I wake up hard.
That's not unusual. What's unusual is the reason. There's a woman in my bed. Warm, naked, pressed against me with her back to my chest and her ass tucked against my groin in a way that makes thinking about anything other than the obvious completely impossible.
Nadia is still asleep. Her breathing is slow and even, her body relaxed in a way I haven't felt from her before. Not the wound-tight, bracing-for-impact tension she carried the first time I met her. Or the fragile, careful stillness of the morning she let me into her parents' house. This is real sleep.
Her brown hair is fanned across my pillow. The bruise on her cheek has deepened overnight, purple and blue against her skin, and seeing it makes my knuckles ache with the memory of what I did about it. My hand rests on her hip, my thumb tracing the curve of her waist.
Morning light pours through a gap between the curtains. The estate is quiet. I can hear birds outside and the faint sound of someone moving in the kitchen downstairs. Ma, probably. She's always the first one up.
Nadia shifts in her sleep. Her hips press back against me and my cock throbs against the curve of her ass and I close my eyesand try to think about something else. Anything else. The seating chart for the wedding. Liam's voice on the phone. The weather.
She shifts again. Deliberate this time.
"You're awake," I say.
"Mm." She presses back against me, slow and lazy, and the sound she makes is somewhere between a sigh and a hum. Then she stills. I feel the exact moment she registers what's pressed against her. "Again?"
I exhale a laugh against the back of her neck. "You sound surprised."
"I am surprised." She rolls onto her back and looks up at me. Her eyes are sleepy, her hair is a mess, the bruise on her cheek is vivid in the morning light, and she's smiling. It’s the kind of smile I haven't seen from her before. Lazy and warm and completely unguarded. "We went three rounds last night. How can you possibly need to go again already?"
"You're lying next to me naked." I prop myself up on my elbow and look down at her. The sheet has slipped to her waist and the morning light is painting her skin gold. Her breasts, the dip of her collarbone, the small mark on her neck from my mouth last night. "How can you possibly be surprised?"
She laughs, full and bright and it fills the room in a way that makes my chest do something I'm not equipped to handle. I've heard her cry. I've heard her whisper. I've heard her moan my name in the shower with her legs around my waist. But this is the first time I've heard her laugh, and it hits me harder than any of the rest.
"Fair point," she says.
I trace my finger along her collarbone. Down the center of her chest. Slowly. Watching the goosebumps rise on her skin,watching her breath catch, and the laughter in her eyes shift to something darker and warmer.
"How's your cheek?" I ask.
"Sore." She touches it lightly. "How are your hands?"
I flex my fingers. My knuckles are stiff and swollen, the skin tight over bruises that go down to the bone. "Functional."
"Functional." She reaches up and takes my hand, examining the damage. Split skin, dried blood, purple and black bruising across every knuckle. She presses her lips to the worst of it. The gesture is so tender it makes something crack open behind my ribs.
"Stop looking at me like that," I tell her.
"Like what?" she asks, lifting her eyes up and looking through her lashes.
"Like I'm a good man."
"You are a good man." She slides my hand back down to cup her breast and I squeeze it lightly, brushing the pad of my thumb over her nipple.
"I beat someone to death twelve hours ago."
"For me." She laces her fingers through mine, careful around the swelling. "You did it for me. That doesn't make you bad, Rafferty. It makes you mine."
I stare at her. This woman. Bruised face, tangled hair, lying in my bed in the morning light saying the exact thing I didn't know I needed to hear. A week and a half ago I was in Dublin, dodging my brother's calls, convinced that marriage was a cage the Council was locking me into. Now I'm lying next to a woman who makes me feel like I've been looking for something my whole life without knowing what it was, and she just handed it to me like it was obvious.
"Five days," she says softly.
I lean down and press my lips to her forehead. "Five days until you're my wife."
She lifts her face up. "That seems like a long time from now."
I brush a strand of hair from her face and tuck it behind her ear. "It does."
