Chapter Nine
Tiernan
The house was dark and quiet when I returned later that night after a full evening at Inequity, handling business. Silence echoed through the cavernous room, moonlight my only guide as I moved through the cluttered house to my office. I hesitated at the door, noticing the sliver of light spilling beneath it into the hall. My heart pulsed hard, then slowed to a steady beat as I reached into my back waistband for the gun I’d tucked there earlier that afternoon.
I doubted an intruder could successfully breach my security, but it paid to be careful in my line of work.
The old door creaked as I pushed it open, gun raised in the other hand.
Bianca blinked at me, a spoonful of Lucky Charms raised halfway to her mouth.
For one interminable moment, we remained locked in place, a poorly constructed tableau in some amateur theatre production. Only a colorful marshmallow falling from her spoon to plop into the bowl in her lap killed the paralysis.
I dropped the gun as she dropped her spoon.
“Do you usually carry a gun?” she asked, more curiosity than fear when I felt certain it was the first time in her life she’d seen a weapon in person.
With the ease of a lifetime of use, I discarded the magazine and emptied the chamber, a bullet falling into my palm as I stalked across my office to my desk. I crouched in front of the gun safe beneath it, typing in the code and placing the disassembled weapon within.
Only when I righted myself and took a seat across from her in my high-backed leather chair, did I address the teenager squatting in my office.
“Do you usually break into people’s offices and eat offensive cereal at their desk?”
Despite herself, amusement warred with irritation at the corners of her full mouth. I noticed, not for the first time, that her upper lip was slightly fuller than the bottom, a lush, arching curve I wanted to test between my teeth.
“It’s the only room that doesn’t give me the creeps,” she admitted, almost shyly. “Seriously, it’s like a gothic mausoleum out there. I think there are bats roosting in the attic, and when I went exploring with Brando the other day, we found a literal coffin in a guest bedroom.” She eyed me skeptically. “Brando’s still pretty convinced you’re a vampire.”
I scoffed lightly, but there was something warm in my chest, something like tenderness.
“Don’t worry,” she amended, as if I would. “He thinks you’re the nicest vampire he’s ever met.”
A startled chuckle escaped that felt wrong in my throat. “Has he met many vampires?”
She shrugged, taking another bite of that disgusting cereal before she answered. “Knowing Brando, maybe. The kid makes friends with everyone. The odder the better, I think. Have you seen how tight he and Ezra are?”
My amusement faded. Ezra liked kids, he always had. When he’d found out about Grace, he was the first one to buy her tiny little shoes. I still had them, locked in a chest in my room I hadn’t opened in years.
“So, do you?” she repeated. “Carry a gun around all the time?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat, studying her innocent face, the wide, beguiling blue of her eyes. She was a serious kid, always watchful, always questioning. It didn’t surprise me she would be interested in what I did, but it did surprise me that I wanted to tell her. Most people were afraid of me on sight, and then if they ever found what I did for the family, they could barely speak without stuttering in my presence.
I was curious to see what reaction this slip of a thing would have if I told her.
“I own a casino,” I started. “A place for the very wealthy to put all their cash in my coffers. I own a construction company, one of the biggest in the state. An import/export business that does a brisk business and some…security on the side.”
She blinked, eyelashes casting absurdly long shadows in the dim light from the lit lamps staggered throughout the room.
“That sounds criminal to me.”
“Oh?” I arched a brow. “And what would a little Texan girl like you know about that?”
Something ghosted across her face before she could control her expression, but her eyes remained haunted. “Enough.”
“Movies and books.”
“My mom dated a lot of men,” she said opaquely, swirling the Lucky Charms around in her bowl, the milk gone pink with dye. “I know more than you might think. Besides, you came into the room with a gun cocked and a nasty cut on your hand.”
I looked down in surprise at the wound Bryant had given me earlier that day. It hadn’t closed, deeper than I’d originally thought, flaying open the skin so it curved back like snarling lips.
“Do you have a first aid kit?” she asked, already unfolding her legs and standing up.
I hesitated, but I wanted to see what she intended to do, so I nodded, then jerked my chin at the corner of the room where an antique bureau stood stuffed with everything from a rudimentary kit to emergency surgical tools. You never knew what could happen in my line of business.
She got up to investigate and I had the perverted pleasure of watching her walk away in one of her old ratty, oversized tees, the hem barely covering her ass. Despite her short stature, she had long, shapely legs that glowed golden in the lamplight. When she bent to open a drawer, I caught a glimpse of the sweet curve of ass over slim thighs.
I adjusted my cock in the tight confines of my suit pants, but I didn’t berate myself for my escalating attraction to Bianca. She was beautiful the way her mother had been, almost arresting, but unlike Aida, there was a warmth to her, an inherent sensuality that was impossible to miss. The pope would have sprung an erection watching her walk around in that Greenpeace tee with her hair all long, bouncy curls gently tangled at the ends. I wanted to catch my fingers in those tangles and use them to pin her still when I fucked her mouth.
She claimed the first aid kit with a little cry of “huzzah,” and moved around the desk to my side.
I watched her mutely, too intently as she hesitated, then sat on the desk in front of me, wedging herself between it and me, our legs pressed together. When she took my hand, I was struck by the contrast between the two of us. She was paler, skin silky under downy white-blonde hairs, her fingers long and thin capped with her perpetually chipped nail polish. Against my dark skin, the bold stamp of my cherub tattoo slashed open by a knife wound, I looked heathen, uncivilized.
I felt it too.
The scent of her was in my nose, doing things to my insides. I wanted to press her back with a strong hand in her sternum, pin her there while I kicked her legs wide and buried my mouth at the source of her sweet scent, in that young pussy already inches from my face.
Fuck me.
I’d never been a man driven by sex because I wasn’t a man driven by pleasure.
I’d only known pain and solitude. Jerking off dry to feel the harsh friction of my own hand was enough to satiate me most days, and when it wasn’t, I fucked one of the endless women who threw themselves at me at Inequity because I was wealthy and dangerous.
Never anything like this, just a woman’s scent enough to get me hard as fucking nails.
I wondered if her ass was red and welted from the bamboo cane and felt my dick weep against the fabric of my suit pants.