In moments, Tiernan and I were alone on the massive casino floor.
A fission of fear scoured through me, different than the kind I’d felt with a gun trained on me for the second time in two weeks.
Palpable fury emanated off Tiernan’s large body in waves that buffeted against me and alchemized something in my gut. Something base, almost animal, that got off on fear and transmuted it into pure molten desire.
“He is the last man who will ever touch you.” The words rumbled through Tiernan and into me.
I gasped when he carted me up into his arms and took two brisk steps to the same table I’d only recently gambled on. He deposited me roughly on the felt, his body carving out so much space between my splayed thighs that the muscles burned from the stretch. His big hands splayed on my ass and tugged me even closer so our bodies were fused through our clothes.
“I won’t let you go,” he warned, his voice ravaged by fury and something like agony. His fingers flexed compulsively, almost too tight. “Not after this. You can’t expect me to let you out of my goddamn sight when there are too many people out for my blood. Out for the secret of who you are.”
“Tiernan,” I said, just his name, as if that was enough to explain the multitudes of reasons why I wanted to be with him at Lion Court but didn’t trust him, why I wanted him with enough passion to sear through my soul but couldn’t let myself have him.
"You want to see me beg for your forgiveness, Bianca? I'll do it on my knees between your thighs and by the time I'm through with you, you won't remember anything but pleasure." His eyes were all black, his pupils’ thin frames for the ferocity of his intent. He shook me slightly in frustration. “Do you want me to carve your fucking name into my chest to prove to you that I am mad for you? Lost to you? Nothing will ever fucking do again except for you?”
“Yes,” I said, my throat raw from the honesty of the word. “Yes, I want all of it. Just once, I want someone to fight for me!”
Tiernan’s hand came up to grasp my chin, holding it steady so he could lean forward and press his forehead to mine. He was so close all I could see were those green eyes as pale and warm as diffused light through trees.
“I’ve been fighting my entire life, Bianca.” That rough palm traced the edge over my jaw and framed the entire left side of my face. “So I know, this is one fight I won’t lose. You know now, the kind of man I am, I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt you, who even thinks about taking us from each other. Do you understand?”
I kissed him, then. Surging up to claim his firm mouth with my open, to sweep past those satin lips into the hot cavern of his mouth and lay claim to every inch of it.
Because I understand exactly what kind of man Tiernan Morelli McTiernan was.
He was a monster. One who wanted to swallow me whole. Maybe a smarter girl would have tried to run away, but it seemed that whenever I picked up my feet, it was toward him I ran.
I wondered––as Tiernan gathered my hair in one strong fist and tugged my head back to kiss me deeply, a groan captured between our mouths––if the difference between a monster and savoir was a matter of perspective. Because the truth was, even when Tiernan had sought to use me, he’d protected me in equal turn. He could have left us to rot in foster care or locked up in the attic of Lion Court and forced us to do his bidding like some 18th century gothic fairy-tale gone wrong. Instead, he bought Brando Spiderman sheets and made his pancakes, he gave me carte blanche on a shopping spree and sent me to the best prep school in the Tri-State area.
There was a deep river of kindness flowing through the arctic tundra of Tiernan’s heart and I was fairly sure Brandon and I had stumbled into it much earlier on than I’d originally thought.
I wondered if the moment Tiernan made me bleed around the thorny stem of that rose, if he hadn’t begun to bleed a little for me himself.
“Stop thinking so loudly,” he murmured against my damp lips. “It’s insulting when I’m trying to kiss you senseless.”
“I am senseless,” I promised him, raking my hands through his luscious dark hair, loving that I was allowed to do that. “Any girl with sense would run the other way.”
A smile played over his mouth, that ropey scar on his left cheek flaring white with the tension. The expression fell when I touched my fingers lightly to the mark, feathering it from the edge of his full mouth to the bottom of his ear. His hand snapped up to grab mine in a tight grip. A current of fear chase down my spine, but he only pressed a kiss to my palm and then pressed it again to his face, tight over his scar.
“I’m not a good man and I have no desire to ever be one,” he admitted in that rough, sex-heavy tone that made my belly tingle. “But I don’t think you want a good man between these pretty thighs. For such a sweet little thing, you love to be owned and used.”
"Maybe, I'm not as sweet as you think I am," I countered.
His hand dipped beneath my skirt to cup my entire underwear-clad sex in his palm. I watched as he brought damp fingers to his mouth and sucked on the tips. "I beg to differ."
A shiver ripped through me like a rusty zipper and when Tiernan slipped both hands beneath my skirt to tag the edge of my panties and slide the down my thighs, I lifted my ass without struggle.
“Enough talking,” he declared. “I believe I was in the middle of groveling.”
Before I could process, he was down on his knees. He was so tall, even on kneeling he was at eye level with my groin. Without waiting for permission, he tugged me farther along the edge of the poker table, flipped up the flared velvet skirt of my dress and fixed his mouth over my pussy.
I fell back to the felt table, landing hard on my elbows, head falling back between my shoulders as I let out a ragged moan.
“Tiernan,” I panted as his mouth did delicious, wicked things to my throbbing clit. “Someone could walk in any minute.”
“No one would dare,” he growled into my inner thigh before nipping at the sensitive flesh there. “And if they did, they’d enjoy a very happy last sight of my gorgeous little thing in throes of passion before I knocked them out.”
“Such a heathen,” I admonished, but the effect was lost as I knifed up, my hands burying themselves in Tiernan’s hair as he started to fuck my clasping entrance with his tongue.
I loved him like this, raw and brutal. The sight of the big man forcing my thighs apart with the width of his suited shoulders, his dark head bent to feast on me almost savagely, chin coated in my juices, his tongue wet and loud in my folds was almost too much to bear.
“Fuck yeah,” he rasped as he pulled away to watch two fingers stretch me open and begin to fuck me. “So gorgeous for me. Do you forgive me yet, sweet thing?”
“No, but maybe if you make me come, I will.”
His laugh was pure smoke. “Oh, be careful what you wish for.”
A second later, a third finger was wedging itself inside me, working me open in a way that stung and throbbed pleasantly at the same time. His hot, satin mouth sealed over my clit and began to trash it mercilessly with his tongue.
My orgasm reared over me so suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even see as it descended, just blackness in my vision and then, as the climax boke over me, wheeling whorls of color and blinding light. I was vaguely aware of the broken groan and gasps falling from my mouth, of the way my pussy spasmed around his thick fingers, wetting him down to his elbow, but I was too far gone to even imagine being embarrassed by my wantonness.