Illicit Temptation (Astoria Royals #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Trace

S hea’s server team cleans up after everyone leaves. I watch them pass through the gates on their way out, and I follow them to make sure the gate latches are secure and the perimeter is all clear.

My regularly scheduled evening walkthrough of the grounds isn’t for another hour, so I do a cursory inspection. With six O’Rourke brothers in the house, plus a team of their bodyguards and seconds tonight, Shea was safer than any night in recent months.

I need to be inside Shea and go looking for my next fix. My thickening cock has me climbing the stairs three steps at a time. I walk right into her bedroom, a comforting claim. “Shea?”

“I need a minute,” she groans from the bathroom.

Alarm skitters through me. If this wasn’t a door to the bean jacks, I’d be kicking it down. “What’s wrong?” I ask from the other side.

“Nothing,” she snaps.

Fuck. I slowly open the door. “Love, I’m still your bodyguard, that means I have the right to—”

Anything else I could have said dies in my throat, seeing her on the bathroom floor clutching her abdomen.

“What the hell?” I drop to the floor in front of her. “What happened?”

Her green eyes find mine, tension and turmoil mixing like an angry ocean. Fluttering them closed, she murmurs, “Cramps.”

“Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?” I think about the food orgy laid out for hungry O’Rourke men.

She tilts her head. “ Period cramps. Something I know men find squeamish and disgusting.” Waving her arm she says, “Go to your room, close the door. It will be over in five to seven days.”

I hide my disappointment. But her period means those shite pills didn’t work. A twinge of relief grips me too, considering my earlier thoughts. This is the second time she’s bled. I’m ready to find that doctor and play Russian Roulette with his brain until he agrees to give me my money back.

Gently stroking Shea’s chin, I bring our faces close together. “Nothing that comes out of your body is disgusting. You have no idea what these eyes have seen in battle. A little blood dripping from your cunt is adorable in comparison.”

She crumbles and leans into my chest. “Figures you’d say that. I’d let you fuck me, but it hurts so bad.”

It’s not pain in her voice. It’s agony, and I want to hurt someone . I don’t have sisters and yeah, I guess I was one of those guys who wouldn’t mess around with a girlfriend on her period. This is different. This hits differently.

This is my wife.

“Does it always hurt like this?” I ask, noticing the difference from last month when she just wanted to cuddle with a heating pad.

Shaking her head, she says, “That’s just it. It’s never hurt this bad. I... I’m going to call my doctor.”

Alarm fires through my veins, imagining her showing him those pills and him telling her someone swapped her birth control with fertility meds. “What can the doctor do? Call Darragh if you need a strong pain med.”

“My gyno gave me special birth control pills that were supposed to make my periods...” Her eyes lock on to mine. “Less painful.”

Something shatters inside me. She’s not on ordinary birth control. “How long have you been on these pills? ”

“The newer ones? Since August.”

Six months she’s been taking these new pills and two months on mine, she’s in so much pain she’s on the bathroom floor. That fucking quack is a dead man.

“Um, maybe you should stop taking the pills for a while.” I gather her in my arms. “Let me knock you up,” I say to joke and cover my ass.

She whimpers against my chest. I think it’s just hormones, but she grips my shirt.

“Trace... I have to tell you something.”