“I was always yours.”
I move. A measured roll of my hips that draws a moan from deep in her throat. She wraps her legs around my waist, and the angle shifts, and?—
“Oh my god,” she gasps.
I focus on that spot. Building a rhythm off her breathing, her sounds, the way her body tightens around me. She’s close. I can tell from the grip of her, the way her hips meet mine with increasing urgency.
“Come for me.” My voice is gravelly. “Let me feel you.”
She comes with my name torn from her lips, and the force of it drags me over with her. I bury myself deep andorgasm harder than I ever have, her name a groan ripped from somewhere primal.
I collapse beside her, pull her against me. We lie there wrecked, shaking, breathing each other’s air until she falls asleep against me.
I don’t sleep.
I lie in the dark with her heartbeat under my palm and think about the world outside this room—my mother’s ambitions, the Sullivan insult, a family that hasn’t yet fully accepted her.
This brave, battered, unbreakable girl has become my reason for living. I don’t think she realizes that yet. And I don’t think she understands yet that for her, I will do exactly what I vowed on our wedding day.
I will forsake all others.
Chapter 11
Cillian
Nora has rearranged the pantry four times.
I know because I counted. The first time, she alphabetized the spices. The second, she organized them by frequency of use, which she explained to me quietly when I asked. The third, she moved everything back to alphabetical order. The fourth happened this morning while I was on a business call. When I walked in for breakfast, the cans were sorted by color.
She’s eating less. I’ve been watching.
She takes small portions and pushes half her food around her plate when she thinks I’m not looking. She’s losing some of the soft weight she’s gained since arriving—I can see it in the hollow beneath her cheekbones, the way her collarbones are more pronounced again.
I sit across from her at breakfast and set down my coffee.
“You’re not eating.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“You said that yesterday.”
She looks up briefly, then away. “I’m fine.”
She’s not fine. She hasn’t been fine since the family dinner two weeks ago, and every reassurance I offer lands and dissolves like it never touched anything solid. I tell her she’s enough. She nods. I tell her Ma is wrong. I can see she doesn’t believe me.
I push my chair back. “Come here.”
She comes. She always comes when I ask, which is maybe its own kind of wrong—she’s been conditioned to respond to requests from men, and I can’t always tell the difference between her wanting to accept and her being afraid to refuse. So I watch her face. I watch her body. I look for tells.
She sits in my lap. Her hands rest against my chest, and her breathing eases. That’s real. Whatever is happening inside her head, her body knows she’s safe with me.
“Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There’s everything to talk about.”
She traces the button on my shirt. “I’m just tired.”
