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He was wrong. I’d been looking after myself for as long as I could remember. I didn’t need anyone to take care of me. I’d been the one that had thrown out all those empty bottles day after day when my father had passed out on the living room floor because he’d been too drunk to make it down the hall to his own bed.
“You’re wasting your time. I’m just going to run away as soon as I get the chance,” I boasted.
His striking gaze held mine and I couldn’t look away. I didn’t really know what my expected end point would be, but I was well past the point of caring about what happened anymore. I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, feeling almost as though I was waiting for him to finally recognize that I was too much and decide to leave too. He cleared his throat and I waited for the inevitable to come just like it always did.
“Running away would be unwise. All that would happen is that I would find you and bring you back safe and sound. And it would earn you another hard session with my belt that would make the punishment you received over the judge’s desk seem gentle,” he finally replied.
His whole demeanor was so calm and steady that it was unnerving. The problem was that, deep down, a part of me believed him. I didn’t know what he was capable of, and I had a feeling that I didn’t want to find out. Curiosity killed the cat, or so they say.
What difference would it make if it killed me too?
CHAPTER8
Cormac
Caitlin McCormick was the epitome of an Irish spitfire, that’s for damn sure. Strong, intelligent, fiercely independent, and utterly breathtaking even in the midst of anger. Despite everything that had threatened to throw her life off course, she had still managed to grow up into a capable young woman.
Caitlin was more like her mother than she could ever know, from her striking glare to the way her lower lip protruded just the tiniest bit when she was aggravated or annoyed at something, but there was even more I could read just from her body language that I’d grown to recognize in Nora, especially when she went toe to toe with Finn. The two of them had been a once in a lifetime sort of love, but that hadn’t meant they didn’t argue just like any other couple. In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that Nora sometimes started fights just so Finn could take her down a peg in the bedroom.
My gaze slid over to Caitlin, picking up on the rosy pink hue that colored her cheeks, the dilated pupils, the constant shifting in her seat. Anyone else might have thought it was just because her bottom was still sore from my belt, but I knew it was more than that. I had pushed her skirt out of the way simply for accuracy’s sake. I hadn’t taken her panties down, but I hadn’t needed to in order to know that Caitlin had been very, very aroused.
So much so that she was recklessly poking at me to see what else I would do.
I’d done my best to ignore her every attempt thus far, but I could tell that was just aggravating her further. For a while, she sat there in silence, stewing as she tried to come up with her next move.
Nothing about what she was doing was making me angry. It was the opposite, in fact. I saw right through what she was doing and knew that she didn’t recognize what it looked like to have someone look after her or even care about her. A piece of my heart broke as I began to understand the fragmented pieces of her life that had never quite come together.
What happened, Finn? How could you have let your daughter grow up without your love?
A massive part of me felt like this was all my fault. If I’d never roped Finn into my misfortunate scheme, both he and Nora would still be alive, and Caitlin wouldn’t be the broken shell of a girl she was today. It was my responsibility to fix all of this and the only thing that would teach her that I had nothing but good intentions with her was patience and time. I took a deep, steadying breath and pushed myself up from my seat. I turned to Caitlin and smiled.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“A shot of tequila would be nice,” she retorted.
When I raised an eyebrow at her request, she just sat, cocked her chin a bit higher, and did the same.
“I’ll get you some juice,” I replied gently.
“I don’t want fucking juice,” she said under her breath, and it took me a second to decide just to let it go for the time being.
She needed my patience now more than anything. I’d turned her whole world upside down in a single day and that would take a while for her to accept. She was safe with me now and I had all the time in the world to show her that a home could be a good place and not just the rotten one she’d grown to know.
Retrieving Caitlin had gone far more smoothly than I had expected it to. Usually when it came to matters of pacifying those in power, there were the usual hiccups here and there where I needed to lay down more money on the table just to get done what needed to be done. This time, the bureaucracy was more than ready to make a deal. There was hardly any funding for prisons there and if the pomp and circumstance of a hearing took place so that the public could feel vindicated that justice had been served, they didn’t much care what happened to criminals after that. I just had to grease the right hands in the right places, and they’d practically thrown Caitlin at me so that they didn’t have to have another mouth to feed within the system.
I’d made Nora a promise and I intended to keep it. Caitlin deserved to know that someone out there cared what happened to her, and I would do whatever I needed to do to prove that to her, even if it took the rest of my life. I would celebrate the small victories though. Tonight, she would be sleeping in a real bed and not a metal bunkbed behind bars with some stranger trying to vie for her support in whatever gang nonsense happened in state prisons nowadays. She was safe and sound with nothing other than a sore bottom and a sense of wounded pride and that was something special.
I made my way to the bar in the back and poured myself a finger of whiskey. I took a small swig before I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of orange juice. She needed to get something of sustenance inside her. The trial had been long, and I was reasonably sure she hadn’t eaten anything for much of the day. I supposed that she might have eaten breakfast this morning, but I didn’t know her well enough to bet on that. I’d get her something in the back if I could convince her to at least sip on this first. If she behaved herself, I might even add that shot of tequila she wanted, but only after she put something in her stomach first. I had no intentions on being a prison warden. If she could handle herself, what difference did having a drink or two make?
I could feel her watching me as I poured a glassful for her. Her expression didn’t really soften either, slowly hardening into a more spiteful glare the longer I stood there away from her. I could tell there was something else though, curiosity maybe.
“I’m sure you’re thirsty,” I tried, but my attempt to lighten the mood fell on deaf ears and I shrugged it off.
She’d figure out that I was just looking out for her in time. When I picked up the two glasses and made my way back over to her, I noticed her thighs press together much more firmly than before. Her fishnets revealed a good amount of her skin underneath, allowing me to see every time her muscles tensed when she was around me. Her skirt was short enough to leave much of her legs bare, which had been an unexpected treat when it hadn’t entirely hidden all of the redness from my belt. I know she’d probably seen the whole outfit as some sort of rebellion, but a part of me liked the bad girl edge to it.
Her legs were long, toned, and lean and the fishnets set them off perfectly. Her hips were curvy in all the right places, and she filled out that too-short skirt like it was made for her. The sight of her pinned over the desk with her red ass properly presented for me would be the fodder of my hottest fantasies for the rest of my life. I was certain of it. That was something I wasn’t willing to admit to anyone, especially her. It would remain unsaid, just like I meant to keep my involvement in her mother’s death a secret that I would take to my grave.
I stood beside her and held out the glass. Her small fingers wrapped around it and an immediate vision of that same hand wrapping around my cock flashed before my eyes. I pushed it away almost as quickly as it had come and swallowed through my shame.
