I look her in the eye. “My mam taught me women are fierce and smart. You’re my wife.”

“For now.”

I bring her forehead to mine. “Always.”

“Callahan.” She stops, breathes, and says, clearly changing the subject, “What would you do to me? You said?—”

“I’d tie you up on that bench there. Spread you open. I’d make it so you couldn’t move; you’d be there for my pleasure.” And hers, because for some reason that’s intrinsically linked. I care about a woman’s pleasure, but it’s more because it enhances mine. But with little Lucie Joy, I fucking care about it. I want her drowning in it. I want to teach her all the heights and depths of it.

I want her as addicted to me as I am to her.

“I’d fuck you. Mouth, cunt, ass. I’d make you beg; I’d make you come. I’d make you want to be my slave.”

“Do it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tie me up, take me. Fuck me.”

“Well now, that’s quite a mouth you’ve got on you there, Mrs. Murphy.”

Nope. I’m never calling her that again. Christ. Mrs. Murphy’s my mother.

“Miss Lucie,” I say.

Her lips twitch like she knows what just went through my head.

I push her off me. Why the fuck not? I’ll tie her up. Get us both off. I push her dress off her as I get up and she’s essentially naked. “Panties,” I say.

She swallows, eyes nervously going to one of the apparently glass walls.

But she does as asked.

She is fucking beyond stunning. I walk around her, tracing over her with my fingers, her flesh soft and smooth, hot to the touch from her arousal. Then I make her lie on her back on the sex bench, which is the height for me to fuck her standing, and I decide to live my fantasies.

I’m not a rope guy. I don’t have that in me. I like it, like watching it because there’s art to it, but I don’t do the whole hours of tying a woman up.

I go to the rack of toys and ropes and whips. There are packaged dildos and ass plugs, anal beads and clips and pegs.

I choose the silk ties. Behind me, her breathing’s labored and it makes my cock beyond hard.

“Callahan…”

I take an O-ring, too. “Yes, Lucie Joy?”

What I should be doing is making sure Declan isn’t balls deep in some woman. Seamus is with him, so hopefully he’s keeping the sex-pest in the making under control.

I remember being Dec’s age, so I know what I’m talking about.

“C-can they see in?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” She snaps her words and the bench creaks.

I don’t turn. “Lie back down. If I want people to see, they will.”

She goes silent and her fuming perfumes the air and strokes my excitement.