13. Leah
LEAH
Is it because I feel so safe with Declan that I’m letting my guard down right now? That’s part of it. It’s in the way he looks at me, like nothing gets past him and nothing gets to me while he’s watching. But it’s not the only reason.
He’s still holding himself in check. I can see it.
The suit is buttoned all the way up, and so is he, and the effort it’s taking him is written in the set of his jaw.
One of his brothers betrayed me. Another is pretending to be my boyfriend.
I’m sleeping with the third. Declan is the one who keeps everything from coming apart, and he’s trying, very hard, not to be the thing that makes it worse.
But there’s a crack in that armor. I can see that too.
I reach for it.
“Declan.” I set my hand flat against his chest. “I want this. I want you.”
His heart is going hard under my palm. He looks at my hand, then at me, and whatever he was holding onto lets go.
He kisses me. No warning, no gentleness, one hand at the back of my head to hold me where he wants me. His tongue pushes into my mouth like he’s been waiting a long time to do it, which he has. I make a sound against his lips, and he swallows it.
I get my hands on his jacket. Push it off his shoulders.
Start on the buttons of his shirt, and when my fingers are too slow, he does it himself, one-handed, without breaking the kiss.
The shirt hangs open. I run my palms down his chest, over the hard ridges of his stomach, to his belt, and he lets me.
When I get the buckle open and my hand inside, he’s already hard, thick and hot and pulsing against my fingers.
“Fuck, Leah.” It comes out through his teeth.
He pushes into my grip once, twice, then grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls my mouth back to his. The kiss turns ragged. Teeth. Breath. His other hand shoves up under my shirt and closes around my breast, hard enough that I gasp.
Then he pulls back, barely, and looks me in the eye.
“If you want to push me away, do it now.” His voice is low and not quite steady. “Because if you don’t, you’re mine.”
My breath catches. Not because the possessiveness scares me. Because I’ve learned not to believe it means anything.
“Belonging never lasts,” I say, and I hate that I believe it. “I’m always the one who leaves first. I don’t need to push you away.”
His eyes narrow. His jaw sets. It isn’t anger. It’s a man deciding to prove something.
“You want this?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He drags my shirt over my head and drops his mouth to the top of my breast, biting once, not gently. “You’ll find I’m hard to leave.”
My bra is gone before I register his hands on the clasp. Then he stands and lifts me, one arm under my knees, one behind my back, and carries me down the hall like I weigh nothing. I press my bare chest to his and feel his heart against my skin, and it isn’t close enough.
He sets me down on his bed, and I look up at him standing over me, shirt open, belt undone, the front of his pants straining, and something low in my stomach pulls tight.
“In here,” he says, hooking his fingers into the waistband of my jeans, “you’re mine.”
He strips my jeans and panties off in one pull and tosses them somewhere behind him. Then he stops. Just looks at me. Naked on his bed, my hair everywhere, my thighs pressed together.
“Fuck, Leah.” His voice has gone rough. “You’re gorgeous.”
My usual self would argue. My usual self would make a joke, say something about the freckles. None of it comes. The way he’s looking at me makes it impossible to feel anything but exactly what he’s saying.
He puts one knee on the bed. Then he takes my ankles in his hands and pulls my legs apart.
“Declan—”
“Quiet.” He settles between my thighs, shoulders forcing them wider, and looks up the length of my body at me. “I’ve thought about this every night since the gala. I’m going to take my time.”
His mouth closes over me.
I arch off the bed. His tongue is flat and hot and slow, one long stroke from my opening to my clit, and my hands go into his hair on instinct. He hums against me, pleased, and does it again. Then again. Then his lips close around my clit and he sucks, and I cry out.
He doesn’t rush. That’s the thing about Declan.
He works me like a problem he intends to solve completely, tongue circling, flicking, pressing flat and dragging, learning every place that makes my hips jerk and going back to it.
Two fingers push inside me, thick, curling up, and he sets a rhythm with them that matches his mouth.
“Declan.” His name comes out broken. “I’m going to come.”
His fingers move faster, his tongue swirls my clit, and then a million sensations crash into me at once.
It hits like a wave breaking. My whole body clenches, thighs locking around his head, back arching so hard my shoulders leave the mattress.
It starts where his mouth is, a deep, aching pulse, and rolls outward in hot rings, up through my stomach, down into my legs, into my fingers where they’re twisted in his hair.
He doesn’t stop. His fingers keep curling, his tongue keeps moving, working me through the peak and past it, and just when I think it’s ending, another pulse rocks through me, and another, each one a little weaker, until I’m shaking and gasping and pushing at his head because I can’t take any more.
He lifts his mouth. His chin is wet. He wipes it with the back of his hand and looks at me like he’s hungry.
He stands and shoves his pants and boxers down, and I get my first real look at his cock.
I stare. I can’t help it.
He notices and almost smiles. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He climbs over me, all heat and weight, and braces on one arm. “But I am going to push you.”
“I want to be pushed.”
“Good,” he answers. “Are you on birth control?”
I nod. “And I’ve been tested. I’m clean.”
“Me too.”
He drags the head of his cock through the wetness between my legs, once, twice, coating himself, and I’m still so sensitive from my orgasm that I whimper.
“So wet,” he says, low, almost to himself. “You’re going to take me so well. Don’t move. Just take me in.”
I try. Not because he’s told me to, but because the control coming off him is like a pressure in the air, and it doesn’t feel like a leash. It feels like being held.
He pushes in.
Slowly, but not gently. There’s a stretch, then a burn, then a fullness that steals my breath, and my hands fly to his shoulders and dig in. He keeps going. Deeper. I can’t stay still; my hips tilt up on their own, trying to take more, and he lets out a sound like a growl.
“Good girl,” he says, and sinks the rest of the way in until I feel him everywhere.
For a moment he doesn’t move. Just holds himself there, buried, his forehead against mine, both of us breathing.
Then he pulls back and drives in, hard, and the bed frame knocks against the wall.
“That’s it, Leah.” His voice is in my ear. He’s moving now, long strokes that hit deep, each one dragging his shaft over my clit on the way out. “Take it. Take me deeper every time. I’ve got you.”
His rhythm is relentless. He doesn’t speed up, and he doesn’t let up.
One hand pins my wrist to the mattress above my head.
The other finds my breast and rolls the nipple between his fingers until it aches.
His mouth is at my throat, teeth scraping, and I’m already climbing again, faster than I thought possible.
“When I say you’re mine,” he says against my neck, “I mean all of you. Not just here. Everywhere. I take care of what’s mine, and that’s you now.”
He lets go of my wrist, reaches between us, and presses two fingers to my clit, circling in time with his thrusts. My hands scrabble at his back.
I can feel him, iron-hard inside me, swollen and throbbing. Still holding himself back, even now, even like this, so I come first. And I don’t want him in control anymore. I want him to let go the way he made me let go.
When my second climax starts to build, I grab his hand from between my legs and dig my nails into his palm.
“Declan,” I say, and it’s almost a shout. “Don’t hold back.”
His eyes go feverish. His rhythm breaks.
He drives into me hard, fast, all the restraint gone, and the orgasm that was building explodes instead.
It’s different from the first. Deeper. It starts inside me, where he’s hitting, a pressure that builds and builds until it bursts, and my whole body goes tight.
My legs come up around his hips and hold on.
I can feel every inch of him dragging through the clenching, and each stroke pushes the wave higher instead of letting it crest. It burns, the way good whisky burns, the way something too hot tastes better for it.
I’m making noise, and I don’t care. He’s saying my name through his teeth.
The pulses go on and on, my body writhing around him in waves I can’t control, and somewhere in the middle of it I feel him lose it too.
He comes with a groan that sounds torn out of him, so loud the whole tower could hear. His hips slam into me one last time and stay there, and I feel him pulse inside me, hot and deep, again and again, his arms shaking with the effort of not crushing me.
We stay like that. Locked together while it ebbs, his face buried in my neck, my nails still in his back.
When he finally pulls out, I feel nothing but heat and satisfaction and, already, the beginning of wanting more.
He rolls onto his back and pulls me with him, my head on his chest, his arm heavy around me. We lie there and breathe. His heart is still racing under my ear.
I feel like I’ve been conquered and like I’ve conquered something. Because Declan let go. Not just his body. Himself.
After a while, his arm tightens. He’s holding a breath, the way he does before he says something he’s not sure about.
“Leah.” I lift my head. “I’m glad you stayed.”
“Would you have given me a choice?”
“Probably not.” A low chuckle. “I want you safe, and the safest place I know is right here. But I’m glad you chose it anyway.”
There’s more. This one takes him longer.
“And I want you to know that sleeping with my brothers doesn’t make you any less mine.”
“Brothers,” I say. The plural sits there between us.
He knows about Kian. Obviously. But that isn’t what he means.
“I know about Emmett,” he says. There’s no anger in it. No jealousy.
“How do you know?”
“I know my brothers.” His thumb moves over my shoulder. “I know what they look like when they want something. And what they look like when they’ve gotten it.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” I don’t want to break this. But I need to know.
“No.” He says it simply. “As long as you’re safe. As long as you’re with us. As long as you’re still mine too. That’s all I care about.”
I put my head back down and kiss the center of his chest.
I could get used to being his. The question is whether I’ll let myself.