SWNOVELS Vicious Hearts: Chapter 31
The depraved and exhilarating becomes our routine.
Something I look forward to, all day. Something I meet with eagerness and, when he catches me by surprise, fear.
Like when he pins me roughly to the floor of a dark bathroom and fucks me within an inch of my life while he uses a little switch across my ass.
Part of it is, yes, the sex is un-fucking-real. Like, heart-attack real. But the other part of it is catharsis.
Every time he fucks me so brutally, I want so badly to see how far he’ll go with me, in the hopes that I’ll get a piece of myself back. I’ve never once used our safe word, which remains “blue”.
I lost some parts of me years ago. I try not to think about it, because it’s a nightmare. And I’ve spent years lying to myself, telling myself I’m fine. But I know deep down that I’m not. I know deep down that I’m still not right in places, after what he did to me in that foster house.
I hate, so much, that he still has this hold on me. I hate that while Cillian will pin me down and eat me for an hour straight, until I’m begging him to let me come, I can’t do the same for him.
I can’t even imagine taking his cock into my mouth without having a fucking panic attack. Which fucking sucks, because I’d really, really like to.
It’s a random Wednesday night when I find myself sprawled across Cillian’s bed—my head on his abs with my hair tousled across my face. I can hear his pulse thudding just as fast as mine through his skin from what we just did.
I wince, gingerly feeling the ache between my thighs that comes with the territory of our especially brutal brand of fucking. But I’ll take it. I’ve even started looking forward to it. Because the pain that puts that ache there pushes me over the edge, every time.
I don’t even miss the razor.
I don’t need to do that anymore. Not for escape, and not for release.
And yet, as incredible and viciously hardcore of a fucking session we just had, something’s bothering me.
“What is it?”
My eyes go wide, my pulse skipping when he asks the question. How is this man always able to peer right into my thoughts?
“You have a tell, you know,” he grunts with a small, dark chuckle—as if reading my thoughts again, dammit. “Your lips move a little when you’re trying to figure out how to phrase something you’re not sure about saying out loud.”
I turn my head, shoving my hair aside indignantly as my eyes lock with his. “You couldn’t even see my lips!”
“I could feel them against my stomach.”
I purse my lips, feeling my cheeks heat.
“So?”
I suck on my teeth before suddenly blurting it out.
“Why do you hold back with me?”
Cillian’s brow furrows just a little as his green eyes pierce into mine.
“I don’t—”
“You do.”
His jaw ticks. “Are you actually looking for me to be rougher with you?”
I lift a shoulder uncertainly. “Not…necessarily.”
I’m not even sure I could physically survive that, to be honest. I’m already perpetually covered in bite marks and bruises—all over my thighs, my ass, my abdomen and my breasts. Or worse, my poor neck, which has started to prompt me to suddenly become a silk scarf wearer.
Eilish thinks it’s very Parisian of me and wonders if I’m hinting to my husband that I’d like a holiday in France.
She will never know the real reason.
“Then what are you asking me?”
I chew on my lip. “I love what we do now…”
My cheeks flush when I admit that out loud.
“But…I know there’s more in you. I know there is.”
A shadow flickers over his face and he looks away. “Whatever else is in me, is not for you.”
I flinch, like he’s just smacked me.
“Wow, okay…”
He scowls. “Easy, Una. That came out wrong. I don’t mean it’s not for you because it’s for someone else,” he mutters. “It’s that it’s…” he exhales slowly and heavily. “Una, the well of my darkness goes down very much deeper than you ever need to see or know.”
“But—”
“Una,” he growls, sitting up. I shiver as he cups my face. “No buts on this one.”
“Fine,” I mumble petulantly.
He leans in and kisses me, making me whimper when he bites my lip hard.
“You’re a fucking animal, you know that?”
He shrugs, smirking as he slips out of bed to go brush his teeth.
It’s pitch black when I wake with a start. I turn, and frown when I reach over to realize the bed next to me is empty.
Again.
Because this is the other part of our new routine. Several times a week, some weeks almost every night, I’ll wake up to find him gone. Not just from the bed, I mean gone from the apartment entirely, only to slip—usually freshly showered—back into bed at some ungodly hour of the morning.
I asked him about it once, and he just said it was a business thing. But I’m not the only one with a “tell”. Whenever Cillian lies, his hand makes a quick motion for his cigarette case before he stops himself. He’s been slowing down a lot with the nicotine. So it’s probably a new tic of his that he doesn’t even know about—his inner psyche reaching for the crutch of a cigarette. But now that I’ve seen that move, I never miss it.
I know he’s lying.
“So, how often do you go to the club?”
It’s morning, and Cillian and I are sitting on the couch drinking coffee and looking at furniture magazines.
We seriously need some more stuff in here.
He looks up from his Lillian August catalog, one brow cocked up at me above his glasses. Which is so…ugh. Completely unfair. Because I’m trying to pry and possibly accuse him of something, and he’s got the fucking nerve to wear those goddamn black-rimmed glasses. Which somehow have the power, unbelievably, to make him even more mouthwateringly attractive.
“Take those off.”
“What?”
“The glasses. Take them off.”
He gives me a curious look before he slips them off. “What club?”
“Venom.”
Cillian eyes me, not saying anything as the seconds tick by and I squirm under his gaze.
“What are you asking me?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
I go back to leafing through my Restoration Hardware catalog. Then I gasp as he plucks it from my hands and tosses it aside.
“What are you asking me, Una?”
“Nothing! I’m just…asking.”
He still goes there. Oh my fucking God he totally still goes there.
Part of me wants to rage and scream at him. The other part of me remembers…this isn’t a real marriage.
We may be sharing a bed and fucking—and oh my God are we fucking—and technically and legally speaking, we are married. But we’ve never had any sort of discussion about what that means for “us”.
Like, “Are we a couple?” or “Are we exclusive?”
It’s that second one that has me…snarling inside, with a vicious fury that honestly scares me a little.
What are you, jealous?
“Look, seriously, just forget—”
I shiver as he grabs my legs, twisting me on the couch so that I’m facing him.
“There’s a darkness in me, Una,” he growls. “Something…” his eyes flicker with malevolent green fire. “Something monstrous.”
I swallow, my hand dropping to cover his as it rests on my knee. “Cillian, you’re not a—”
“This is more than you have any fucking idea about,” he hisses thinly, making me shiver. “And if I keep it bottled up, I’ll explode. So I have…avenues…to let it out.”
My mouth goes small. “Avenues.”
He nods.
“Like tying girls up at Club Venom and—”
His phone chooses that particular moment to go off. Cillian groans, pulling away from me and glaring at it. “Fuck, I have to take this.” His eyes dart back to mine. “Una—”
“Look, honestly, forget it. I slept weird last night and my head’s all crazy today—”
“We will continue this conversation later.”
I shrug, reaching for the Restoration Hardware catalog again and letting my eyes feast upon ridiculously expensive couches.
But “later” doesn’t come. Cillian’s on the phone for most of the morning. Then Castle stops by to pick him up and he’s gone for a few hours. He’s back later with sushi takeout for dinner, which is great.
Then he pins me to the bedroom floor and fucks the living daylights out of me with his hand around my throat and, which is even more great.
Then, we collapse into bed and I pass out, exhausted.
It’s late when I wake, startled from sleep. I turn, and I try not to seethe when I slide a hand over to feel the emptiness in the bed next to me.
Fuck this.
I’m about to go back to bed, when suddenly I hear quiet sounds from outside the bedroom. Frowning, I slip from the bed and tiptoe to the door. I open it and glance down the dark hallway to see Cillian slipping a lethal-looking knife into a sheath at his hip before slipping on his black jacket.
Then he’s out the door.
I don’t even hesitate. I’m changed into leggings, a hoodie and sneakers, and bolting down the stairs of the building faster than I would have ever thought I could. Outside, I slip behind the planters next to the front door, ignoring the curious look the doorman gives me.
When I see Cillian’s black GTO slip silently out of the underground garage like a shark, I make a move. I bolt to the road and raise my hand, hailing down the taxi that quickly pulls up to the curb to let me in.
“Follow that GTO, please! And just…try to do it so he doesn’t notice, please?”
The driver arches a sympathetic brow.
“Chasing the husband, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“No sweat, lady. Ain’t my first husband-chasing rodeo.”
Then we’re off.
And I’m not sure if I’m excited, jealous, or just plain terrified of what I’ll find.