Deadly Seduction (6 page)

She smiled slightly. “I always did love your honesty.”

“So, about tonight…”

“What about it?”

Cillian yawned out loud. “I’m mighty tired. Please don’t make me drive all the way back to Birch Tree tonight. I don’t think I can stand to see Brianna…not now.”

“You can stay over and I won’t even put you on the sofa if you do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Take another shower and brush your teeth. I have some extra toothbrush heads in the cabinet for my Sonicare toothbrush and there should be some spare men’s boxers around.”

Cillian opened his mouth to object as she stood and held her hands up. “I don’t give a crap if you showered over at Chiara’s house but I am not sleeping in the same bed as a man who just crawled out of a
whore’s
bed. Sorry, it’s not how I roll, Cillian, and you oughta know that.”

“Chiara is an escort—a highly expensive one at that—and she’s one of the cleanest women I have ever met. If I were you, I’d be more worried about me sleeping with my old lady.”

Gisela stopped walking and turned around to face him. “If you’d come from fucking her, you wouldn’t get in my bed, no matter how tired you were.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry,
love
, you know how I’m all about the truth.” She smiled before she disappeared into the bedroom.

Cillian approached her hallway bathroom and closed the door behind him.

He thought it was sick how he’d just finished fucking another woman less than two hours previously and his cock was ready to go again.

How could he not have these thoughts when he was about to crawl into bed with the beautiful and untouchable Gisela Jackson? His first love and the woman who’d obliterated his heart until he didn’t think he’d ever be capable of loving another person again?

To this day, although he had love for his brothers and sisters, he only loved his children as much as he loved Gisela and this was a major transgression on his part.

The Club came first before everything. Love the man, you have to love the Club—no ifs, ands or buts; and the old ladies got that.

However Cillian could never wrap his head around this and it bothered him deeply.

He felt like a priest, surrounded by religion his entire life but the concept of God still eluded him.

He felt ambivalent about the Club.

It was a means to an end, a way to make income and the only life he knew yet he didn’t
love
it. He was power hungry and got off on all the respect being the VP provided him. He also liked the brotherhood involved because at the end of the day, that was what the Club was about. He would take a bullet for his brothers but it wouldn’t be one he’d
want
to take.

From the moment Gisela had entered his life, she’d been his reason for getting up and taking a shower, living from day to day. Hoping, praying, and wishing they would someday have a chance at a
real
future together.

Perhaps that was the reason why she felt justified enough to make her speech. She’d finally accepted she would never escape this life and she’d stopped trying. Not only did she not want to escape it, she’d finally embraced it and made peace with it.

God knows he wanted that kind of peace to settle within him about the Club. He was tired of living in his father’s shadow and being Desmond Cox’s son. He wanted to forge his own path and he had no intention of changing a thing except perhaps switching to something that was a bit more lucrative and safe.

Human trafficking.

The Triads, Russian Mafia and Albanians were rolling in the fucking dough because it’s what they did.

Desmond would have no part of it.

Raymond refused to employ Asian or Eastern European women because of it.

Everyone thought it was too damn dirty to touch.

And yet, running guns and selling drugs was perfectly all right because no one got hurt?

As far as he was concerned, their brand of crime was a way to make money and there was more money in pussy than anything else in the world.

Cillian didn’t want to change human trafficking but he would have made it more user friendly for the women. He would buy up a bunch of women and there would be a system in place where they could earn their way out of the life in a year’s time.

The amount of profit he could turn on a whore in one year would be immeasurable. And he would set aside a small sum to send her on her way, perhaps ten thousand dollars. He approximated that he could probably make ten times that much in a year so give her part of what she earned and she would still be better off than the shithole she’d come from.

It was a plan he’d shared only with Ronan and his uncle in England, Dexter “Hardy” Cox, and his father’s youngest brother. In fact, he and his uncle were, ironically, the same age.

Hardy was already involved in human trafficking and making a killing but he hadn’t told Dizzy about it. He knew his father would send him to London personally to murder his own uncle if he knew about it. There was a lot of shit Cillian had done in his life but murdering a family member was beyond the pale, and a line he wouldn’t cross regardless of the consequences. That was some scary, Sicilian
Godfather
bullshit and he couldn’t do that. His heart was made of stone but he could never stoop that low and think he’d ever be redeemable. Once someone stepped over the line, they didn’t come back.

He’d seen it happen with his brother, Jaden’s first kill and again, when his half-brother, Kaz, murdered someone for the first time. It wasn’t in their DNA and they weren’t strong enough to get past it, to let it go. Perhaps that made them better people than he was or maybe it just meant he was a sociopath.

No, he couldn’t have been one because he could feel empathy and he always had to justify his murders. He couldn’t just kill a random individual; perhaps that is why he felt like shit about having to kill Riley.

The guy might be a Fed or he might not be but he hadn’t personally
wronged
him. And in his heart of hearts, he knew the guy didn’t have enough to indict any of the Club members because all of the evidence he possessed was purely circumstantial. He was being ordered to hit this guy because his father had something to prove to Emilio Navarro. He wanted to demonstrate he could be as badass as the
Aztecas Infierno
cartel and that would never happen.

Cillian wasn’t chopping anyone’s fucking head off with a machete and he wasn’t about to have a kamikaze shoot-out with the cops anytime soon.

There was crazy and there was
fucking insane
.

Aztecas Infierno
were about a million miles past
fucking insane
. They would murder their own families if money was involved. It was a different culture, a different mind frame, and Cillian couldn’t buy into the concept of human life being so worthless and
cheap
.

He soaped himself down and rinsed off before he stepped out of the shower and toweled himself off quickly.

Gisela’s toothbrush and toothpaste were set on the large area of the double sinks. She also had a bottle of Listerine which he liberally drank from and swished in his mouth for thirty seconds before he spit, grabbed her toothbrush, applied toothpaste and turned it on.

If she was worried about getting germs from him, she could live with it. They’d exchanged bodily fluids in another life for God’s sake. He didn’t see the harm in using her toothbrush; after all, it wouldn’t cause her any permanent damage.

After he’d finished up, he turned off the light and walked into the bedroom. He could tell by her soft breathing she was asleep. She was drunk when he’d spoken to her and the marijuana hadn’t helped her inebriated state.

Cillian removed his towel and let it drop to the Persian rug beneath his feet before be crawled into bed behind her and spooned her. He buried his face in her hair for a moment and smelled the delicious scent of Garnier and her perfume, something by Christian Dior or Chanel. She always did prefer French perfumes.

The scent of her and the proximity to her warm, soft body lulled him to sleep.

Chapter Four

Gisela

I knew it wasn’t my imagination when I awoke in the middle of the night and felt something hard pressed against the small of my back.
I turned over and met Cillian’s sleeping form face to face.

How could I have fooled myself into believing it’d all been a dream? It sure as hell had felt like one. I hadn’t given him permission to sleep in my bed, did I?

Oh holy fuck, I had because his skin smelled of
my
body wash and he looked so innocent, so sexy, so mouthwatering hot as he slept.

This was all so very wrong.

I was single but that didn’t mean I was dead. I had a regular bootie call with Leo Abandonato. He was a few years older than me and married but we had great bedroom chemistry and it kind of just happened. Maybe it was because he always managed to get himself in so much trouble and was in my office at least once every few months.

We enjoyed one another’s company, spoke about the same subjects because we were both Harvard school grads, and then we would go up to one of his father’s luxurious hotel suites and fuck one another’s brains out.

It was the perfect arrangement because I wasn’t tied down and I didn’t have to feel anything for anyone.

My heart had and always would belong to the man right across from me who slept in the nude and was married to a whore he would soon be rid of—hopefully.

Although we never managed to rid ourselves of each other and that was the fundamental breakdown.

No relationship we ever attempted would ever work out okay because we were unfinished business.

I touched his cheek reluctantly before I allowed my fingers to trace the tattoos on his right arm. They all meant something, from the guns and roses tattoo that was a “Boston” thing and had something to do with family to the names of Caitlin and Declan on his arms.

I knew he loved his children, and why shouldn’t he? But I always wondered how he felt about our child together? Did he ever think about our son at all? Did he ever wonder what he would be like when he was a man?

I thought about it all the time as a single, successful, twenty-nine-year-old child-free woman. I didn’t feel child-free—I felt like someone had taken a piece of my heart and stepped on it until it was nothing but pulp, opened up my ribs and threw the deformed organ back into my chest. It beat just the same and I woke up, went to work, did my job and attended family and society functions but I was walking wounded.

It’d been like this for me since I was sixteen years old and the baby that had suckled on my right breast for ten minutes was rudely snatched away from my arms. Even though my breasts were normal now, I could still feel the phantom suckle of an infant child who was now a teenager and wouldn’t know me from Eve if we passed each other on the street.

The tears came though I tried to wipe them away and I laid on my back before I grabbed Cillian’s hand and placed it over my empty stomach. It was then I noticed it. Right there, on his forearm, was a “C” in Celtic-style lettering and the words,
Beidh mé ag cuimhneamh ort
underneath in fancy lettering.

Loire had done the tattoo and I knew enough Irish Gaelic—after spending six months of my life in Belfast in what seemed to be a lifetime ago—to know it read,
I will remember you
.

The waterworks began and soon, I was sobbing though I bit my lip and tried to stay quiet. I didn’t want him to wake up to see me like this because it wouldn’t fundamentally change anything. My parents had been gung-ho about the idea of adoption, the same way they were now gung-ho about taking Misty’s baby away from her once she gave birth.

It was tit for tat.

The Coxes were allowed to keep my child with Cillian therefore they would be allowed to take Misty’s child by my brother, Drake.

Not that I blamed them.

Misty was known as a party girl and she wasn’t in a fit state to raise a child. My parents were actually doing her a favor.

Perhaps like they’d done with Cillian and I.

We couldn’t have raised our son, not at the age of sixteen.

It was better that Conan ended up with a nice, loving, stable Irish Catholic family who bore the last name Cox. He still inherited his birthright even if it wasn’t with us.

The tears had dried upon my face as I still circle the spot with “C” and the words in Gaelic on Cillian’s arm.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me but I knew it was a bad idea to have him, naked in my bed, beside me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked and I realized he was awake though I had absolutely no idea how long he’d been up.

His voice startled me out of my contemplation and I looked over in his direction. His eyes are incredibly pale in the moonlight as it seeped through my slightly parted Venetian blinds and my eyes were glued to his, unable to look away.

“Nothing…
everything
. How drunk was I to let you stay over?”

“Drunk enough, and for your information, I’m as sober as a judge. I haven’t had a drink in more than six hours and besides a puff of your primo chronic before you hit the bed, I am completely here with you. I know you’ve been crying but I don’t know what it was about so I’d rather not ask.”

“
Beidh mé ag cuimhneamh ort
…I honestly thought I was the only one who kept his memory alive even if he wasn’t with us. I never got it tattooed but I never needed to…Conan is tattooed on my soul, and I can’t ever forget him, no matter how hard I try.”

“Neither can I.” Cillian shifted in the bed and turned his body toward me. “I can’t forget one damn thing about that time in our lives, babe. I tried to—God knows I did with drugs, booze and women but…Brianna could never measure up and I have been playin’ myself all these years. I wanted so badly to believe we could make a life with one another eventually and all I did was fuck up every potential chance I ever had with you.”

I turned my body toward him and felt his erection pressed against my body. Shit, I was in a really bad situation because if I was being honest with myself, I would admit I couldn’t see past him. He was the past and how could I move on when I truly never wanted to? When all I wanted was a second chance for us that would never happen, not if I had to defend him in the courtroom.

“Don’t do it…if you don’t kill this guy then maybe…we can try again. We aren’t broken…perhaps we’re a little bent but we can try again, and if I let this one chance slip through my fingers, I know I’ll never be happy. Maybe content but
never
truly satisfied because I won’t have you.”

Cillian pulled me toward him before he flipped us over and I was underneath all of his powerful and radiating maleness. He spread my legs with firm thighs and planted himself between me though I still wore my pajamas.

“You know when Dizzy gives me an order, I have to follow it, baby. It isn’t about us being together and don’t you know I would wait for you until we could be a proper family? That’s never been the question…will you wait for me though? I probably will have to do some time and I gotta know you’ll be there when I get out. It’s the only thing that would get me through a stretch, and you
know
that.”

I held his face in my hands as I stared into his eyes with an intensity only he could bring out in me. “You’re not going to prison, not if I have anything to do with it.”

His crystal blue irises, brilliant in their intensity, bore down into me before he kissed me and I surrendered to it on demand as his tongue darted in my mouth and I opened up to receive him. I moaned into his mouth as he lifted his body up only to unbutton my pajama top like we had nothing but all the time in the world. He wrapped his arms around my waist, his hands grasping the globes of my ass as my breasts and his firm chest were pressed against one another.

My nipples were hyperaware of my breasts against his naked flesh and I felt every inch of his skin against mine. He was warm, the feeling was erotic and made me flood my thong with juices from my body as he grabbed a hold of the back of my head and brought me in closer to him.

Our tongues did an elicit dance, riding the waves between want and need, lust and love. I didn’t even care I was breaking my own rules because I’d vowed over thirteen years ago that Cillian would never ever be inside me ever again.

Several failed relationships and a bootie call situation with Leo had me second guessing every decision I’d ever made in my adult life. I needed to get off but it had to be with someone who I knew loved me to the very core of their being. I knew I wasn’t just a side bitch or a play thing with Cillian and that made all the difference.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I gasped when his lips finally left my own and started devouring my neck, sending chills up and down my spine. “We’re playing with fire and either one of us could get burned badly.”

“I’ve never wanted something so much in my whole goddamn life and just so you know, I wear a condom with my wife and Chiara so I’m clean.”

I scoffed at this comment. “I’ve got an IUD and I still wear a condom with every man I’ve slept with…other than you of course. I trust you—goddamn it, I really want to trust you but maybe we should…just so we don’t…” I trailed off.

“Fuck no, Sela. I want every fuckin’ inch of youse bareback,
mo aingeal álainn
. I don’t want a barrier between us and I won’t have it.”

“Mmm, do you call every woman your ‘beautiful angel?’”

“No, I don’t. I’ve never said it to anyone other than you.”

My heart skipped a beat as Cillian’s head moved down my body and slipped one of my hard nipples into his mouth. His hands worked on taking off my pajama bottoms, panties included, before he tossed them over the side of the bed.

I gasped as his fingers speared inside of me and found the spongy tissue of my G-spot. “You’re ready for me already and we’re just gettin’ warmed up, babe. I haven’t even tasted your beautiful pussy and you’re drenchin’ my fingers like a fuckin’ fire hose.”

I laughed out loud if only to relieve the tension and my utter embarrassment. “Such sweet words you say to a woman.”

“Only you, my little angel.”

He kissed his way down my body, stopping at my stomach to trace a few faint stretch marks from a long-ago faded pregnancy. His tongue lingered erotically on my abdomen and inside my belly button. I wanted him to get to work faster, to move his head down to where it counted but he leisurely laid kisses on hips and between my thighs.