The Wedding Pact (The O'Malleys #2)(75)

Her tentative touch made him face her. He braced himself for the pity, but that wasn’t what he saw when he finally turned. No, there was pure and unadulterated rage. Her green eyes practically glowed with it. She took his hands. “Say the fucking word and I’ll see it taken care of.”

Shock left his mouth hanging open. “What?”

“Some things aren’t done, James. Some lines aren’t crossed. Family might be the weight that pulls you under, but they protect their own. These…” She ran a finger over his shirt, directly across one of the deepest scars. “He tortured his own flesh and blood, his children. You protect your children at all costs. To hurt them on purpose?” She shook her head, the fire in her eyes only growing. “The punishment is death.”

“You’d kill my father for me.” He was still trying to catch up with the unexpected reaction. She was so fierce, so furious, so ready to do violence on his behalf. And she wasn’t backing down. She’d do it. She’d find a way to get to my old man in prison and see justice done, and she wouldn’t blink or feel bad while she was doing it. He framed her face with his hands, his entire body shuddering with the strength of his realization. “I love you, Carrigan O’Malley.”

He kissed her before she could say anything else. He wouldn’t let her kill Victor. She carried enough. He wouldn’t be the reason she added to that burden. But that she’d offered and meant every word…it was a priceless gift that he could never repay. No one had ever gone to bat for him. Brendan might have stepped up more often than not to direct their old man’s rage away from his younger brothers, but this was different. Carrigan wasn’t family. She didn’t have a damn thing to gain by this. The only reason she’d be driven to demand Victor’s blood was because she felt just as deeply for him as he did for her. It didn’t matter if she said the actual words aloud. Her actions made that shit more than clear.

Her arms snaked around her neck, and she drew back enough to say, “This conversation isn’t over.”

“I know.” He kissed her again, delving into her mouth and showing her all the things he’d never have the words to say. How much he appreciated her, that he loved how fierce she was, how much he never wanted to let her go.

He didn’t know what the fuck they were going to do about their current situation, but he was determined to find a way around it. He couldn’t do anything less for the woman in his arms.



Carrigan’s fury didn’t abate as she kissed James. If anything, his words only drove it higher. He loves me. She’d known there was a feeling growing inside her, getting stronger every time she saw him, but she’d refused to put a title on it. Love. It was love. And she was putting him in danger right now for even being here with him.

One night. I’ll figure everything out tomorrow.

Things would fall into place where they would. Right now there was just her and James and several hours of freedom. She tugged on his shirt, pulling it up and over his head, needing to be skin to skin. Apparently he had the same idea because he had her dress off seconds later. He lifted her, and she quickly wrapped her legs around his waist while he carried her through the house to the same bedroom they’d been in the other night. “I’m never going to get enough of you, lovely. Never.”

That’s what she was afraid of. Because she felt the same way—that this was the end all, be all, and everything after this would be like living in a shadow. She kissed him harder. There is no tomorrow. There is just right now, in this moment, with this man. The feeling of a clock counting down in the back of her head intensified. This might be her last chance to have him, to feel his hands on her body, to have him whispering filthy things in her ear.

To tell him how she felt.

She opened her mouth to do just that, but some instinct held her back. If he knew she loved him, too, he’d never let her go. He’d fight to his dying breath for her. Which was the damn problem—his dying breath. I can’t let him die for me.

So she kept silent as he laid her on the bed and kissed her as if he never needed to breathe. His clever fingers did away with her bra and he sat back, pulling her panties with him. He stopped with them around her ankles, her feet pressed against his chest. “What do you need from me tonight?”

She pressed her lips together to keep from confessing everything—her fear and her shitty future and all the worries crowding to the forefront of her brain now that they weren’t losing themselves in each other. She focused on his blue eyes. How had she ever thought they were cold? They weren’t. They were the hottest flame. Really, there was only one answer. “Everything.”