ve never been a man to be at the whim of my desires. I take care of my own needs more often than not, and then occasionally, when I feel the urge, find a woman to do it. I don’tsuccumbto them. And I’ve definitely never felt this kind of lust before. It would frighten me, if I were the kind of man who felt fear.
I flip through the documents, looking for something else to focus on. Her family history, her education, her financial holdings. Everything the Council thinks I need to know to control her. At the bottom of the stack is a medical report, and my stomach turns when I realize what it is.
A gynecological exam. Recent. Confirming her virginity.
The Council did their research thoroughly.
