Page 65 of Intimately Faithful

She puckered her brow. “No. What do you mean?”

“You’ve had other men beside me. I don’t care. I have you now and I’m not letting you go again.”

On one hand her body flooded with fire at his possessive declaration.

It’s what she’d been waiting and hoping for since she saw him again.

But that same fire flooded with ice cubes.

He still didn’t know everything.

And that was her fault.

“Danny … I haven’t. You’re my only.”

With a great gusting sigh he pulled away from her and put a lot of distance between them that she loathed instantly and didn’t know what to do with her hands. She watched his movements and could recognize when he was concealing his anger. “We don’t need to discuss this. I said I don’t care, Aoife. What does a number matter if you or I have fucked a dozen people.”

Her skin bristled. He’d said he hadn’t… was that a lie to placate her feelings?

She’d have to deal with it knowing other women have had him too, she would hate it…loathe it..and want to do murder, but she’d have to deal with it. Yet she wouldn’t stand for him lying.

“Have you?” She fired at him, emotional bullets spraying everywhere. Dying for the right answer and dreading the wrong one.

He looked over and her stomach muscles tightened. It wasn’t a particularly evocative glance, nor was it menacing. Danny was never that kind of man. But it was heated, and she felt it in every nerve ending in her body until the point she couldn’t sit still.

“What is it you want me to say? That I couldn’t get over you, so I haven’t been with anyone else?”

“Yes,” she said too fast, her insides stumbling like an out of control geyser firing excitement at will. “That’s what I would like to hear if it’s the truth. I’d feel better knowing it wasn’t only me with those feelings. Have you had twelve women? You said you couldn’t… you said my mouth was the only one.”

“I don’t lie, Aoife.”

The way he said it. In that superior haughty tone of his caused her eyes to narrow and for her to hold onto her temper.

“Meaning I do? Is that what you’d be saying to me right now, Danny?”

“You had a husband for a number of years and you have a child with a mobster. Unless your name is Mary, you can’t claim your virginity back, sweetheart. Not for your sake or for mine, it’s not necessary.”

Just like that, his eyes looking over at her were dark and cloudy and she saw clearly everything he’d held in. The unspoken words … the unsaid accusations. The anger of it all was there in his gaze that punched clean through her stomach.

It was as if she were looking at a brand-new version of Danny Murphy.

One who could easily hurt her.

Lifting her chin, strengthening her shaking bones, Aoife smiled tightly. “Careful there, pastor. You’re close to calling me a slut. I only turn into a whore for you, remember.”

His face dropped.

“Aoife I didn’t…dammit, I would never.”

“Save it. You said it already. Have a nice day. I’m going for a nap with Misha.” Plucking the baby up, using the small body as a shield to her bleeding feelings, she walked by him, avoiding his hand reaching out. “Aoife, I didn’t say that.”

Hurt shot through her like nothing else before. “You betterownwhat you just said because it’s the reason you’re about to lose me.”

The sound of high pressure was coming only from one place and that was her ruined heart.

That’s what he thought of her?

She didn’t hear anything more he said as she marched up the stairs, staring into big blue eyes. She kissed Misha’s cheek and the wee one clapped both hands on Aoife’s face.

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