Sparrow(8)

His body was muscled steel. Tantalizing and smooth, with the exception of three, old scars running from his stomach to his chest, his shoulder to his bicep, and a smaller one near his throat. A shamrock was tattooed on his chest across his heart, timeworn and faded.

A flashback of my friend Daisy and I eavesdropping on the teenage girls whispering in our apartment building’s stairwell made my heart stutter. I was just a kid, six years younger than the high school girls, when one of them excitedly told her friends that she’d finally managed to bed Troy Brennan. That he was a certain kind of guy: his body was built for fighting and fucking, and he did both with a passion, rage and brutality most girls wouldn’t forget.

But even if I wanted to get nasty with my husband, I couldn’t forget who he was—the guy who murdered Billy “Baby Face” Crupti, a murder so brutal the media reported that Crupti’s body had been chewed on by animals prior to being dumped in the water. And there was a priest who’d been found dead in our parish church, his tongue cut out.

Everyone in South Boston knew that Troy had killed them both.

No one said a word.

That should have told me a thing or a dozen about my husband.

His cruelty was infinite. His hands had touched blood, weapons, knives, dead bodies. Thinking about him caressing my body with those hands should’ve made me nauseous. Yet somehow, it didn’t…

“Not scared at all. You don’t know anything about me.” I turned in bed, offering him my back and hugging my knees to my chest. I buried my face in the soft pillow.

His side of the mattress lifted unexpectedly. I heard him pad across the floor to the bathroom, but he didn’t bother to close the door. I listened closely. He took a leak and washed his hands, whistling. When he returned, he stood there at the end of the bed in his underwear, his cock saluting in my direction.

“First time you've seen a boner?” he mocked.

I didn’t want to tell him the truth. Yes. So I gulped and looked up, concentrating on a piece of modern art, a painting of a naked woman behind him. I shrugged. “Yours is nothing special.”

“That’s where I can prove you wrong.” His smile almost passed for human.

“Thanks for the offer, but beside the fact I’d rather chew on used needles, I just got my period.” I pulled the duvet all the way up to my nose.

“Bull-fucking-shit.” His mouth twisted into a vicious smirk. “Let’s see it.”

“What?”

“Let’s. See. Your period,” he said slowly. “Take off your briefs.”

I scooted away from him, looking around me, trying to marshal my thoughts. “You’re not serious?”

“I don’t do humor, Sparrow. Besides, you’ve shown some spine so far, don’t wanna ruin it by chickening out on me, do you…wifey?”

“But…”

“The butt is a good option,” he said evenly, not a trace of amusement in his voice, “but I’m more interested in seeing your blood right now.”

I glanced around me, looking for...what? Sharp objects to throw at him as I ran? He could probably kill me just by breathing in my direction. Instead of taunting him like a three-year-old, I should’ve told him the truth.

“I’m not chickening out.”

He moved closer toward me. “Actions speak louder than words.”

Screw it. He wanted to play, and I was starting to understand his twisted game.

I stood up in front of him and peeled my PJ shorts down an inch at a time. My fingers scraped my pubic bones and despite my hatred of him, I found myself self-conscious about my scrawniness. I bet he was used to sleeping with women who were all curves. And I looked like a boy, with my pale skin, fragile frame and bonfire hair.

But he’d challenged me, and I had my stupid pride to keep intact.

“Underwear, too.” Brennan sat, falling onto my side of the bed with a soft thud as I stood in front of him, removing my clothing inch by inch.

My body vibrated as I held back my hatred. His gaze zeroed on my pelvic area, tucking one hand into his underwear and stroking himself leisurely. I took off my underwear, feeling a mixture of disgust and thrill with the situation. What the hell is wrong with you, Sparrow? Appalled, I wet my lips, watching him. Are you freaking high?

“Show me your blood,” he rasped.

I winced again, sucking my lower lip and releasing it slowly. My body hummed with embarrassment as I slid one of my index fingers between my folds, scraped the surface of my inside shallowly, and displayed my finger, showing him a scarlet smear of fresh blood.

I’d put the blood there while I was in the bathroom, purposely cutting my foot open with his razor and letting myself bleed so I could insert it between my legs. I’d closed the cut with the styptic pencil I’d found next to his razor and then rolled on a pair of socks to hide what I’d done, just to be safe. I knew it was sick, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

And I was desperate not to give Brennan what was mine, in case he decided to have me on our wedding night.

Troy inspected the blood on my finger, raised his eyes to meet mine and licked his lips, top to bottom. He looked like he was going to pounce and rip me open at any moment. Whether it was with lust or hate, I wasn’t completely sure. Either way, he was raw, untamed. Trouble.

“Do you really think a man like me will be put off by blood, Red?” he asked.

“Quite the opposite,” I said, using every ounce of confidence I still had in me. “But rape is beneath you. I know that.”

I hoped that.

Troy stopped stroking himself and leaned forward. I barely managed to control my quavering thighs when he parted his lips and took my bloody finger in his mouth while his eyes zeroed in on mine. He sucked my finger clean for a whole minute before releasing it with a pop and snaking his hands behind me, cupping my ass cheeks and jerking me toward him. I collapsed on the bed, straddling him. He smiled that mischievous smirk that seemed to highlight his startlingly handsome features, his eyes wild with abandon. My thighs clenched on either side of his waist.

Damn thighs.

Hell, this was bad. I needed to stop, this much I knew. My body, however, had very different plans.

“I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do,” Brennan said finally. “But so far you haven’t stopped me. Now why is that?”

I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I haven’t stopped you because I don’t want you to hurt me.” I put my hands on his bare chest to balance myself. His muscles were flexed, hard. Something about what he said annoyed me. He made it sound like I enjoyed his attention, the way he sucked on my blood. I didn’t. True, I didn’t feel violated—for some screwed up reason I wasn’t eager to explore—but I certainly didn’t ask for it.

A moment of silence passed between us as we looked at each other, my eyes imploring and his, contemplating. The only noise was the sound of faraway cars honking in the downtown Boston night and the lash of rain washing against his floor-to-ceiling windows.

“I don’t find you attractive.” My voice was hoarse.

A lie.

“Say that to your pussy.” He wasn’t offended one bit. “My briefs are soaked, Mrs. Brennan.”

A truth.

I blushed furiously, scrambling off his lap and almost kneeing his junk in the process. I darted to the end of the bed, desperate to avoid him. Resting on his elbows, he turned his head, his eyes narrowed on mine, challenging again.

“You’re wasting your time.” I covered my lower body with my hands, feeling my ears pinking before I even whispered the words. “I’m a virgin.”

“I had a feeling you would be.” Amusement danced in his eyes as he rolled closer and reached out to draw circles on my pubic bone. “That can be rectified.”

“I don’t want it to be,” I fired back, feeling all kinds of ashamed, annoyed and…Hell, who was I kidding? Troy Brennan really wasn’t that bad to look at. If you were willing to ignore the monstrousness lurking behind those ice-blue eyes, he might not be the worst candidate as a lover.

Of course, that was the last thing I was going to admit to him or anyone else in this lifetime.

“This period of yours…” He licked his lips, keeping his voice businesslike and ignoring my last comment altogether. “When is it going to end?”

“Four, five…years,” I answered, my lips twitching, but I thought about how it’d feel to have him, even five years from now. “What can I say, Mother Nature can be a bitch.”

“And she’s not the only one.” He flattened his hand on my stomach, and I let his heat seep through the fabric of my cotton shirt.

His master bedroom was magnificent, with marble flooring, a huge black-leather headboard, gray and white satin throws, rich beige rugs and custom lighting. It looked like something out of a catalogue. Breathtakingly impersonal and too sterile to feel at home in.

Just like its owner. But just like its owner, it was unbelievably striking.

It was different.

It was insane.

It was…something I didn’t hate, even though I desperately wanted to.

“Something tells me that if Mother Nature was in charge right now, you’d be riding me like a jockey.” He sat up and hauled me back toward his body, his breath caressing my skin.