Cormac (Dangerous Doms 2)

I walk quickly. I don’t even know where I’m going or what I’ll do when I get there, but I need to be away from Cormac for a little while. I walk out to the garden, forgetting that the clouds rolled in.

“Miss, it’s raining out—” someone says behind me, but I let the heavy front door bang closed behind me. I don’t care that it’s raining. I don’t care that within five steps of the house, I’m soaked to the skin. Lightning crashes in the sky above me. I probably should go back inside, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I make it to the trellis in the garden and sit under the leaves that shield me from the torrent.

What am I doing? What will I do next? But above all, there’s one question that has plagued me ever since I hit my head, and can’t remember all that I need to.

Who am I?

I can’t deal with memory after memory. My mother, my father, my sisters given away. Me, as a little girl, begging to go on a playdate and my mother sending me to my room for even asking. How I shunned all boys at school after seeing what my father did to the boys who came near my sisters. How I earned the name “bitch” because they thought me cold and detached.

I remember everything now, everything with such awful clarity I wish again for the lapse in memory. I had somehow built a resistance to the pain that tormented me, and now… oh, God. Now that it’s flooding me at once, I can’t handle the waves of pain and helplessness.

I jump to my feet when a large branch falls to the ground beside me. I step out of the trellis and let the rain cascade down my face. I close my eyes to it, but welcome the cold lashes of wind and water. They mingle with my tears, and I don’t feel so alone. The only sound out here is the howling of wind and the slashing of rain on the ground. I’m frozen to the bone, but don’t want to move. I belong here, right here, with the sodden earth beneath my feet and the sky above me.

I walk past the garden, down the stone steps that lead to the estate, to the large, wrought-iron fence that surrounds us. Several men stand in all black by the gate, wearing slickers, and their eyes immediately come to me.

“You can’t be out here, miss,” one says. “Mr. McCarthy will have my head if I don’t bring you back inside.” He steps toward me, but I’m half-crazed. I hold a hand up to him.

“Mr. McCarthy will have your head if you touch me,” I warn him.

He holds both hands up in surrender. “Not goin’ to touch you, ma’am. Just makin’ sure you’re okay.”

The other man pulls out his phone and makes a quick call.

“Don’t you dare,” I tell him. He’s going to call my husband. I know it.

But he dials anyway, ignoring my protest.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” I scream. Nausea rolls through me in a sudden torrent that makes the world swim before me. Damn it.

“Christ, woman.” I open my eyes and shield them from the rain when I see Cormac heading to me, wearing nothing but a pair of sodden jeans. He’s barefoot and bare-chested, and he looks like he did in the bedroom, ready to throttle me.

“Go ‘way.” I say petulantly. “I don’t want you right now.” He waves his guards away to give us privacy, and they scurry like mice.

“Leave me alone, Cormac! I don’t want you right now. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Aileen!” he has to shout my name to be heard above the roaring wind.

“Cormac!” I throw back at him.

“Get in the damn house!”

“Make me!”

We square off in the garden like that, my hands on my hips and his eyes shooting daggers at me, until he reaches me, yanks my hand, and pulls me to him.

“Let me go,” I say, but it’s fruitless. He’s already got me wrapped in his arms.

“Impossible woman!” he seethes. “What the fuck am I going to do with you?”

“You could—” I begin, but his mouth slams down on mine and silences me. He slams his hand on my lower back and shoves me to him as he claims me with his mouth, his tongue sliding against mine. Goddamn him, my body flames beneath the onslaught of his mouth, and I can hardly stand. He reaches down and hoists me up until my legs wrap around him. He kisses me until I’m melting, until I can no longer feel the rain at my back, and my whole body’s light and warm with the feel of his lips on mine.

We’re panting when he pulls away. I drop my forehead to his.