Only Yours (A McDade Brothers Novel Book 2)

by Scarlett Finn

  “Did you figure it out?”

  Mesmerized by the sight of her small fingers on his face, she lost herself to her thoughts. “It didn’t feel good… It makes no sense… We didn’t marry for love. Being faithful to you shouldn’t have mattered. We hadn’t even had sex.”

  “Maybe you just didn’t want to be like them.”

  “My mom never cheated,” she said, turning her hand to stroke him with the back of her fingers. “Not that I know anyway… I used to hear her crying, on the phone to her friends talking about whichever latest bimbo my dad had taken to Tahiti or whatever…” Frowning at herself, recalling the memories renewed her sense of guilt. “I used to get so mad at her… I used to think my dad wasn’t doing anything wrong because my mom never showed that she was willing to fight for him. She never went out and dragged her man back, you know? I used to think she was so weak… I wanted her to go out there and grab hold of him. I wanted her to demand fidelity.”

  “Might have worked,” he said. “Or she could’ve ended up like my mother.”

  “I know,” Whisper said, hooking her wrist over his shoulder and resting her head on the back of her hand. “I was a kid. I didn’t get it. I get it now. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was doing to her… I’d hear them fighting about it. She’d be sniveling and crying, begging him not to go to the bed of whoever… He liked it… He liked that she was dependent on him…He liked the power he had over her.”

  “My father was the same. Though he coupled his cheating with a helluva lot of psychological abuse.”

  “My father was definitely more of the physical variety… Though I guess you could say ignoring her for weeks on end was a form of psychological abuse. Even when he was home and talking to my brothers, he could go a whole month without saying one word to me or my mother.”

  “We’re not going to be like them, Peanut,” he said, finger-combing her hair away from her face.

  Whisper raised her head from her hand. “How do you know that?”

  Stroking her lip with his thumb, he brought their mouths closer. “I don’t want anyone else.”

  “You say that now. But how will you feel after six months… or six years… or three kids. Won’t you need some peppy twenty-two year old to make you feel like a real man?”

  “My definition of a real man isn’t the same as my father’s,” he said. “I want to be with you. Only you. I’m only yours.”

  Sitting back, Whisper met his eye. “That hasn’t been my experience,” she said. “Since we got married, you’ve been keeping me at arm’s length… If you wanted me so bad, why not have sex with me straight away? It’s not like I was going anywhere.”

  “I needed you to be ready,” he said. “I know you. I knew how you’d be if I was like every other guy.”

  Sinking down onto her back again, her lips curled. “If you want to be like every other guy I’ve had in my life, you should probably punch me in the face.” Arching her back, she stretched, settling deeper into his bed. “But please don’t, your bed is too comfortable to bleed on.”

  Bowing over her, he brushed his lips on hers. “Never.”

  Before he could deepen the kiss, Whisper laid her hands on his shoulders to separate their mouths. “You wanted me to fall for you… to feel something.”

  Shifting around, he lay down on the bed at her side, looming over her. “Do you?”

  “Do I…” Whatever was going on between them wasn’t something she’d ever experienced. In fact, it was so unique, Whisper hadn’t yet decided if she liked it or not. Drawing a finger over the shoulder seam of his tee-shirt, she breathed out. “Damn, I wish you hadn’t kissed me.”

  “Maybe you weren’t ready.”

  When he started to withdraw, she threw her arms around his neck to keep him near. “I can’t feel anything for you, Zay,” she said, fixated on his lips.

  “Why not?”

  “Because your brother will be home soon and maybe he’ll like the idea of getting married to Madison Byrne. Maybe he won’t want to confront your father or tell Parker about Nicole… If any of those things happen, I’m out. Right back where I started.”

  “You can’t admit to feeling something for me,” he said. “ ‘Cause you still don’t trust me.”

  While one arm remained around his neck, the other loosened so she could lay a hand on his chest. “I need you to do what’s best for you, Zay,” she said. “Your family is your life, and I’ll be honest, I don’t have a damn clue how this is going to play out. I can’t see a way that everyone can make it to the other side. Something will have to give.”

  “You think it will be you.”

  “Makes the most sense… But that’s not on you. If Doran wants to get married, the Doherty alliance is over… The way your dad was talking, it’s over anyway… My family will be coming for me. Even if you wanted to be with me… soon there won’t be a me to be with.”

  “I can take on your father.”

  “And Caelan and Miles?” she asked, shaking her head despite his obvious determination. “I wouldn’t want you to. You’d be committing suicide.” He inhaled as though to object, so she put her fingers to his lips. “Even if you’re ten times stronger than every Doherty that comes at you, how will your family react to you standing up for me? You’re a valuable McDade resource and—”

  He flew up off the bed, surprising her into silence. “Maybe I don’t want to be a resource,” he said and whirled around, opening his arms. “What the fuck are we doing, Whis? All of us! What the fuck are we doing?”

  Pushing onto her elbows, the strength of his frustration was intriguing. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  As the third son, Zaid would never be in charge of his family’s businesses, not unless something happened to Parker. But her husband wasn’t a backseat kind of guy. Whisper could only imagine how he’d gotten this far in life without asserting his dominance over all of them.

  In contrast to the Dohertys, who had no rightful heir, the McDade side was brimming with them.

  “I idolized my father too,” he murmured.

  “Not nice when they fall from their pedestal, is it?” she asked. “Figuring out they’re human and you’ve been chasing an illusion your whole life… it’s depressing.”

  “My father fell from his when I found out what he’d done to my mother… And then Score… What my father let Parker do…” He exhaled. “Guess we know why…” Whisper didn’t know the full story there, but figured it wasn’t the time to ask. “But what was I gonna do, Whis? Where was I gonna go?”

  She understood that feeling all too well. “We’ve been conditioned since we were born,” she said, sitting up in the middle of the bed. “This is what we are, Zay. You’re a McDade… I’m a Doherty.”

  Rushing back to the bed, he sat down facing her. “What if it didn’t have to be that way?” he asked, scooping a hand around her cheek beneath her hair.

  Though his words were more aspirational than optimistic, they did make her smile. “I had no idea I’d married an idealist,” she said. “You have to spell it out for me, baby. What do you want? Hmm? Tell me and you’ll get it…” That statement took on so much more meaning now that she suspected her husband had been invested in their relationship since long before they were married. He breathed in as if to speak, Whisper got there first. “Please bear in mind, we don’t know who might be eavesdropping on us.”

  Nodding toward the bathroom door, she wanted to make sure he didn’t say anything that Nicole may be able to take back to the other McDades. The plan was to keep her quiet until they came up with a plan of their own and got a lay of the land. Whisper doubted their plan would involve silencing the naïve adulteress for good.

  He inhaled and released some of his negative energy. “Let’s give her something to listen to, wife.”

  Easing the straps of her dress from her shoulders, he unhooked her bra and laid her down while dipping forward to kiss each of her breasts.

  “Zay,” Whisper murmured, ru
nning her hands through his hair.

  When he lifted his lips from her breasts, she strengthened her hand on the back of his head to guide his mouth up to hers. She’d wished out loud that he hadn’t kissed her, not because it wasn’t incredible, but because it complicated everything.

  He hadn’t kissed her for so long. All her assumptions about his resistance were wrong too. He had wanted her, but wanted to wait until she’d come around to his way of thinking. Zaid hadn’t just watched her, he’d studied her, he knew her. If he’d taken from her on their wedding night, Whisper would never have seen him as anything other than every other horny guy she’d ever met.

  Waiting caused her to think. Her attraction to him had time to simmer. Zaid had chosen not to fulfill her, which had built her anticipation, warmed her fantasies, and opened her to looking at him in different ways. Ways that led to guilt over the lie and a belief that they could never have anything real while that barrier was in place.

  But the barrier had come down. Whisper couldn’t love a man she couldn’t trust and couldn’t ask a man to trust her while lying to him. Except neither of those obstacles remained. Did that mean she could trust him and ask for his trust? It couldn’t. If it did, then she could come to depend on him, could feel for him… could love him.

  “We shouldn’t,” Whisper said, her voice weak within the pant that left her lips when his rose.

  Her husband wasn’t of the same mind; she could read that in his narrow heated eyes. “But we’re gonna.”

  Kneeling up, he yanked his tee-shirt off over his head and leaned backward to grab the rope she’d left on the end of the bed. The corner of her lips rose when he stole one of her wrists and raised it to the head of the bed to tie her to it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Proving that you trust me,” he said, intent on his work tying one wrist to the headboard and then the other.

  Whisper didn’t equate sexual trust with other kinds of trust. Being tied up by her husband was exciting. Even if it turned sinister, she could turn herself off to whatever was being done to her. Numbing out was a particular skill that children in families like hers had to learn fast.

  “Peanut,” he said.

  She looked at him, having not realized that her mind was wandering until his voice broke through. Pulling on her wrists to test his work, Whisper was satisfied that he’d done it well.

  Curiosity tilted her head. “Why do you call me that?”

  “Because you’re tiny,” he said. “At your best when you’re salty… And lethal to anyone who doesn’t have an immunity to you.”

  So much had changed so quickly. Whisper couldn’t fight against him taking control; it was probably exactly what she needed while being so at sea. Somehow, he’d known that. Zaid knew her. How had she missed that? He knew things about her that even she hadn’t been aware of. He knew how to get into her thoughts, and into her heart, something no other man had ever accomplished.

  The whole thing could be a ruse, but she couldn’t figure out what benefit he’d get from conning her. The current situation was the first real and raw trial they’d had to face and they were doing it together. He wanted to do it together, like it was the most natural thing in the world for them to lean on each other.

  “Can I ask you something else?” He nodded once. Given that she was tied up at his mercy, it made sense that he’d grant her request. It wasn’t like running away was an option. Whatever his answer, she’d have to accept it. “Whose idea was our marriage?”

  “You ready to hear the answer to that?” he asked. Her response was to bend her leg and bring her foot around to stroke his torso. “Your father came to us, proposed the alliance.” Sliding his hand up and down her ankle and shin, he let her continue her caress until he stalled her foot in the middle of his chest. “Burl wanted the in, to expand our network. He recognized the power we had after…”

  “The bloodbath,” she said on a half shrug. “That’s what I call it.”

  He nodded in understanding. “We couldn’t ask for money or territory. The point was to join forces, so we’d be obligated to share those resources. Parker said the only way to judge whether Cyrus was serious or not was to ask him to give us what he valued most.”

  That was sort of dumbfounding because Whisper was low in her father’s list of priorities. “And somehow all of you thought that was me? Boy were you wrong.”

  “Bosco was the first to suggest it. Can’t say I didn’t have the thought,” he said. One side of his sinister mouth curled. “But he voiced it.”

  She waited a few seconds before asking, “Did he know?” Zaid just nodded and raised her foot to his mouth to kiss each of her toes. Bosco knew how Zaid felt about her. He’d been there three years ago when Whisper first got her future husband’s attention, and the two were trusted friends. “I like Bosco.” Zaid stopped kissing to frown at her, but she laughed. “Not like that.”

  “You scare him,” Zaid said, kissing her big toe once more before sliding her foot down his body to the outside of his hip.

  “Because I’m volatile.”

  He pushed up her skirt. “Because he knows there’s nothing I’d deny you.”

  This time when their eyes met, she read an intense sincerity in his that humbled her. “If I was going to pick a man to love,” she said, trying her best. “It would be you.”

  “Baby steps, Peanut,” he said, shifting down the bed between her legs, working her panties off as he went. After tossing them over his shoulder, he slid his hands up the front of her thighs to expose her pussy to him. “I have waited too long to taste what’s mine.”

  Zaid began to lower, but Whisper tensed her legs, bringing them together a fraction to block his way. “You can have me anyway you want,” she said. “But you will have to be willing to share.”

  His brow snapped down in a glare. “What the fuck? No, we’re past that, Whis. You want to play and flirt and rile me up, that’s—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not talking about games or even desire; I’m being practical. You said that if we had to walk away, we would, but we’d do it together. The easiest way for us to support ourselves, at least at first, will be—”

  “No,” he said, tightening his grip on her thighs until she was sure his fingers were leaving their prints on her. “You will not whore yourself to feed us. I can think of ten better ways right off the top of my head.” Lunging down, he got in her face. “You’re my whore. No one else’s. I have the paperwork to prove it.”

  Whether it was a naïve fantasy or not, it was nice that he wanted to keep her for himself, even if it couldn’t be a reality. On their wedding night, she’d reprimanded him for calling her a slut because words like that only worked in dirty talk if there was an element of respect beneath them. Whisper felt that respect now, she felt him, and his possession of her. It heated her up so much that she wanted to claim him too.

  “Understand that I’ll do what I have to,” she said. “To protect you.”

  All her life, she’d been vehement in her loyalty to her family. Learning that her family—which translated to her father these days—didn’t have the same fidelity to her changed things. That was probably why she’d felt isolated and alone for so long. Whisper had no anchor. Zaid was offering one. He was giving her something to cling to, a lifeline, something to protect and be loyal to.

  For the first time in her life, the person she’d die for was willing to do the same in return. It was intoxicating to be embroiled in something as pure as it was corrupt.

  “Sounds like love to me, Peanut,” he said, brushing his mouth over hers and pushing her legs farther apart.

  Her eyes closed as she tried to steal another kiss. “I don’t want you to love me.”

  For so many reasons. If he said it and she believed it then lost it, or he cheated on her, Whisper would be so broken there would be no return. But that was a pipedream compared to the reality of what was about to play out. In this bed, they could enjoy each other wi
th ease. Maybe she had a few hours, maybe a few days, but as soon as her father caught up with her, she’d lose her life.

  Whisper didn’t want Zaid to love her because she couldn’t promise to stick around and love him back. Losing her while their connection was still so new could ruin him. She didn’t want to be the reason that such a magnificent, powerful man broke.

  “Too late, Doherty,” he said.

  Whisper gasped when he thrust himself down her body. The next time she felt his mouth, it was feasting on her. She forgot about objecting and reality and good sense. Everything faded to nothing while he stimulated her clit with his tongue and fingertips. He pleasured her to paradise with a mouth more skilled than she could have imagined.

  Still panting and vibrating with the thrill of orgasm, Whisper couldn’t breathe or see right when he began to kiss his way up her body.

  “Ready for the entrée?” he asked and kissed her chin, then her lips.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been withholding that from me,” she said, using all of her energy to force each of the words out.

  “No more withholding,” he said and kissed her again.

  His hand moved between their bodies. Anticipation fizzed to excitement as she waited for him to take his dick from his shorts.

  Before her husband could move onto the main course, someone came into the bedroom. “Zay, have we—oh, shit,” Bosco said and immediately turned his back.

  Whisper barely had time to register his identity because her vision was still blurry. Zaid pounced up to grab his tee-shirt, which he flung over her. He probably meant to cover her naked chest, but, in his haste, managed to cover her face too.

  “Think about knocking?” Zaid demanded.

  She guessed from the way the bed moved that he’d shifted to sit on the edge of the mattress facing his friend.

  “That your wife?” Bosco asked.

  “Yes,” Zaid snapped. “What the fuck, B—”

  “I’m sorry,” Bosco said, a snicker in his voice. “I didn’t know you were fucking her.”