by Wild, Cassie
“Security?” Declan’s brow winged up.
I laid a hand on Cormac’s shoulder. “Unless you’re looking to hire a bodyguard, you don’t really need to know anything else, do you, Declan?” I gave him a sweet smile.
The look in his eyes made me narrow mine, and Dad, apparently sensing the storm, took Declan’s glass, splashing the rest of the scotch into it. “Afraid I ran out before I could pour myself some, boy. Go down to the cellar and get me another bottle, would you?”
Declan acquiesced without another word, and I gave Dad a grateful look as he sank into his chair. “Daria, that was a fine meal,” Seamus said, picking up his water glass and tipping it in her direction.
“Thank you.” A faint flush pinkened her cheeks, but she looked pleased with herself. “I had plenty of help, of course.”
“The turkey,” Isabel said with a groan. She was slumped in her seat, one hand on her belly. “That turkey was the best. How did you make it?” But before Daria could even start to explain, Isabel lifted a hand. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. You’ll make it sound easy, and I’ll burn our condo to the ground trying.”
Daria laughed, but neither Sean nor Isabel joined her. They’d both actually been rather quiet during the meal. I didn’t know Isabel all that well, but I did know quiet wasn’t exactly her speed. And it definitely wasn’t Sean’s. I made a mental note to ask him if everything was okay before they left.
By the time Declan returned with another bottle of the Macallan, we were all chatting, us three women about shopping and sales, while my dad and Cormac were, surprisingly, talking about Ireland. Sean was quiet, brooding into his whiskey, while Brooks occasionally made a comment to Daria, Isabel, or me.
Declan twisted the bottle open and poured our father another drink before glancing over at our brothers. “If you kids are done licking your plates, there’s some business we need to discuss.”
Immediately, my spine stiffened.
I forced myself to relax as both Brooks and Cormac looked at me. Brooks’s glance was brief, but Cormac’s lingered. I pretended not to notice, rising and gathering two plates in my hands as I glanced at Daria and Isabel. “Why don’t we carry these in and put them away?”
Isabel looked shocked at the very idea.
Daria caught sight of her expression and grinned. Then she looked back at me. “We can rinse them off and load up the dishwasher. Ms. Shrew told me she’d be in tonight to handle the clean-up, and she fussed at me, made me promise not to do that myself.”
Arching my brows, I asked, “And?”
“Well…” Daria twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “I said okay. She kind of scares me, Briar. She’s like this force of nature.”
Because I understood, I just grinned. Then, turning my attention back to Isabel, I nodded at the dishes. “Come on. Grab a few plates.
A few minutes later, I realized I’d been thoughtless.
Cormac came walking in behind us, loaded down with plates, and I realized that I’d more or less left him hanging.
Fixing a bright smile on my face, I turned to him and grinned. “Thank you! Once we get this done, you want to take a tour of the house with me?”
“Why don’t you two go ahead and do it?” Daria looked over her shoulder at me, smiling. “Isabel and I can handle this.”
Isabel made a show of groaning. “Isabel doesn’t want to do this.”
“Oh, hush. You brought two desserts, and you showed up late.” Daria stuck her tongue at her best friend. “It won’t hurt you to work for twenty minutes, Iz.”
Isabel shoved off the counter and shuffled over to Daria, looking like a fifteen-year-old who’d been ordered to do manual labor in her bedroom. “Fine,” she said, sulking. “But then I’m eating some ice cream.”
They were both laughing as I pulled Cormac out behind me.
“So, is this totally killing you?” I asked him softly.
He stroked a hand down my hair. “No.”
His tone was odd, and I glanced up at him, curious. But with his face neutral, eyes so blank, I couldn’t read anything in them. “Everything okay?”
“It’s fine.” He hitched up a shoulder. Then, in an abrupt change of mood, he slid me a sleepy look and took my hand, rubbing his thumb across my wrist. “So…about that tour?”
How could such a light touch wreak such havoc upon my nerves?
Hell. He could do this with a look. How?
I didn’t know, and he’d been doing this to me almost since we’d met.
Clearing my throat, I nodded down the hall. “Come on. We’ll start down here.”
We began with the game room and worked our way through the house, moving to the east wing, then to the west.
The bedroom I’d used until I moved out a few years ago was in that wing, and we stopped there. I stood quietly in the doorway as Cormac prowled the space. He studied it with a critical eye. Without turning to look at me, he said, “This was your room.”
“Is that your brilliant deductive powers or are you just assuming that since things are clearly a girl’s room and I’m the only girl…?” I asked, tucking my tongue against my cheek.
He shrugged, still with his back to me.
“You’re close to your family,” he said, voice low.
It seemed an odd comment, but then, as I considered how distant he seemed to be from his family, maybe it wasn’t so strange after all. “We are,” I said slowly, taking my time as I answered. “We’re closer now than we were. Mom’s death…” I lifted a shoulder as the rest of my comment was trapped in my throat. “That hit us hard. It was really hard on us the first few years. But we managed to put ourselves back together, I think.”
“How did she die?” He half-turned, staring at the large picture window that sat as a backdrop for the pretty princess bed that I’d loved so much. He didn’t look at me, but I could feel the weight of his attention, feel all of his focus.
I took a deep breath, the remembered grief welling up inside me, aching like an old wound, one that had never fully healed, one that never really would.
“It was a car crash.” I wandered inside, and out of habit, I closed the door. My brothers had always loved to barge in, and if I’d wanted any semblance of privacy, I’d learned young to close the door. With it shut behind me, I leaned back against it and stared off across the room, not really seeing anything. “She didn’t work a typical job, but she liked to volunteer at school with us, and she helped out with a couple of different charities. Women’s shelters, that sort of thing. She was coming home from a meeting for a fundraiser one evening and…”
Even now after fourteen years, it hurt to talk about it. Rolling my lips inward, I paused and stared at the ceiling until I knew I wouldn’t cry if I continued. “This guy had just been fired from his job. He stopped to get a few beers. He wasn’t outright drunk, you know. He wasn’t really a bad guy. He had a bad day, made a bad decision. He went over the line and hit her head on. She died instantly.”
Cormac’s head dropped. “I’m—”
Before he could say anything more, the words came tumbling out. “He pled guilty. There wasn’t even a trial. Dad was going to go to the sentencing without us. But Brooks, Declan, and I wanted to go. Declan told him that if Dad wouldn’t take us, then he would find a way. Sean was still too young, so we left him behind. But…” I licked my lips, throat going tight once more. “We had to go. I was angry. I was so angry.”
Cormac glanced up at me. “What happened?”
“We get there, and this man is just weeping. His wife is weeping. Their kids looked shell-shocked. His wife came rushing up to Dad, and she kept saying how sorry she was. She didn’t ask Dad to do anything. She just kept saying she was sorry.” I reached up to wipe the tears from my face, still staring out at nothing. “And he gets on the stand. His name was Hayden Crowder. He was a salesman. He’d only been at the job for like six months, and he wasn’t very good at it. They fired him, and he went to go have a few beers and…”
&
nbsp; I looked over and found Cormac watching me.
My face flushed, and I averted my gaze self-consciously. “He wasn’t a bad guy.” Heaving a sigh, I rubbed my neck. “My brothers hated him, but I…hell. I just looked at him, saw his wife crying, saw his kids. I just wanted my mom back. I wanted to forget I ever saw him.”
“What happened to him?”
The crack in my heart split a little bit wider. “He died in prison. Some sort of fight. The guy was like five feet three inches. Might have weighed one-twenty soaking wet. He wouldn’t have had a chance, no matter what. Last I heard, his wife moved back to Kentucky so she could be with her family. Two lives lost, two families messed up, all for one bad mistake.”
“It was his fault,” Cormac said, his voice sharp.
“Oh, I know that,” I said softly. I found my gaze drawn back to him, and I studied his averted profile. He stood by the window, staring outside. His spine was rigid, shoulders a harsh line. “But it was a stupid mistake. He had two beers. Two. I mean, it wasn’t like he was falling down drunk. Wasn’t like he did it all the time. He’d never even had a parking ticket before that day. One bad mistake, and it affected all of us. Should I hate him for it?”
Cormac’s gaze flew my way. “I would.”
“Hate’s a poison you feed yourself,” I told him, shaking my head. “I’m not going to swallow poison over somebody else’s actions. I came to peace with what happened.” The knot in my throat was so huge, so painful, I could barely speak now, but I made myself. “I miss her. I’ll always miss her. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to expend all that negative energy, especially when it won’t change anything. And she wouldn’t want that.”
Eleven
Cormac
Sometimes, I didn’t see how she could be real.
Listening to her talk about her lack of antipathy for the guy who had killed her mom was humbling.
I’d been dealing with plenty of antipathy all fucking day, and most of it was centered toward myself and Marcos, and here was Briar. She’d lost her mom, and did she hate the man responsible?
No.
The last few years I’d lived with my parents, I’d been pissed off at them because they were always shaking their heads at me and giving me that disappointed look when I came in bloody from another fight, or when the school called because I’d skipped again. It seemed like all I ever did was disappoint them, and it got fucking old. Being away from that had been…freeing.
I really believed that.
Or I had. At first.
But lately, I looked in the mirror and saw myself, and I was disappointed—disappointed in myself and everything around me. Half the time, I outright hated myself.
Briar didn’t even hate the bastard who’d killed her mother. How in the fuck could she be for real?
The floor shifted, and I lifted my gaze to her just as she took a step toward me.
I tensed instinctively, half wondering if I’d overlooked another way out of this soft, feminine room. The only other door opened into a bathroom painted in a soft, girlish pink. The only way out was the door just behind Briar—the closed door. I set my jaw as she reached up and pushed my hair back from my eyes.
“You look so tense. So pissed off.” She cupped the back of my neck and tugged me down until she could press her lips to mine.
I was pissed off—at myself. I didn’t need her being soft and sweet to me right now. It wouldn’t help. Hell, I didn’t need her being soft and sweet to me at any time. I didn’t deserve to have this woman spending any time around me, but despite the sadness I could still see in her eyes, she was the one offering me comfort instead of the other way around.
“I’m not pissed off, princess,” I said in a short voice, nudging her hand aside. I backed away and went back to staring out the window. “I’m restless. I guess being around a bunch of rich guys who probably wonder what in the hell I’m doing with their precious Briar has me on edge.”
“Ouch,” she said, her tone mild.
I shot her a look, but the expression on her face was one of amusement.
“Is it really so hard to be here?” She cocked her head, studying me with calm eyes.
I started to say yes—to lie.
It wasn’t that being here was hard.
It was the lying that was hard. It was the job that was hard.
It had never been like this before, and part of me was pissed off at her for changing everything.
I opened my mouth to say something…anything. I had no idea what I wanted to say, but as I stood there, trying to figure it out, my mind just went blank. Briar closed the distance between us.
She rose on her toes and pressed her lips to mine. “I don’t know why you’re so pissed off all of a sudden, but I really don’t feel like fighting. Can we just…not?” she whispered against my mouth.
When she went to pull away, I caught the back of her neck.
“Fine. We won’t fight.” I fisted my hand in her hair and tangled the soft, wavy strands around my fingers. “I’ve got a better idea anyway.”
Her mouth opened on a gasp as I caught the hem of her skirt and dragged it up so I could palm her ass.
She groaned, the sound turning into a shocked gasp as I sank my fingers into the crevice that ran between the rounded cheeks. I pressed even deeper, seeking out the pucker of her anus and probing at it.
She arched up against me, startled. Dragging her mouth from mine, she stared at me in surprise.
“I guess this is the sort of thing that never occurred to nice little girls like you, huh, Briar?”
Her cheeks flushed hot and red, but her voice was steady. “I’m a doctor, Cormac. I know what anal play is.”
“Do you now?” I dipped my head and pressed my lips to her ear. “Then why are you blushing like a virgin who just got felt up for the first time? Why are you clenching this perfect little ass of yours, even as you rock against me, like you want more, but you’re not sure if you should?”
Whatever answer she was about to make turned into a broken whimper as I breached the tight pucker between her cheeks with the tip of my middle finger.
I stared at her face as I wiggled and twisted, working deeper and deeper with every move.
I waited for her to call it off, to tell me to stop.
She didn’t. In fact, she brought her hands up, clutching at the front of my shirt as she started to rock more fervently against me.
“You like it, then,” I said, watching her. “Do you like me finger-fucking your arse like this, Briar?”
She whimpered.
“That’s not an answer,” I told her, pulling back.
She keened out a wordless sound of protest.
I caught her around the hips and nudged her closer to the bed, pushing her skirt up over her hips and baring them. She wore a pair of socks that went halfway up her thighs, with leather boots that went up almost as high.
Her ass was covered by a pair of black panties. She stood bent over in front of me now with those sexy boots and her ass covered by a scrap of silk, and it was the sexiest fucking sight I’d ever seen.
I caught her panties and tore them away with a wrench and twist of my wrist.
Shoving the scraps into my pocket, I tore the zipper of my pants open one handed, using the other to guide her forward until she was bent over the bed, face pressed into the mattress. “I’m going to make you scream, Briar. Unless you want your family to hear, you better be careful.”
She was already wet and slick, although still tight when I filled her on the first thrust. Using my thumb, I teased moisture up from her cunt to wet her ass. Once I had her more prepared, I circled my thumb against her there and pressed relentlessly, waiting for her to yield for me as she had before.
Briar whimpered low in her throat, made hungry, broken noises that made me even harder.
Once I had my thumb wedged inside her, I began to rock against her, using the grip I had on her other hip to haul her back against me. She started to thrust back, meeting
me with each deep, penetrating thrust.
She bounced up on her toes as I moved in her harder, filling her deeper and deeper.
The gnawing, burning edge still filled me.
Grabbing her hair, I fisted my hand in it and dragged her head from the bed, forcing her upper body upright. The mirror affixed to the dresser was directly across from us, and I watched as her fogged eyes locked on our reflections. “You see us, Briar?” I asked, my voice guttural and rough.
“Yes.”
“You see how I’m fucking you? How you’re moving on me? All but begging for me? Riding my dick, my thumb, like you don’t know how you want me to fill you?”
“Yes…Cormac…please…”
The broken sound shuddered through me and threatened to break me. I should have stopped, right then and there, should have just let it go. “You don’t even really know the man you’ve taken inside your body, Briar. You just think you do.”
“I know enough.” Her eyes cleared as she met my gaze, and for a long, long moment, we stared at each other and the intensity of the moment all but leveled me. She’d braced her hands on the bed to help support her weight, but as I watched her, she lifted one hand up and stroked it up her side, cupping her breast.
My balls drew tight as she rolled her nipple between her thumb and forefinger, then pinched it.
“Do your worst, Cormac,” she murmured.
* * *
“Do your worst, she says,” I muttered as I paced across the wide, brick patio that ran the length of the Downing’s house.
She was inside with Daria and Isabel, going over the newspaper and studying ads. The three of them were actually considering going out shopping tomorrow.
At least she had one flaw.
She was fuckin’ crazy.
I started to glance back over my shoulder toward the window where I’d last seen her but stopped myself just in time. I directed my attention back out toward the lawn. Winter might be breathing her cold breath down Philadelphia’s neck, but the lawn here at Seamus Downing’s estate still looked pretty nice. The grass was lush and green, and while there weren’t any flowers blooming, there was still color in the form of bushes and evergreens, the occasional sculptured hedge offering a bit of relief.
