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.

Everyone in South Boston knew that Troy had killed them both.

No one said a word.

That should have told me a thing or a dozen about my husband.

His cruelty was infinite. His hands had touched blood, weapons, knives, dead bodies. Thinking about him caressing my body with those hands should’ve made me nauseous. Yet somehow, it didn’t…

“Not scared at all. You don’t know anything about me.” I turned in bed, offering him my back and hugging my knees to my chest. I buried my face in the soft pillow.

His side of the mattress lifted unexpectedly. I heard him pad across the floor to the bathroom, but he didn’t bother to close the door. I listened closely. He took a leak and washed his hands, whistling. When he returned, he stood there at the end of the bed in his underwear, his cock saluting in my direction.

“First time you've seen a boner?” he mocked.

I didn’t want to tell him the truth. Yes. So I gulped and looked up, concentrating on a piece of modern art, a painting of a naked woman behind him. I shrugged. “Yours is nothing special.”

“That’s where I can prove you wrong.” His smile almost passed for human.

“Thanks for the offer, but beside the fact I’d rather chew on used needles, I just got my period.” I pulled the duvet all the way up to my nose.

“Bull-fucking-shit.” His mouth twisted into a vicious smirk. “Let’s see it.”

“What?”

“Let’s. See. Your period,” he said slowly. “Take off your briefs.”

I scooted away from him, looking around me, trying to marshal my thoughts. “You’re not serious?”

“I don’t do humor, Sparrow. Besides, you’ve shown some spine so far, don’t wanna ruin it by chickening out on me, do you…wifey?”

“But…”

“The butt is a good option,” he said evenly, not a trace of amusement in his voice, “but I’m more interested in seeing your blood right now.”

I glanced around me, looking for...what? Sharp objects to throw at him as I ran? He could probably kill me just by breathing in my direction. Instead of taunting him like a three-year-old, I should’ve told him the truth.

“I’m not chickening out.”

He moved closer toward me. “Actions speak louder than words.”

Screw it. He wanted to play, and I was starting to understand his twisted game.

I stood up in front of him and peeled my PJ shorts down an inch at a time. My fingers scraped my pubic bones and despite my hatred of him, I found myself self-conscious about my scrawniness. I bet he was used to sleeping with women who were all curves. And I looked like a boy, with my pale skin, fragile frame and bonfire hair.