Page 34 of Hostile Vows
“The start of an epic love story,” he muses.
My cheeks burn under his intense stare. “Love story… pleeeeeease!” I scoff.
“Yeah—my dick is going to love fucking your cunt,” he says straight-faced, momentarily narrowing his eyes on my ringless wedding finger. “I take it the ring wasn’t to your liking.” His frosty tone challenges the heat of the bold sun.
“None of it was to my liking.”
“Is that right? Given the way you’re admiring me, I would say you're secretly happy about it. As for the way you sucked my dick, that was sheer fucking hunger,” he says, his voice thickening like a rope to choke the lies from my throat. “In the best possible way.”
It infuriates me how he brings it up again, as if his deception was something to be proud of. “I’ve sucked my fair share of dicks in the past. So last night was just me going through the motions.”
My biting statement triggers something in him. Instantly, his expression shutters and a menacing frown knots between his dark brows. He goes from laid-back to wolfish in zero to sixty seconds, leaning in so his mastery burns through me.
Placing a large hand on my thigh under the table, he digs his fingertips into my flesh. “Anything you did before me is gravely insignificant. Do not speak of those incidents again. Whereas everything we do together moving forward is exactly what you deserve—what you’ll crave. It won’t be you going through the motions when you’re begging me.”
I let his words sink in and wonder why he’s so irritated by the mention of my disappointing past encounters. It’s not like he cares about me. Then I recall his intriguing tattoo and our meeting place. The one spot on the Hennessy estate that brought me happiness—him.
“Why do you have our tree tattooed on your back?” I do my best to ignore the immobilizing grip on my leg.
He stares back at me, unmoving for a moment, the hand burning my skin becoming heavier—relentless. I watch as the darkness in his eyes lightens to gunmetal, as if he’s recalling every memory we ever shared under that warped Hawthorn tree.
“I think you’ll find it was my tree long before I found you sitting under its branches,” he finally answers.
I suck in a sharp breath when his fingers uncurl, quickly making their way to my throat. My pulse hammers beneath his expansive palm, more so out of confusion from the acrimony brewing behind his fierce gaze.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving that night? One day you were there, the next you were gone.”
My heart stops beating. “We were told to leave immediately.”
“By whom?”
“It doesn’t matter now. Besides, I left a note on our kitchen table with your name on it. Mammy wouldn’t let me go anywhere near Hennessy House. She said it was too risky. Your family would have killed us.”
His frown tightens and his fingertips lock in place. “It matters to me, Sinéad! I’m guessing the fucker who ordered you to leave was the same man who abused you. I waited hours for you under that tree. After I realized you weren’t coming to meet me, I raced to the cottage. It was empty when I arrived. Like you’d never existed. At one stage, I actually thought I’d made you up. You just disappeared. Who the fuck does that?”
He didn’t get my note.
“So, all this time you really didn’t know where I was?” I grit out, slapping my hand over his to loosen his grip, only to find my pitiful reflection in his molten black eyes.
“No one knew where you’d gone,” he snarls. “But you knew where I was, right? Yet you didn’t bother to reach out to me.”
“Why would I have done that, Dré? I left my uncle's address, and you didn’t show up. Anyway, I knew you were flying home, eventually. It’s not like I could’ve hopped on a flight to Colombia. Do you really think a girl like me could track down a notorious organized crime family and survive? Or that I’d want to fall for a man who has evil blood running through his veins?”
The air around us smolders with something devastatingly carnal, and dare I think it—hurt. Before I have time to read between the lines, he lets go and sits back, glacial and barely composed.
“You’ll tell me who ordered you to leave eventually, and when you do, I’ll kill the cunt with my bare fucking hands,” he mutters in a low growl.
That’s doubtful.
One minute his skin was scorching mine, the next we’re like two isolated islands—separate and alone in our thoughts. In that moment, I’m transported back to the night I’ve tried to forget.
The unbearable weight of cold steel heavy on my tongue and the eyes of a devil, cracked with amber fire. His haunting laughter still catches up with me in the shadows.
The harrowing nightmare of hot tears creeping out from behind the swollen flesh closing over my left eye. How they burned like acid. Mammy’s screams of forgiveness and that shade of pure horror whitening her lips. She’d had enough of his torment. We both had. Except I was the only one foolish enough to try to put an end to it.
You’re either the hunted or the hunter.
Those words had inspired me. I’m certain that petrified little girl would have put a bullet in her tormentor's skull had the Hennessy sibling with an inbred evil streak not woken up. I eyeballed the fist-happy bastard from the foot of Mammy’s bed, the barrel of his own gun aimed right at his snarling face.
