Binding Rose: A Dark Mafia Romance(103)

He turns around and grips my chin with a familiar brutish force.

“You’re wrong, acushla. I’m all that you need,” he spits out, making my shoulders slump in disappointment.

“That might have been true in the beginning. Not anymore. Actions have consequences, husband. It’s time you faced yours.”

I snap my chin out of his grip and then turn around to lie back in bed, turning my back towards him. I can feel the waves of uncertainty flow from him. Unsure if this is just another one of our games, or if I truly mean my threat.

I mean every word.

After a few minutes, he slides in next to me, his hands gripping my waist, his breath in my ear.

“You’re mine, acushla. You’re just confused. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

I slant my neck just enough to face him.

“No, Tiernan. You’re the one who’s confused. If you fight me on this, you’ll lose me. Is that what you want?”

“I won’t,” he seethes with gritted teeth. “I meant what I said when I told you that I will make you happy and give you all that your heart desires.”

“My heart desires Shay and Colin. Until you give them to me, then there is no happiness to be had. For either of us.”

“You’re wrong. And I’ll prove it to you,” he threatens, biting on my earlobe and then sinking his teeth into my bare shoulder.

He lifts my leg just a tad, enough to sink his cock inside me. One hand snakes around my throat, choking me, while his other hand begins to play with my clit. His hands are showing me no mercy while his cock fucks me ever so slowly, building up a crescendo my body is powerless to fight off. He knows every secret it’s ever had and forces it to dance to the tune of his own making. When he wrings another orgasm from me, he cums inside me once more, thinking he’s proven his point.

I press my palm to his cheek and stare at him, sweat covering his brow.

“All you’ll get is this, husband. You can have my body, but as long as you deprive me of what I want, you’ll never have my heart. The choice is yours.”





Chapter 23





Tiernan



I’ve become my wife’s warden yet again.

For the past month I have kept her hidden away in our apartment, unwilling to let her step one foot outside it. Fear of losing her has driven me mad, but as each day passes, I feel my obsession is slowly driving her out of my reach.

In war, I have always known what to do, what is expected of me. But binding Rosa to me is a battle I’m not sure I’m equipped to win. I’d lay my empire to ruin, burn it all down, if I thought it would be the key to unlocking her heart. I had a taste of its sweetness once, but nothing I do seems to grant me access to it again.

As promised, she has let me into her body, but never into her heart, and it’s driving me insane. I fuck the insubordination out of her at every turn. Fucking her seven or eight times a day if needed. I’ve even resorted to waking her up in the middle of the night just so she can ride my cock until the glimmer of the woman that professed her love for me shines through. I fucking live for those few seconds when she truly is mine, but once it disappears and evaporates into thin air, my grief multiplies tenfold.

Her flawless petals are withering right before my very eyes, and my love is the cold winter that is slowly killing her.

If all of this wasn’t doing me in, then my brother coming into my office every day, hassling me and demanding to see my wife, isn’t doing me any favors, either. The only one that hasn’t come out and made his demands of me is Colin. No. He’s done far worse. After the first few weeks when I ceased all access to her, Colin requested to leave Boston and return to Ireland. Unlike my hot-tempered brother, he understood why I no longer wanted them near her. That I wanted my rose only for myself and refused to share her. After I declined his request to leave, every time he looks at me now, I can see the growing resentment starting to build up inside him. Soon he’ll forget we’re kin, forget his allegiance to me, and become my enemy—all in the name of love.

And fuck, he does loves her.

Even my whoremonger of a brother has fallen under her spell.

The woman has bewitched us all.

The question is, do I love her like they do—unconditionally and unselfishly?

A part of me screams to submit and give her whatever she wants, but the possessive part of me, the one where my obsession for her completely corrupts me, selfishly wants her only to myself. I feel my resolve waning with each day that passes and then reprimand myself for being so weak.

“Any mail for me, Jermaine?” I ask the doorman when I pass through The Avalon’s front doors after a day of ruling over an empire that no longer excites me as it once did.

When I was part of the grime and dirt of the streets, using my gun and blade to put fear into the hearts of men, it had its appeal. Now that I’m forced to reign over Boston from up high in my tower, where my days are full of board meetings, sleazy politicians, and dirty cops, it lacks its luster.

A part of me used to envy Colin and Shay for being able to fight down in the ditches.

Now my envy has only increased with the knowledge that not only do they have the life I wish I could have back, but they also have my wife’s heart.

“Here it is,” Jermaine says, handing me my mail.