Chapter 15
Damen
I’m getting jittery.
It’s been a week since the attempt on Killian’s life. A week of games, good food, and getting to know each other better, but somehow he hasn’t made a move on me yet.
Perhaps he has more self-control and patience than I gave him credit for, but it’s the day before Christmas, and if I don’t up my game, Killian might slip out of my grasp for good. I can’t have that.
I won’t have that.
With each night on the couch, away from his sweet-smelling body, soft mouth, and tight ass, I’m getting more impatient.
I want to—no, I need to make him whimper in delight.
I can see him eating me up with his eyes, and I push the limits of PDA in public just to get my hands on him, but in private, he’s not budging.
Even my mother talked to me the other day, and said, “I wasn't so sure when I saw the piercings, and the hair, and the tattoos but he's a good one, Damen. Father will come around.”
And now I’m staring down the barrel of losing him after Christmas? The one man who accepts all of me while keeping his sweet personality?
So I’m upping my game today. I’ll charm him in new ways. Despite his love of the grim and macabre, he has a romantic soul, and I will speak straight to it. All without any lies, just as I promised, because while I am secretly working on seducing him, my intentions are pure.
“I named him Renoir, after returning from a year at a university in Paris. He looks like something the impressionists would have loved to bring to life,” I say and pat my horse's side. He’s a beautiful American Paint with blue eyes and crisp white patches on a dun coat.
I push my hand down my pocket and pass an apple into Killian’s hand.
“Go on, offer it to him on a flat palm.”
Killian looks up at me all wide-eyed, his hair hidden under an aviator hat covered in spiky studs. “The whole thing?”
He’s so amazed it’s adorable. He saw some of my family riding out yesterday and couldn’t believe he didn’t yet know we had horses here.
When he said he never rode one, I knew this would be the bonding experience we need, so here we are, at the stables, about to ride out.
I prepared the calmest beast for him, so there should be no snags.
“Just like this,” I tell him and guide his hand up. Renoir doesn’t bother to smell the apple and takes it straight from his palm.
Kill shivers when the soft lips brush his skin, and I encourage him to get acquainted with my horse, because he will be seeing him a lot in the future. “He likes you,” I add, hovering over him, so close he can surely sense the warmth of my body.
I understand his fears, I really do. He’s a civilian after all, he’s not the biggest, he confided in me he doesn’t have experience when it comes to fights other than drunken scuffles, and he’s worried that since his taste in men has been questionable so far, his instincts are failing him.
But he’s wrong. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him, so if he needs a little nudge, I will provide it.
Kill laughs, so bright eyed I know I made the right choice bringing him to the horses.
“He’s so big! It’s a little intimidating.”
I must be becoming sex-starved around him, because even those words remind me of our first fuck and the way he stared at my cock, unsure yet elated.
I try to redirect my thoughts when heat trails to my groin and open the stall next door, where a tawny quarter horse named Bessie is waiting for her rider, already in full gear.
And this one will carry your gorgeous behind, I tell him in French, and his eyes glint as if I’ve sprinkled him with gold.
Killian gently shoves me back. “Oh stop! I’m gonna fall in love.”
This is the kind of flirting that keeps happening even when we’re not acting for an audience. It just never takes us that one step farther, yet all the sparks are there as if we popped champagne.
“Stop what?” I laugh, then continue in French. ‘Telling you you will be mine?’
He covers his flushed face, and I already know that the next time we fuck, because we will, I’ll be whispering some sweet nothings to him in this language.
“You know what!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I lie and lead him into the stall. He doesn’t argue with me and lets me acquaint him with the gentle horse he’s about to ride. Eventually, I grab him by the waist and help him into the saddle, where he goes all stiff with fright.
“I didn’t think I’d be this high up.”
“Bessie isn’t even that tall. Don’t you worry, mon chéri,” I say and climb onto Renoir, making sure I look particularly elegant in the process. This is the day Killian’s will has to break.
“I said, stop! You actually made me giggle. Goths don’t giggle!” But he’s laughing, because of course he doesn’t want me to stop. He longs for me to continue until he feels his choices have been taken from him and he succumbs to my tender attention.
“I love your giggle. It’s like a little bell calling for me in the woods,” I tell him as I take the lead of his horse and nudge Renoir to move.
Kill holds on to the saddle with excitement all over his face, and I know where to take him for that amazement to amplify until he can’t help but kiss me.
“But are you the hunter or the wolf?” He winks at me. He’s losing self-control with each day.
“Maybe I’m both. Who could know?” I ask him as we set off from the stable and down the wide path cutting between the trees. Everything is covered by a blanket of snow. In the sunshine, I spot tracks of small animals who must have passed by recently and point them out to Kill. “A fox was here.”
He has that look-at-me-I’m-riding-a-horse smile on his face and it’s so charming I want to roll in the snow with him. “Please don’t tell me you’ll be hunting foxes tomorrow. They’re so pretty.”
“No, of course not. Besides, I’ll be the one hunting. You just need to drink hot chocolate and look pretty when I come back with my trophies.”
I wonder how freaked out Killian is going to be when he finds out what kind of prey the Van der Horns hunt each Christmas, but I think the truth will be easier for him to swallow once he’s back in my arms, stretched under me, with my cum inside his body.
He shimmies his shoulders with glee, looking more confident on horseback by the minute.
“I bet that’s why Titus is so pissed off all the time.
He knows you’ll bring more trophies than him.
That and Bree’s probably not putting out since she said several times how much of an ick that Christmas blazer is giving her. ”
“Serves him right,” I say as the horses carry us through the fairytale-worthy woods.
Titus and Bree’s wedding was in December, and they had a whole photoshoot in the snow.
If I didn’t hate the idea of copying my brother so much, I would gladly use the same setting for some pictures featuring Killian and myself.
“But this is it. The hunting grounds. The property comes with plenty of land offering more than enough space for the beasts to roam.”
And this year, I’ll finally get to hunt.
“This is so amazing. I never even imagined being in a place like this. Like we’re royalty from a time long gone.” Kill looks around. We ride at snail’s pace, since it’s his first time on horseback, but we are approaching the spot I hope will charm him right back to me.
“Not many get to be a part of it,” I say, letting it hang in the air, so he can imagine himself belonging in this beautiful place. With me. Hell, even with my family, once they get over themselves.
Killian too could have everything he ever dreamed of, if he only gives me another chance.
“What was it like growing up in a place like this?” he asks, eyes filled with curiosity.
I love his questions. He’s inquisitive, makes me feel heard, but this one stumps me, because it hits in unexpected ways. While I’m trying to present him with the perfect vision of a future with me, growing up here wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
I choose to be truthful, because I’m not in the business of lying to the one man I can be myself with.
Not to mention that I promised him not to and intend to keep my word.
“It was a mixed bag, honestly,” I say as we near the large clearing I’m leading him to.
“Lots of space, I could have anything I wanted, but before Mother agreed for me to attend a boarding school, I was a bit lonely.”
He’s about to ask another question, but the sight emerging from between the trees leaves him speechless. “Is that a whole-ass carousel?”
And as if to make the moment even more magical, a gust of wind comes with a fresh flurry of tiny snowflakes.
A big one lands right on his nose as I lead Bessie all the way up to the carousel.
It’s rather small, but whimsical, with wooden horses that have some of the paint peeling off, and pictures of castles on the cresting, it looks like a giant macaroon in dire need of refining.
Still, even now it’s spectacular in this clearing, far away from people who might invade our perfect moment.
“And no hidden traps,” I add. “It’s a nineteenth-century merry-go-round that was transported here in parts from Britain by my late grandfather. I got it for my fifth birthday.”
“Can I go see?” Killian asks, which is a cue for me to get off Renoir to help Kill down.
“Of course! I knew you would see the magic in it, chéri,” I say and approach Bessie from the side.
He looks at me with so much softness I just want to be inside him.
Touching his hand will have to suffice. I instruct him on how to get down, and when he’s ready to slide off the saddle, I catch him, so he’s in my arms. His breath quickens, and my heart beats faster, because this could be when he chooses to show me his true feelings.
Instead, he pulls away, but it takes him many seconds to make that decision.
These stolen moments of touching him are fuel to my fire.
“You say that as if I’m a romantic, not an unemployed punk who looks at life without rose-colored glasses.”