CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TIERNAN
I always thought a bullet would finish me off.
But in the end, it was my wife that turned out to be my demise. She didn’t even do anything special. Nibbled on a slice of pizza while sitting in my lap, dangling her feet in the air, reminding me of our diabolical height difference.
The pizza place was packed with late-night clubbers. All my blood was concentrated in my cock. And all my cock wanted was to be buried inside
my wife’s pussy.
Not her ass. Not her mouth. Pussy.
I wanted my old life back. Where sex was something I approached on my terms. Recreationally. Sparsely. And as a form of punishment to others as well as myself.
All this Jane Austen yearning, frayed desperation bullshit made my skin crawl.
“I need to pee.” My wife hopped off my lap on the stool I was occupying. I stood up and followed as she wove through the crowd. No way was I letting her out of my sight.
It was jarring to care about a stranger.
I spent the majority of my adult life either killing people or screwing escorts. No part of me found humans a sacred species. Something worth preserving, let alone protecting.
But somewhere along the way I stopped seeing Lila as a human.
She was just Lila.
And the thought of some dipshite’s filthy hands touching those dozen shades of golden hair—sunlight, sand, flax, and daffodil—made me…
What, arsehole? You gonna try being a good husband now? Write her poems? Fuck her next to candles and roses?
Of course not.
I wouldn’t let roses anywhere near her. She hated them. What was this, amateur hour?
Lila stumbled over her own feet walking the straight line from our seat to the jacks. The sleep deprivation was taking its toll.
“Are you going to stand on guard?” Lila gave me an incredulous look.
“I’m coming in with you.”
Lila rose on her toes, putting her hand on my cheek. “Thank you for taking care of me.” She reached up and kissed my eye patch, and I hoped what I was feeling was a fatal heart attack and not fucking flutters. “From now on, I promise to take care of you, as well.”
She walked inside, locking the door behind her.
I fished my phone out and texted Tierney.
Tiernan: Do you still have those sleeping pills? I need to crush them into Lila’s drink.
Tierney: Aw, are we getting rid of her? I kinda got attached. ☹ Tiernan: I’m not offing her, you eejit. She needs to sleep.
Tierney: SHE’S PREGNANT, Tiernan. You can’t just give her shit.
Tiernan: She’ll drop dead at this rate.
Tierney: Is this concern I read between the lines, brother?
Tiernan: She is my Camorra warranty.
Tierney: Admit that you like her, and I’ll give you a solution to her sleeping problem.
Tiernan: I don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Tierney: To negotiate I’d have to budge from my demands. I’ll do no such thing.
I heard the toilet flush on the other side of the door. I didn’t have time.
Tiernan: Fine. I don’t want her dead. Happy?
Tierney: Elated. <GIF of Jonah Hill screaming excitedly>
The faucet was running. Tierney was typing.
Tierney: Whenever sleep escapes me, I find a willing victim and orgasm.
HARD. A good orgasm always knocks me out.
Tiernan: THIS is your advice?
Tierney: Yup. It’s a good one, brosky.
Tiernan: Hate you, sis.
Tierney: <3 <3 <3
_______
When we got home, I filled Lila a warm bath and threw a pink bath bomb into it. The entire bleeding bathroom reeked of essential oils and strawberries. I made a note to torch down the apartment to get rid of the smell.
Not that it needed to be set on fire. The temperature was already at a record fucking high.
Lila must’ve been a lizard in a previous life, because she liked the thermostat on seventy-six.
I preferred it at forty-nine. We settled for seventy-six. Whoever said marriage was all about compromise had never wedded an Italian princess.
“Don’t fall asleep in the bath,” I barked out the order.
She nodded sleepily, shutting the door in my face.
While Lila took a bath, I took my sister’s demented advice. It was shit terrible, but I had zero alternatives. Apparently, giving Lila pills could fuck up the baby. And while that sounded like a win-win situation to me, she seemed fond of the devil’s spawn.
Ambling to the kitchen, I grabbed a whiskey bottle and poured three fingers into a tumbler, tossing it back and wiping my mouth. I fished out my phone and texted Rhyland Coltridge.
Coltridge was a newly minted tech billionaire. He was also a former escort who used to screw half of New York’s socialites for a living. I had it on good authority he knew what he was doing in the sack. I needed expert advice. Someone who wouldn’t run their mouth. For all his faults—and fuck knew I could write a dissertation about them—he was discreet.
I knew, because my sister had hired him to overcome her own hang-ups back in the day.
Tiernan: I need advice.
Rhyland: Is this Tiernan Callaghan?
Tiernan: … Rhyland: Don’t reproduce.
Tiernan: Sex advice, you low-grade gigolo.
Rhyland: First of all? Very endearing. Second? I’m retired.
Tiernan: 20K an hour.
Rhyland: Sorry, should’ve specified: I’m retired AND a billionaire.
Tiernan: I’ll sell you my shares of App-date.
My having shares in his wholesome fake dating app had been a thorn in his side. Anyone associated with me was as good as dead in polite society.
Rhyland: JK. Giving back is my passion.
Rhyland: Talk to me, buddy.
Tiernan: Virgin. Skittish. Needs to come hard. No full-blown sex.
Rhyland: IDK if I’d call you skittish.
Tiernan: Not me, you eejit. HER.
Rhyland: Oh. Well, only one in five women orgasm from vaginal intercourse, so I wasn’t going to suggest penetration, anyway. Your best bet is eating her out.
The clit has over 10,000 nerve fibers. Not much room for error, unless your tongue is made out of sandpaper.
Groaning, I refilled my glass. A headache formed behind my eyelids.
Tiernan: I’ve never engaged in such activity.
Rhyland: Eating pussy? My condolences. Highly recommend. 12/10.
Rhyland: I’ll send a video with a demonstration on an adult doll.
Tiernan: And you have that kind of thing handy because…?
Rhyland: I taught a Harvard course last year. You know, as a world-renowned expert in pussy.
Rhyland: We all leave our footprint on this planet. You fight overpopulation. I promote great orgasms.
Tiernan: Let’s promote bringing this conversation to an end.
Rhyland: Forwarding you the reel. Make sure you sell your stock first thing
tomorrow morning.
Tiernan: One thing, Coltridge.
Rhyland: Yes?
Tiernan: This conversation never happened.
Five minutes later, I was watching Rhyland pleasuring a plastic doll with far too much enthusiasm. Ten minutes later, I entered our bedroom.
Lila was already in bed, running a towel over her damp hair.
I stopped at the foot of the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Her bloodshot eyes clouded. Christ, how long had it been since she had a decent night of sleep?
“I’m going to help you fall asleep.” I rolled the tip of my tongue over my teeth, tasting the residue alcohol. “If you let me.”
I never asked for permission.
What I wanted, I took.
I did ask for permission now.
She sat up straighter, expression wary. “How will you do that?”
“I can touch you in a way that would make you very happy. Very sleepy, too.”
She bit down on her lower lip, considering my proposal. I stood there, like a schoolboy, waiting for her words. Waiting to hear if she’d let me serve her. Kneel at her altar and eat her out.
Pathetic.
“What if you hurt me by accident?” She rubbed her button nose. “That monster did. I can still feel it, sometimes. Between my legs. His rough fingers. His thing inside me.”
I closed my eye, drawing in a breath. My bloodthirst for this faceless tool was infinite. I wanted his life more than I did Alex’s.
“I would never hurt you like that.” I found my voice, opening my eye.
“Even if I wanted to. Even if you begged me to. Even if you cheated on me.
Even if you killed me.” And then, because it felt too raw, too real, I added, “Protecting you is a compulsion at this point. I’d stop the night from falling if darkness scares you, Lila.”
Where the fuck did this come from? I had no idea, but it wasn’t a lie.
I felt exposed in that moment. Like she had a loaded gun and a clear shot to finish me off. I hated it, and her, and this. But the thing about compulsion was, you didn’t have a choice.
Lila nodded. “I trust you. My body is yours.”
She leaned back, popping the two first buttons of her silky white nightgown. Her breasts spilled out, full and round and perfect. Her pale nipples were diamond-like studs.
She didn’t ask what I planned on doing to her.
If I were going to fuck her, eat her out, toss her on her belly and ride her
arse.
Lila gave me full autonomy.
Joke’s on her, because I hadn’t the freshest clue what to do with it.
“If it ever gets too much, tug my hair,” I said. “And I’ll stop immediately.”
She smiled in gratitude.
Now what? There was no buildup. No foreplay. I couldn’t just rip her panties off and start feasting. I obviously didn’t plan this sufficiently.
Christ, the look on her face. The hope gleaming from her eyes. It was too late to back out now.
I’d been postponing this moment since our first kiss, not wanting to fuck this up. And now I was standing here and she was sitting there and we were both still, breathing heavily, and very, very quiet.
“Can I see your penis?” Lila licked her lips, breaking the tension.
I nodded solemnly.
I used one hand to undo my belt and pop my slack’s button, then rolled down my zipper. I pushed my Armani briefs down. My cock sprang out, purple and fully erect. An angry vein rippled across it, root to crown.
She fell forward on her palms, crawling across the mattress to get a better look. A spike of arousal and horror shot through me.
Her face was now inches from my cock, and I’d never been this turned on in my entire bleeding existence. God, look at her. Something was very wrong with society, that it was legal for this scene to happen.
Her. Virginal, innocent, sweet to the point of toothache.
Me. Murderer. Psychopath. Pervert.
Lila tilted her head, studying my cock like it was a medieval painting.
“Are they all the same size?” Her head snapped up, her pale blues meeting my eye.
“No.” I was glad she couldn’t hear the strain in my voice. “Size, length, and width vary.”
She frowned, tapping her lips pensively. “Makes sense.”
“Why?”
“Because if…he…had one like yours, I don’t think I’d have survived.”
Something primal kicked me into high gear at her words.
I ducked down and caught her lips in mine to shut her up. She gasped into my mouth but opened up for more. Our tongues found one another. I sank to the mattress, laying her down. I braced my arms on either side of her head without mounting her. I didn’t want her to think about that arsehole.
Our kiss deepened, and Lila reached for my cock between us. At the touch of her silky hand, it spasmed and pulsed, leaking into her palm. She
moaned into my mouth and patted it like it was a dog’s head. I didn’t even care. It was perfect. She was perfect.
She was playful and confident and fearless. I no longer set the pace of what was happening. The conqueror became the conquered. And I knew, with amusing, dark finality, that I was completely, tragically, wretchedly hers.
She used her free hand to hold the side of my face, stroking her fingers along my cheekbone. Her mouth moved over mine, looking for different angles to deepen our kiss. Meanwhile, the hand that worked my cock discovered that if she stroked it up and down, it instinctively thrust into her.
She did that while I went through Rhyland’s idiotic video in my head, trying to remember all the right moves, and coming up blank.
Lila let go of my cock to tug her nightgown down all the way. She fumbled with the material. I pushed myself backward on my knees, watching her.
You bleeding idiot. You should be doing that to her.
“Should I…” I cleared my throat. “I mean, should I?”
Did you just mumble, motherfucker?
She bit her lower lip, nodding.
I unbuttoned her gown, searching her face intently for signs of discomfort.
My wife looked alarmed and a little overwhelmed, but not like she wanted to stab and shoot me simultaneously, like our so-called honeymoon.
“I want you to put your penis in my mouth. See why you like it so much.”
“No,” I growled, a little too quickly, a little too harshly. “This is not
about me. It’s about you.”
“Shouldn’t it be about both of us?”
She reached for my face again and slowly removed my eye patch. I held my breath, forcing myself not to look away and hide.
“I think you are beautiful,” she voiced out loud, to bring the point home. “And if I had to choose a husband all over again, I’d still choose you.”
I leaned down, taking her right nipple in my mouth, giving it a good suck. It was sweet and warm and smelled of her coconut body lotion. Lila arched, asking for more, and I used my left hand to tease her other nipple,
tracing it with my finger, gently stroking and tugging, testing different pressures to see what made her toes curl.
Her tits were… Ah, fuck, was there even a word for this? I couldn’t get enough. My tongue lapped against every inch of her right breast, then moved to the left. All the while, she was squirming, thrusting her pelvis upward, begging for something she didn’t understand, and I didn’t know how to give.
I kissed my way down her torso, not because I remembered Rhyland did that in the video—I couldn’t recall my own bleeding name, let alone the tutorial—but because I wanted to know what every corner of her body tasted like. I ran my tongue along the curve of her waist, hands gripping her ass as she squirmed breathlessly—ticklish, duly noted—kissed her hip bones, nuzzled my nose into her pussy through her panties, inhaling deeply.
I realized her scent was an aphrodisiac; it made my cock leak precum all over the sheets.
I wanted to rip her panties to shreds and gorge on her pussy without even knowing what it tasted like. But I had to be careful with her.
No, wanted to be careful with her. I’d won the most precious thing she had to give—her trust—and I wasn’t going to fuck it up.
I moved my hands across her legs, massaging them, working my way up; I sat back on my knees, snatching her right leg by the ankle, pulling her panties off.
Her pussy was a work of art, and I’d visited most museums in the Western world.
An achingly tiny triangle, protected by golden curls a shade darker than her hair.
No one taught her to wax, trim, shave, seduce. And yet she was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
I kissed each of her toes, maintaining eye contact. She purred and stretched across the mattress like a lazy cat. I kissed the inside of her ankle, moving south, to the back of her knee, kissing and lapping at her inner thigh, slowly, slowly, giving her the chance to stop me, to change her mind.
She didn’t.
My mouth watered the closer I got to her pussy. My cock twitched uncontrollably.
I stopped at her center, giving her a slow, earnest lick from arse crack to clit.
She moaned so hard I thought she was going to wake people in Nebraska.
Stroking her inner thighs, I started licking, using my free hand to feel for her elusive little clit. I wasn’t completely hopeless. I knew its general whereabouts. When I found it, I started massaging it.
My wife tasted incredible. Of clean skin and sugar water and an addiction I never thought I’d pick. My tongue dug deeper, penetrating her, my thumbs spreading her wider. She arched tautly, like a drawn bow.
“Tiernan,” she choked out my name, speaking it in her sweet, soft voice. “What are you doing?”
“Playing with my food,” I murmured into her core, knowing she couldn’t read my lips.
She reached for my hair. Gave it a good, earnest tug. I froze, lifting my head up to watch her.
“Shit. Was that too much?” I felt myself honest-to-god bleeding blushing. The fuck was wrong with me?
Lila snapped her head up from the pillow, face pink, eyes unfocused.
She wrenched her fingers from my hair, yanking out a good portion of it.
“Why did you stop?” It was amusing, how I could hear her tone based on her sharp movements.
“You pulled my hair. That was our safe word.”
Her eyebrows slammed together. “I was close.”
“You were?”
“Yes. And I wanted to see what it feels like. Go back to it.” She pushed my head between her legs hurriedly, and I laughed.
I went back to work, picking up the pace. Every time I thrust my tongue into her, her muscles squeezed, trying to trap it inside. And every time my finger pad flicked just below the clit, she writhed and whimpered.
She was close again.
So was I.
Without realizing it, I was rubbing my cock against the mattress, seeking friction. Lila yanked at my hair again. This time I glanced upward before stopping. She thrashed and moaned with abandon. I continued.
Her hips jerked, trying to escape my tongue, my lips, my fingers, and I clamped a hand around her waist, pinning her to the bed.
She came hard against my tongue with a rush of liquid heat. I knew, because I could barely pry it out of her cunt. A cunt that was now dripping.
My desire for her was violent.
I slurped it, rubbing myself faster against the bed. She whined in pleasure, stretching her leg.
My orgasm hit different this time. It built, like a castle, brick upon brick, curling skyward, looming over everything else, until there was nothing but pleasure, and her scent, and her flesh.
I came inside my hand so hard my vision blurred. Every muscle in my body was rigid. Every inch of it slicked with sweat. I buried my face in the crook of her knee, breathing her in.
“Oh, fuck.” I kissed her kneecap, chuckling, my lips skimming along her smooth bronze flesh. “Jesus Christ. That was…perfect.”
I wasn’t an empath, but I did feel pity for the rest of the male population for living their wretched lives without knowing what my wife felt like. I stood up and proceeded to the bathroom to wash my hands. Returning two minutes later, I found my wife asleep, her head resting on the silk pillow, mouth slightly agape.
I pulled the duvet over her, kissed her forehead, and turned off the light.
I paused in front of the bathroom again, only for a nanosecond, before deciding there was no way I was washing that woman off my skin.
Instead, I took her “pissed off” spot in the recliner in the corner of the
room and sat back, watching her sleep.
All eight hours of the night.
