The man is majestic, I’ll give him that.
“Do you know what I’ve learned since becoming boss of the Irish syndicate?” he starts, pretending to check his cufflinks. “It’s that when someone begins to toe the fine line of my patience, sooner or later they’ll pass a point of no return and regret every choice they’ve made that got them there.”
“It doesn’t bode well for our marriage if one innocent dance tests your patience in such a way.”
“No, it does not,” he states pointblank, the severity in his tone making me grasp for balance. “But I am a fair man. You’ll learn that about me soon enough. There is so much I have to teach you.”
Right now, I don’t want to learn anything from this man.
Something tells me being his student is a recipe for disaster.
For my heart as well as my soul.
“If you want to discuss the merits of fairness, then I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow, can it not?”
He shakes his head.
“I’m not a big believer of procrastination. Why leave a lesson left untaught for tomorrow when you can do it so diligently today?”
“And what exactly is this lesson you are so eager to teach me?”
“That the wedding band on your finger doesn’t protect you as much as you think it does.”
My jaw slacks open again.
“You can’t hurt me,” I state with all the confidence I have.
“No.” He shakes his head again, wagging his finger at me. “The treaty stipulated that I can’t kill you. No one ever said a thing about hurting you.”
He’s lying.
He must be.
Alejandro swore to me that every family member made a blood vow to protect and care for the daughters that were sold into bondage for the sake of ending the Mafia Wars. He wouldn’t have lied to me.
Would he?
“You’re lying,” I rebuke, looking down at his relaxed demeanor on the bed and feeling utterly unnerved by how at ease he is.
“Am I? I might be. It’s possible. Made men aren’t known for being trustworthy. But there is one truth that not even you will be able to discard so easily. You vowed today to honor and obey me before God and all his witnesses. Which means that if I feel you have broken those vows in any way, then I’m within my right to punish you for it.”
My eyes widen at the threat gleaming in his distractingly exquisite eyes.
“Take off your robe.”
“No,” I’m quick to reply, my heart rattling double time in my chest.
My apprehension multiplies at the devilish smile that tugs at the corner of his upper lip. The sinister grin tells me that my refusal to do as he says was the exact response he was hoping for.
At lightning speed, he lifts off the bed and pulls me onto his lap, my chest hitting the edge of the mattress in such a way that the only thing preventing me from falling is his large palm pressed down on my lower back.
“If this is your idea of rational behavior, then I shudder to think when you’re being completely obtuse?!” I bite back through gritted teeth.
“Such big words,” he mocks. “So elegant. So fucking sophisticated. Let’s see how well-spoken you are after a few hard slaps on that rear of yours, aye?”
I don’t know what has me more frightened—that my husband of a few hours is about to spank me, or the fact that his accent just became that much thicker and more arresting.
When Tiernan lifts my robe over my head, I’m thankful it covers most of my face and how the debasement has my cheeks flushing a deep red.
“Do you always come to bed naked?” he asks, using that same husky tone in his voice that puts me on edge.
I don’t answer him.
If I’m going to end my wedding night being punished like an errant child, then I’m going to act like one and stubbornly keep my words to myself.
The cold air on my heated skin isn’t enough to cool my temper or my imagination. Suddenly I wish I could see his face so I can at least try and tell what he’s thinking.
Tiernan takes his sweet-ass time just appreciating my bare bottom. Undoubtedly, he’s doing it on purpose just to agitate me more.
“I see this isn’t the first time you’ve found yourself over someone’s lap,” he utters faintly, while his thumb lightly traces over the bite marks my father’s belt buckle left on my lower back, ass, and upper thighs. “Miguel’s handiwork, I presume?” he adds, but I don’t make a sound, not wanting to confirm his perceptive deduction either way. “I’ve never liked your father. Now I hate him even more,” he whispers softly, making sure to brush with the pads of his fingers every scar that he can find.
But it’s the ones lying dormant inside my soul—the ones that will forever remain out of anyone’s reach—that yearn for the same delicate attention.
I push the weak thought away and bury my head into the mattress, biting into the duvet cover to keep myself from begging him to continue on with his soft caresses. He begins to slowly massage each ass cheek, running his hand back and forth, squeezing the sensitive flesh every so often in between every gentle stroke.
But I’m not fooled. This is just the eye of the storm that is coming.
It dawns on me that while Shay needed to believe that someone was being kind to Iris, Tiernan wants to make sure that his sister will not be the only soul that suffers tonight.
“This will hurt much worse if you don’t relax.”
“Isn’t that the point? For it to hurt? For you to punish me?” I snap back, cursing myself for breaking my vow of silence so quickly.
“Who says you can’t find pleasure in pain?”
“Right,” I scold. “If that’s the case, then remind me the next time you do or say something I don’t like to lay you over my lap.”
CRACK!
The sound of his palm connecting with my butt cheek sounds scarier than the pain he inflicted. In fact, compared to my father’s heavy hand, Tiernan’s is quite tame. If his intention was to scare me into obedience through the threat of pain, he’ll have to do much better than that.
“Do you always speak your mind like that? So freely?”