“Oh, God,” I whisper. My heart still hammers in my chest, my nerves still fraught. The nausea I felt at the sight of the blood still lingers.
“Shhh,” he says, holding me. “Sebastian said memories might come back like that. What were you dreaming?”
I don’t want to tell him. Was that a memory? Or a nightmare?
“I can’t remember,” I lie.
He doesn’t question me at first, just holding me.
“You were fighting me,” he finally says. “Did you dream that I was hurting you?”
I sigh. “Aye. You were… God, you assaulted me. Like… like sexual assault.”
“I raped you?” The tone of his voice should warn me, but I don’t pay heed. Now that I’ve begun to tell him, I can’t stop.
I nod. “And there was so much blood. Every time you—I would—” My voice trails off when my throat suddenly tightens. He growls, his eyes narrowed as if the very thought makes him furious. I don’t like to talk about this at all. It’s making me nauseous again. Bile rises in my throat and my mouth waters. “Let me go. I’m going to be sick.”
He releases me and I race to the bathroom just in time. I heave the contents of my stomach into the toilet, too weak and sick to be embarrassed. He’s by my side, a cool washcloth pressed to my neck, then cheek.
“Poor girl,” he whispers. He’s kneeling beside me, holding my hair. “No more wine for you, young lady.”
“Isn’t the wine,” I protest, panting. I’m at least momentarily relieved that the nausea’s passed. “I can drink wine. It’s something else. Must’ve been something I ate. Damn calamari.”
“You said you were sick before we went out, though.”
He helps me to my feet and hands me a glass of water. I rinse out my mouth.
“Aye.”
“Well, no need to diagnose this,” he says. “Not now. You get yourself to bed.”
He half-leads, half-carries me back to bed and tucks me back in. “Now rest, sweet girl. You need your sleep.”
But sleep doesn’t come, not at first. He lies beside me, brushing his fingers through my tangled hair.
“How do I know?” I ask him. “How do I know that what I dreamt was only in my mind, and not a memory?”
“I suppose you’d have to ask,” he says. “I can assure you if you dreamt I raped you, that didn’t happen.”
“Of course not,” I whisper.
But they’re only words. How do I know? He’s a man capable of vicious, brutal things. I know he is. The wisps of memory that come to me of my family are the same. Just tonight he admitted to his brother’s casually delivering a beating, as well as retribution enacted on a woman. My own memory tells me my family were violent and vicious.
His is, as well.
I’ve married into a family of criminals.
What else have they done?
Can I love a man like him? A man I hardly know?
I finally fall asleep when the sun’s rising, but only for a short time. I wake consumed with nausea again. Whatever it is hasn’t abated.
I make it to the bathroom again, and he follows me. But this time, after I get back to bed, the nausea doesn’t leave me. I roll and twist in the sheets, my stomach clenching with queasiness. Cormac dresses in a pair of pajama bottoms and calls Sebastian.
“She’s sick. Says she didn’t feel well yesterday, and it got worse throughout the night. We ate the same food, yes. I’m fine. And no, no one would’ve had a chance to slip anything.”
It’s an odd place for the questions to go, but I suppose it isn’t out of the ordinary if you specialize in organized crime. My mind didn’t even go there, that I was somehow poisoned. But given who I am and who he is, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Cormac’s brows raise and he suddenly looks stricken. “Certainly. Aye. Most certainly possible. Yes, why don’t you come up.”
It dawns on me before he hangs up the phone.
Certainly possible.
My fatigue. The nausea. My unexpected tears and emotions I can’t seem to check.
“Cormac.”
He looks at me, his phone still in his hand. “Aye?”
“Am I pregnant?”
He blinks. “Sebastian’s bringing up a test right now.”
I sit up in bed.
“Why the long face?” he asks.
I blink and look up at him. “This is my serious, contemplating-life-choices face,” I reply. A corner of his lips quirks up, and he turns and walks to my dresser. He tosses me a pair of pajamas.
“Put those on before he gets here.” I blink. I’m still naked. Yikes.
I dress quickly, ignoring the way my stomach growls and churns, when a knock comes at the door outside. Cormac answers it and comes back with the doctor I recognize from the day I woke up from a coma.
“Good morning, Aileen,” he says pleasantly.
“Morning.”
I wonder what he’s seen. What he’s done. If he’s doctor to this crew of men, he’s likely seen loads. What does he know? What secrets does he hold? Did Nolan hurt the reporter, and if so, was the doctor called in to see her?