Sparrow (6 page)

“That’s interesting, because you sure seem to have a healthy interest in lingerie shopping. Too much spare time?” I deadpanned.

His smirk widened. “I didn’t pick those items.” He tilted his chin to the gift nestled in layers of tissue paper.

“No?” I blinked slowly.

“No…” He leaned forward, bringing his mouth closer to mine. “My mistress chose your gift.”

Sirens wailed in the distance, a truck beeped as it reversed and the angry hum of my blood buzzed in my ears. Still, somehow, time completely stopped despite the busy streets of Boston flashing by outside. Our driver kept swallowing hard and looking straight ahead robotically, but I knew he was listening. Saying I wasn’t comfortable having this conversation in front of a complete stranger was the understatement of the century.

I pressed my lips between my teeth, trying not to launch at my husband like a cornered animal. This man promised me his faithfulness in front of a priest less than an hour ago. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe he’d ever take this marriage seriously, but he didn’t have to rub his affairs in my face.

“She really doesn’t like you if she goes around buying lingerie for your wife.” My voice barely trembled.

“She just knows what’s best for her. Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her.”

I tucked my hands under my thighs to keep from trying to strangle him. “Tell her to send me the syllabus. I’m especially interested in How to Tame the ManWhore 101.” I offered him a sweet smile, folding my arms over my laced-covered chest.

Just then, the limo came to a halt and the driver rushed to help us out of the back and onto the steps of the eighteenth-century landmark where the wedding reception was taking place. Troy got out first, offering me his hand. I didn’t move, ignoring his gesture.

“Remember, play nice.” He kept his palm open, yet uninviting.

“Whatever. Fine,” I muttered slapping my hand into his. We walked and waved, smiling to our guests through plastic grins.

“But I like your fight,” he said softly through our make-believe joy as we made our way, arms linked, like the two happy lovers that we weren’t. “Can’t wait for you to show me some of it in my bed.”

SPARROW

I SHOULD HAV
e known he was a man of his word.

But he should have known that on top of hating his guts, I was also a virgin.

A virgin, despite my best efforts.

Contrary to what anyone might think, I wasn’t especially keen on saving my virginity for that special someone. I’d grown up in a rough neighborhood, among people who didn’t buy into fairytales. Prince Charming was about as feasible as Santa Claus to me, if not less. There was not one romantic bone in my scrawny body.

No, my cliché virginity was due to the fact that I just hadn’t met anyone who wanted to share more than a few kisses and the occasional grope with me. I was notorious for my bad luck with the opposite sex. True, I wasn’t particularly striking or sexy, but I wasn’t a hag either. Yet somehow, guys always kept their distance from me.

At school.

At work.

And especially in and around South Boston.

So I’d quietly carried the burden of my virginity, hoping I’d find a man who’d be sweet enough to guide me through the dos and don’ts of lovemaking.

I had a feeling Troy Brennan, with his physical size, strength and brutal way of living, was not the best tour guide for a beginner like me. If there was one ray of light in my grim situation, it would have been my hope that Troy was too busy messing around with half of Boston to notice I had a pair of boobs and an ass, too.

But he did. He noticed.

Right after we got back from our wedding celebration, to be exact.

We arrived back at his glitzy penthouse in Back Bay, thoroughly drunk and understandably flushed.

Brennan walked into his lavish bedroom and started taking off his clothes silently, folding them in a neat pile on a sleek black bureau near the huge king-size bed. He stripped down to his briefs, giving me a full view of his muscled body. All male, not an Abercrombie & Fitch-ad type of guy, but a real, hairy, big, demanding one.

Furious and frightened, I walked swiftly into the master bathroom, shutting the door behind me with a loud bang and locking it for good measure.

“Don’t be long,” he instructed from the bedroom.

I ignored him, took a seat on the edge of his giant Jacuzzi and, regulating my breathing, plucked out the hairpins that dug into my skull one by one. I threw them into the sink with a blissful
plink
. Then I tackled the impossible dress, struggling to reach the laces in the back and shimmying until I finally managed to crawl out of the corset more fitting for a Barbie doll.

I opened drawers and cabinets.
Stalling, stalling, stalling.
After all, he was drunk. Maybe he’d fall asleep, pass out…or throw up and choke on his puke. Maybe I had nothing to worry about.

After forty minutes, I tiptoed back to the bedroom wearing a pair of socks and my old PJ’s—gray sleep shorts and a white cotton tee—and crawled onto the far edge of the immense bed. I wanted to curl into myself and disappear between his sheets as far away from Brennan as I could manage.

Not breathing, barely moving, I peeked sideways to check to see if he was safely asleep.

His eyelashes fluttered up and down against the red and blue city lights spilling into the darkness. He was staring at the ceiling, lost in thought, the covers thrown back on his side.

“Scared of sex, huh?” His menacing voice cut through blackness with an amused bite. “Well, no surprises there.”

I didn’t fail to notice that he was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of Calvin Kleins. They were white, tight and emphasized his erection.

His body was muscled steel. Tantalizing and smooth, with the exception of three, old scars running from his stomach to his chest, his shoulder to his bicep, and a smaller one near his throat. A shamrock was tattooed on his chest across his heart, timeworn and faded.

A flashback of my friend Daisy and I eavesdropping on the teenage girls whispering in our apartment building’s stairwell made my heart stutter. I was just a kid, six years younger than the high school girls, when one of them excitedly told her friends that she’d finally managed to bed Troy Brennan. That he was a certain kind of guy: his body was built for fighting and fucking, and he did both with a passion, rage and brutality most girls wouldn’t forget.

But even if I wanted to get nasty with my husband,
I
couldn’t forget who he was—the guy who murdered Billy “Baby Face” Crupti, a murder so brutal the media reported that Crupti’s body had been chewed on by animals prior to being dumped in the water. And there was a priest who’d been found dead in our parish church, his tongue cut out.

Everyone in South Boston knew that Troy had killed them both.

No one said a word.

That should have told me a thing or a dozen about my husband.

His cruelty was infinite. His hands had touched blood, weapons, knives, dead bodies. Thinking about him caressing my body with those hands should’ve made me nauseous. Yet somehow, it didn’t…

“Not scared at all. You don’t know anything about me.” I turned in bed, offering him my back and hugging my knees to my chest. I buried my face in the soft pillow.

His side of the mattress lifted unexpectedly. I heard him pad across the floor to the bathroom, but he didn’t bother to close the door. I listened closely. He took a leak and washed his hands, whistling. When he returned, he stood there at the end of the bed in his underwear, his cock saluting in my direction.

“First time you've seen a boner?” he mocked.

I didn’t want to tell him the truth.
Yes
. So I gulped and looked up, concentrating on a piece of modern art, a painting of a naked woman behind him. I shrugged. “Yours is nothing special.”

“That’s where I can prove you wrong.” His smile almost passed for human.

“Thanks for the offer, but beside the fact I’d rather chew on used needles, I just got my period.” I pulled the duvet all the way up to my nose.

“Bull-fucking-shit.” His mouth twisted into a vicious smirk. “Let’s see it.”

“What?”

“Let’s. See. Your period,” he said slowly. “Take off your briefs.”

I scooted away from him, looking around me, trying to marshal my thoughts. “You’re not serious?”

“I don’t do humor, Sparrow. Besides, you’ve shown some spine so far, don’t wanna ruin it by chickening out on me, do you…
wifey
?”

“But…”

“The butt is a good option,” he said evenly, not a trace of amusement in his voice, “but I’m more interested in seeing your blood right now.”

I glanced around me, looking for...what? Sharp objects to throw at him as I ran? He could probably kill me just by breathing in my direction. Instead of taunting him like a three-year-old, I should’ve told him the truth.

“I’m not chickening out.”

He moved closer toward me. “Actions speak louder than words.”

Screw it. He wanted to play, and I was starting to understand his twisted game.

I stood up in front of him and peeled my PJ shorts down an inch at a time. My fingers scraped my pubic bones and despite my hatred of him, I found myself self-conscious about my scrawniness. I bet he was used to sleeping with women who were all curves. And I looked like a boy, with my pale skin, fragile frame and bonfire hair.

But he’d challenged me, and I had my stupid pride to keep intact.

“Underwear, too.” Brennan sat, falling onto my side of the bed with a soft thud as I stood in front of him, removing my clothing inch by inch.

My body vibrated as I held back my hatred. His gaze zeroed on my pelvic area, tucking one hand into his underwear and stroking himself leisurely. I took off my underwear, feeling a mixture of disgust and thrill with the situation.
What the hell is wrong with you, Sparrow?
Appalled, I wet my lips, watching him.
Are you freaking high?

“Show me your blood,” he rasped.

I winced again, sucking my lower lip and releasing it slowly. My body hummed with embarrassment as I slid one of my index fingers between my folds, scraped the surface of my inside shallowly, and displayed my finger, showing him a scarlet smear of fresh blood.

I’d put the blood there while I was in the bathroom, purposely cutting my foot open with his razor and letting myself bleed so I could insert it between my legs. I’d closed the cut with the styptic pencil I’d found next to his razor and then rolled on a pair of socks to hide what I’d done, just to be safe. I knew it was sick, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

And I was desperate not to give Brennan what was mine, in case he decided to have me on our wedding night.

Troy inspected the blood on my finger, raised his eyes to meet mine and licked his lips, top to bottom. He looked like he was going to pounce and rip me open at any moment. Whether it was with lust or hate, I wasn’t completely sure. Either way, he was raw, untamed.
Trouble
.

“Do you really think a man like me will be put off by blood,
Red
?” he asked.

“Quite the opposite,” I said, using every ounce of confidence I still had in me. “But rape is beneath you. I know that.”

I hoped that.

Troy stopped stroking himself and leaned forward. I barely managed to control my quavering thighs when he parted his lips and took my bloody finger in his mouth while his eyes zeroed in on mine. He sucked my finger clean for a whole minute before releasing it with a pop and snaking his hands behind me, cupping my ass cheeks and jerking me toward him. I collapsed on the bed, straddling him. He smiled that mischievous smirk that seemed to highlight his startlingly handsome features, his eyes wild with abandon. My thighs clenched on either side of his waist.

Damn thighs.

Hell, this was bad. I needed to stop, this much I knew. My body, however, had very different plans.

“I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do,” Brennan said finally. “But so far you haven’t stopped me. Now why is that?”

I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I haven’t stopped you because I don’t want you to hurt me.” I put my hands on his bare chest to balance myself. His muscles were flexed, hard. Something about what he said annoyed me. He made it sound like I enjoyed his attention, the way he sucked on my blood. I didn’t. True, I didn’t feel violated—for some screwed up reason I wasn’t eager to explore—but I certainly didn’t ask for it.

A moment of silence passed between us as we looked at each other, my eyes imploring and his, contemplating. The only noise was the sound of faraway cars honking in the downtown Boston night and the lash of rain washing against his floor-to-ceiling windows.

“I don’t find you attractive.” My voice was hoarse.

A lie.

“Say that to your pussy.” He wasn’t offended one bit. “My briefs are soaked, Mrs. Brennan.”

A truth.

I blushed furiously, scrambling off his lap and almost kneeing his junk in the process. I darted to the end of the bed, desperate to avoid him. Resting on his elbows, he turned his head, his eyes narrowed on mine, challenging again.