Our skin was cleaved together from the shoulder down, and the scent of us was tangled amid the sheets. Oddly enough, though I hadn’t drunk a drop of the hard stuff last night, I felt like I was hungover.
Groggy and drowsy, but comfortable.
This was going to be my future.
If I allowed it.
I could keep her at arms’ length, maintain a strict distance between us, see her only perfectly made up at meal times and have her by my side at galas, or I could have her likethis.
Raw.
Ripe.
Ready to plunder.
Almost shuddering at the thought, I looked her over, taking note that her hair wasn’t as much of a rat’s nest as I’d hoped. It was tangled and wavy around her head, a cloud of gold for me to breathe in.
I needed to work on that.
And Iwantedto work on that.
That was the difference.
When Camille had come back onto the scene, a week or so after Inessa and Eoghan’s wedding, I’d been reminded of that fucking promise I’d made. A few whispers here and there among my contacts, and I’d learned shit about the Vasovs that I’d always suspected but had never really wanted to know for certain.
Because he was the afore-mentioned frenemy, I wasn’t going to kill the Bratva Pakhan, but I wasn’t going to complain that she had.
If any fucker deserved it, it was Antoni Vasov.
The more I’d learned, the more I’d heard, the more that had been shared with me, I’d known I had to fulfill that promise to Mariska. She’d been a good mother, whose inability to bear a son and whose poor choices, of which I was dead center, meant her girls had to be raised by a fucking monster.
Camille had pushed all the right buttons yesterday when she’d tried to coerce me into this marriage, but she hadn’t known that I’d been planning our union for longer than she’d even registered who Brennan O’Donnelly was to her family.
I’d thought of an anonymous union. Kids produced after rutting between the sheets. A family forged between strangers.
Yet, here and now, there was nothing strange about how perfectly her tit fit in my hand. There was nothing usual about how delicious she felt in my arms.
I just needed to fatten her up, and she’d be my dream girl.
Fate definitely had a way of fucking with a man...
Because she wasn’t how I imagined she’d be, brazen after her time with the Sinners, and I had a feeling she’d be embarrassed, I was careful not to disturb her as I maneuvered away from her and made my way off the bed. We were so stuck together that it was impossible not to wake her, but she confirmed that incredible shyness that years with a goddamn MC hadn’t managed to erase by waking up and pretending to be asleep.
My lips curved into a smile that was both amused and wry, because she was already proving to be a complication.
A man like me, with the various stressors I had in my life, didn’t need complicated. If anything, I needed simple. Fuck, did I. But I liked how she had spunk in some things, then was innocent in others.
At least, I liked it for the moment.
After thirty fucking years, maybe I’d want to strangle her, but a lifetime married to me, married into the O’Donnelly clan, and I had to believe that she’d grow into her confidence.
I let her play pretend because I didn’t particularly want to face facts this morning, at least, not with her watching on. Especially when, quite by chance, I saw some dirty smudges on the arm nearest to me.
Bruises.
That fucker had bruised her.
Christ, I wished I’d been the one to kill the bastard now.