34. Declan
34
DECLAN
I watched Olivia stomp away from me. Her yellow shirt made her look like a shooting star getting away from me as fast as she possibly could.
Did she actually want to stay in Ireland? Or did she just want me to want her to stay?
I pinched the bridge of my nose, my thoughts ricocheting inside my skull. Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t I simply go for it? After all, I knew what I wanted.
I wanted more time with her, didn’t I?
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that actually asking her to stay implied promises I wasn’t ready to make. I would be asking her to give up the career she’d had since college and the country she’d had since birth, all for a relationship I wasn’t quite willing to name. As much as I wanted to say, Stay, it wasn’t fair for me to ask her for that unless I could offer her something better in return.
I hesitated, unsure whether it was better to go after Olivia or give her some time.
My phone buzzed while I was making up my mind. I frowned, not recognizing the number.
“Hello. You have Declan Byrne.”
“Declan, hello! It’s Colm from the Ballybeith Press . I’m sure you know it?”
I rolled my eyes. The Ballybeith Press was a digital newsletter that got emailed to everyone in town once a week whether they wanted it or not. It didn’t matter how many times you unsubscribed yourself from the list, someone else would helpfully add you back on. Colm had retired from his actual career about five years ago, and since then, all of his free time went into our little local newsletter.
“Sure, Colm. What can I do for you?” I kicked a rock. It was probably another bloody fundraiser. I never resented donating money to support village stuff, but I hated the song and dance and endless small talk that went with it. I wanted to wrap this up, so I could go inside to Olivia.
“As you may know, someone bought the O’Rourke mansion yesterday. And a certain town councilman hinted that someone was you,” Colm said.
I raised my head, focusing on the conversation for the first time.
“I’d love to do a brief piece for tomorrow’s newsletter. Announce you as the new owner, explain your plans for the property, that sort of thing.” He laughed. “I still can’t believe O’Rourke sold it to anyone, let alone you. And the sale was so fast!”
I grinned, wolfish. It had been a fast sale. O’Rourke had been desperate to sell, and I’d made a cash offer well above asking price. He probably thought he’d gotten the better end of the deal.
Little did he know.
“Declan?” Colm prodded. “Can you confirm you’re the property’s new owner?”
What the hell , I thought. I hadn’t planned to make a big public announcement. But now that the property was officially mine, this was as good a way as any to rub Mark O’Rourke’s face in it.
“Yes, I’m the new owner of the O’Rourke mansion,” I confirmed, liking the taste of the words on my tongue.
“Well, may I be one of the first to offer congratulations, then,” Colm said. “What are your plans for it? Will you be living in the place? Using it for office space? Turning it into a Deer and the Warrior museum?”
I savored the moment, picturing Mark O’Rourke’s face turning red with rage.
“I’m going to raze it to the fucking ground. And you can quote me on that.”
“You can’t…I mean, you can, but…why?” Colm blurted.
I let the silence build between us. “Mark knows what he did,” I said at last. “Have a nice afternoon, Colm.”
Then I hung up.
My revenge quest had finally come to a close. I’d expected it to be satisfying, and it was. But at the same time, a part of me worried how Olivia would take the news.
Would she understand why I’d needed to do this? It didn’t seem likely. My one consolation was that she didn’t read the Ballybeith Press . I had time to find the right moment to break it to her.
But first I had to patch things up with her.
I found Olivia in the basement pool. She was swimming laps, her form elegant and her focus complete. Her red hair flowed behind her, making her look like something out of a myth.
I watched her swim for a while, just for the pleasure of it. Then I stripped down to my boxers and joined her.
I sliced through the water, fast and sure, until I caught up with her. She started when she noticed me and sputtered to the surface.
“Don’t scare me like that!”
“Sorry,” I said, trying to sound contrite.
“No, you’re not,” Olivia said.
My grin faded. “Well, not about startling you. But I am sorry for pushing you too hard this morning. I support whatever decision you want to make with your blog.” I didn’t admit that she was right about how badly I wanted to ask her to stay, though. I couldn’t start that conversation until I knew how it ended.
Ripples traveled back and forth between us as we both treaded water.
“I’m sorry too,” Olivia said. “I shouldn’t have flipped out on you.”
I noticed she didn’t admit I was right about her wanting more than a life as a nanny.
Fair play to her.
It felt like as much as we cared about each other, every time we patched over one crack in our relationship, another one appeared.
You’ll have more than cracks when she finds out you’re razing the mansion, a voice in my head said.
I ignored it. I didn’t want to think about the O’Rourkes, or my past, or her future. Right now I just wanted to live in the moment with Olivia.
I swam toward her, wrapping an arm around her waist to tug her toward me.
She laughed.
“Make it up to me?” I suggested. The water had darkened her eyelashes, and her eyes looked green as the sea.
Olivia looped her hands behind my neck. “I thought you were supposed to be making it up to me.”
I kissed her. She tasted like chlorine and summer and her . “Maybe we make it up to each other.”
She searched my face. When she nodded, it felt like she was agreeing to more than the make-up sex.
Maybe this was how you built a relationship. You just kept making it up to each other, coming back together, patching over cracks, for as long as you possibly could. Even if it was messy. Even if it was humbling.
Even if the woman you were falling for was goddamn impossible to hold on to.
I kissed her, fierce. Her lips were equally hungry. It was hard to get the right angle in the water. It felt like the first time again, as we bumped and crashed and fell into each other. Olivia used my shoulders to get a better angle, and as she pushed up from the water and kissed me from above, we finally got it right.
I drank from her lips. She kissed me so damn good I forgot where we were, and we temporarily sank below the water.
Olivia disentangled herself from me and shot back up to the surface, laughing. “What the hell was that?”
“You distracted me,” I grumbled.
Olivia tossed me an impish smile. And then she dove back under the water, swimming to the wall.
I gave chase. I was always chasing this woman.
I hit the wall a second after her, caging her against it. This time when she wrapped her legs around my waist, I could brace us against the wall and keep us steady.
If only there was a way for me to keep us steady in the rest of our lives. I shoved the thought away and leaned in, my voice soft and low in her ear. “Distract me some more.”
She shivered. “Got anything in mind?”
I lowered the neckline of her swimsuit below her breasts. The neckline and the water pushed them up, plump and begging for my touch.
“There,” I growled. “That’s a start.”
She made a little sound in the back of her throat that was half gasp, half purr, and all feminine. I lifted one of her breasts to my lips and bit, just hard enough to make her buck and squirm against me. Then I soothed her with my tongue, murmuring curses and endearments in the same drugged language. I lost myself in the slick feel of her skin, the way I could make her breath speed up, the way she gave herself over to me—and gave as good as she got.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I lifted her from the water and set her on the lip of the pool. Then I spread her thighs and kissed her through the fabric of her swimsuit.
She moaned, lacing her hands through my hair to guide me where she wanted me.
The first time we’d done this she’d been shy, almost apologetic. Now she understood I needed this as much she did. She understood what a fucking privilege it was for me to worship her like this.
“Your hands,” she gasped. “I need you to touch me too.”
I slid two fingers under the suit, stroking her the way she loved. Giving her every touch she craved.
When she came apart, the glorious sounds she made echoed in the tiled room. I nearly came, just from hearing her like that.
I rested my head on the softness of her thigh, trying to get my own breath back. Olivia ran her hand through my hair, idle and gentle now that I’d taken the edge off for her.
Meanwhile, I needed her. Hard, fast, and now.
I cast about the room for someplace to fuck her, but everywhere but the pool was too hard. I didn’t want her bruised, and I also didn’t want to be gentle. Not tonight. Not when the outside world was pressing down on us and it felt like I could lose her any second if I didn’t hold on tightly enough.
She tugged my hair lightly. “You need to fuck me hard, don’t you?”
It was halfway between a tease and a scold, and it made my problem worse. It did something to me when my clean-mouthed Olivia talked dirty.
She stood up and peeled herself out of the swimsuit, looking for all the world like Aphrodite coming out of the ocean. If Aphrodite was red-haired and covered in freckles, which in my opinion, she should have been.
Even after what we’d just done, Olivia still blushed at my frank interest. Then she bit her lip and walked toward a shelf of towels. She unfurled them all, one after another, making a bed of softness in this concrete room. Then she sank down on all fours, adjusting the thick pile of fabric, until she had it to her liking.
Olivia looked back over her shoulder and winked . “Will this do, boss?”
I burst out of the water so fast a surge of water came with me. In a matter of seconds I was naked and kneeling behind her. I gripped her soft hips and nudged her thighs farther apart.
“Lower,” I ordered, my voice dropping in tone until it become a half growl. I laid my hand on her lower back, my splayed fingers caressing her smooth skin, and moved it up the grooves of her spine. I pushed her down until her breasts were touching the floor, her body bending into the most wicked of curves. “Yes, just like this.”
She shivered and complied, her body melting under my touch. “Yes, boss.”
I smacked her ass. “Stop that. You’ll give me some nanny fetish.”
“Only fair.” Olivia laughed, breathless, as she pressed her hips back toward me. But there was a helpless edge to her laugh, like she’d given up fighting how much we wanted each other. “You gave me a sleeping-with-my-boss fetish.”
I thrust into her, hard. She was wet and ready from my mouth, but she still gasped, surprised. That soft gasp echoed on the tile around us. She dropped her forehead to the towels and groaned. “God, Declan. It feels so good.”
I set a hard, punishing pace. One that wouldn’t let either of us think about anything outside of this room. One that would leave our minds and bodies spent for hours afterward.
Maybe I did want to bruise her a little. She was leaving marks all over my life. It seemed only fair to return the favor.
We used each other until I’d completely lost track of time. Then I changed the angle, and she started crying out again, little jagged things, as her back arched, and her hands spread and clenched on the towels. As she clenched around me, I felt her pull me toward delicious oblivion. I pulled out with a roar and finished on her back.
Then I rolled her over and gently laid her down, kissing her while we both got our breath back. I reached down with one hand and carefully massaged her knee. “Was that too much? Did I hurt you?”
She bit her lip, searching my face. “I think,” she said carefully, “we’ll hurt each other no matter what we do. We might as well have fun while we’re at it.”
I frowned. Some bone-deep part of me revolted at the idea of hurting her, even a little. “That wasn’t an answer.”
“I’m fine, Declan,” she said. She smoothed my hair back. “I liked it—especially that part at the end. You sounded like an animal. Positively feral.”
“You make me feel feral,” I said. I gestured to the mussed towels around us. “Obviously.”
She looked up at me, wide-eyed. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “You say things like that, and I…I don’t know what to do with you.”
I stared down at her. She really had no idea what a miracle she was. I’d never let anyone tear open my life like this before.
“Believe me,” I ordered. I kissed her once, like her belief in me was a pact we could seal together.
Believe me when I show you how much you mean to me, I thought, Even if you can’t always understand me.
We went upstairs and cleaned up, too exhausted to think about the cracks in our relationship.
W hen I rolled over the next morning, Olivia was already awake and scrolling through her phone.
I kissed the back of her neck. “Don’t tell me you’re checking your email so early in the morning.”
“I always check my email first thing every day, in case Sunny Days Childcare sent me anything I need to respond to,” Olivia said. “Plus, I like the newsletters.”
“The newsletters?” I said.
“There’s a news round-up I like. Some nonprofits I give to. A few authors I follow. Local stuff from places I’ve lived. I like seeing what everyone’s up to,” she said.
“Aww,” I said. “You actually read your junk mail. How did I not know that about you?”
She rocked her ass against my cock in retaliation for that remark. I swallowed a groan and tried to roll her under me, more than willing to be distracted from this particular argument.
She giggled and wiggled away from me. “Hold on, I just got my first issue of the Ballybeith Press . Molly signed me up—she said it’s a hoot.”
My lust-fogged brain took a second too long to process her words.
Olivia stiffened against me.
I reached for her. “Wait. Let me explain.”
But she was already scrambling out of bed, clutching the sheet to her chest. “How could you, Declan? Is this true?”
Something cold and heavy settled over my chest. She was looking at me in horror. Like this was the one thing she might not be able to forgive.
She was waiting for an answer. Waiting for me to deny it.
Unfortunately, a denial was the one thing I couldn’t give her. “It’s true.”