“Turn around,” he murmurs, lips grazing that spot just beneath my ear. It’s the spot that always makes me lose track of what I was doing.
My pulse leaps. Like he knows I’ve done something I shouldn’t. I’m going to wear a radioactive dress and blow us up.
“Cutting it close, aren’t you, wife?” Calling me his wife drenches my panties.
I spin too fast, almost tangling myself in the dress.Cormac looks at it, then back at me.
His gaze catches all the openness of it. The elegant plunge that’ll kiss the curve of my lower spine.
Jaw tightened, he says, “I don’t likeallyour skin on display.”
I step closer. “You’re an O’Rourke. Irish Mob royalty. No one’s going to look at me the wrong way tonight.”
His brows lift with just a hint of amused disbelief. “Is that right?”
“Uh-huh,” I whisper, even though my stomach is doing somersaults. “Because they’ll be too busy fearing you.”
The tension in his shoulders loosens, but only a little. His hand skims up my arm, warm, possessive in a way that makes me melt.
Then he pulls back just enough to show me what he had hidden behind his back.
“I bought you something,” he says, producing a flat, square velvet box.
“What did you buy?” I pitch my voice, excited.
He paid my tuition. Bought me clothes. He gave me a place to live and a driver. He buys all my food. But those are necessities. This is a gift. Something he had to think about. And that has my heart pounding even more.
He opens the case, and a string of chocolate diamonds shimmer. The necklace is delicate, elegant, and expensive enough to give me hives.
It’s not lost on me that it’s a choker. He’s collaring me.
“It matches your eyes,” he says, but his gaze is on my throat. On the pulse he once kissed in the dark when he had no idea I’d be his student a month later, and his wife a few months after that. “And it will keep men’s eyes where they belong,” he says.
“And where do I belong?” I ask, breath catching.
“Beside me,” he murmurs. “Under me.”
There’s a warning in his touch. I belong to him.Don’t forget it.
His fingers trace my nape as he presses them against my skin. For a moment, I can’t breathe. All I feel is his fingers brushing my throat. That look in Cormac’s eyes makes me feel like a goddess. Will he still look at me like that when I come home wrecked from a long day of work, in messy scrubs?
I swallow. Hard. “It’s beautiful.”
Too beautiful. I’m a scrappy MS-3. Not an ornament.
“You’rebeautiful.” He kisses the side of my neck, then takes another small box out of his pocket. “I got matching cufflinks. According to the jeweler, it signals that we’re paired.” His breath touches my cheek. Warm. Controlled. Hungry. “Bonded. Mine.”
I swallow, the gravity of what it means giving me goosebumps.
“I need to shower, do my hair and makeup. This bedroom is going to be a war room soon.”
Cormac places a kiss on my lips and exits my closet to grab his tux. “I’ll get ready in my son’s room.”
His son… It warms me when he says that. The man does possession like a champion.
Watching him leave, my gaze on his muscular shoulders and backside, heat rolls through me. Low, molten, dangerous.
When I emerge from the bedroom ninety minutes later, I’m stunned at how he looks. I’ve seen him naked, in scrubs covered in blood, his professor garb, but this… A sharp tux runs a close second to naked.