“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 HAVe 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.