10. Declan
Declan
Ican’t seem to make my body move.
Shay is just standing there by the bed, a folded bar towel in his hand. My old Henley hangs off one of his shoulders, exposing the healed bite mark at the base of his neck. His curls are a mess from sleep.
Mine. The word doesn’t hit like a punch anymore. It just settles, a solid weight in my chest.
“I want to know what this is,” he says, his voice quiet but steady. “When we both choose it.”
Every alpha instinct I possess is on its feet, screaming bad advice. Get him on the bed. Put your hands on him. Show him how much you want him. But he’s not asking me to take. He’s asking if I can be trusted with what he’s offering.
My throat is dry. “You don’t have to do anything,” I say, and my voice comes out rough.
His mouth twists. “That isn’t what I said.”
“I know.” I force my hands to stay loose at my sides. “I heard you.”
He watches me, his expression unreadable. “Did you?”
“Yeah.” I take a slow breath. “You’re asking me to be here with you. No games, no bullshit. Just… choosing.”
His gaze flicks away, down to the nest of my shirts and blankets he made without even realizing it. I drag a hand over my jaw. “Sorry. I’m not saying it right.”
“You’re saying it like an old man.”
“I am an old man.”
“Don’t get cocky.” He finally looks back at me. “I’m not good at this part.”
“Neither am I.”
“You own a bar. You talk to people for a living.”
“I pour drinks and tell guys when they’ve had enough. It’s a pretty specific skill set.”
That gets the barest hint of a smile out of him before it vanishes. He swallows. “I don’t want you to treat me like I’m going to break.”
“I don’t.”
“Declan.”
“I don’t,” I repeat, taking one careful step closer. The air in the room is thick with his scent—sandalwood and chocolate, soft with sleep—braided into the cedar and whiskey of mine. It just smells like us. “I know you’re not fragile. You’ve made that painfully clear.”
“Good.”
“But I’m not going to be another guy who takes what you give and acts like that means he owns you.”
His entire body goes still. It’s not a big reaction, but his jaw tightens and his fingers clench around the towel.
“You don’t,” he says, his voice flat.
“I know.”
He just blinks at me, like the answer wasn’t what he was braced for.
“And that’s not me agreeing to some rule just to get you in my bed,” I say. “You don’t owe me a thing. Not for the room, not for the clothes.” I gesture vaguely at the nest. “Not for that.”
A flush creeps up his neck. “It wasn’t half my laundry.”
“Right. A third.” A small smile pulls at my mouth. “I’m just trying to make a point.”
“You’re being an asshole about it.”
“That’s how you know I’m serious.”
He stares at me for a long beat, then sets the towel down on the bed. The little embroidered BYRNE’S logo ends up facedown on one of my shirts. His hands drop to the hem of the Henley he’s wearing.
“Come here,” he says.
I go still. “Shay—”
“Not because I owe you.” His voice is quiet, but it’s got that sharp edge, the one that dares me to get it wrong. “Because I want you to. So don’t make it weird.”
I take another step, then another, until I’m standing right in front of him. “Okay.”
He lets out a short, frustrated breath. “Okay? That’s all?”
“No.” I can feel the stupid, helpless smile on my own face. “It’s just all I can say without sounding like a complete fool.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Harsh.”
“True.”
I reach for him slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull back. My fingers just brush his wrist, right over the quick thrum of his pulse. He doesn’t move. Instead, he turns his hand and threads his fingers through mine.
It’s such a small thing. My breath catches. His palm is warm, a little damp, and the faint callus on his index finger—from gripping a pen too tight while he updates one of his spreadsheets, probably—presses into my skin. It’s a tiny, perfect detail that makes him unbearably real.
“You still here?” I ask, my voice rough.
“Yes.”
“Can I kiss you?”
He rolls his eyes, but I smell the sweet spike in his scent. “Declan, if you’re going to ask for permission every single—”
“Just say yes.”
His face softens. “Yes. Kiss me.”
I don’t grab him. I just tip his chin up and kiss him the way I’ve wanted to for weeks.
Slow. His lips part on a quiet sigh, and he tastes like the coffee from this morning.
He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat that goes straight through me.
I let him deepen it, his free hand coming up to flatten against my chest before sliding around to the back of my neck.
His fingers tangle in my hair, and the kiss turns warmer, needier, but it stays gentle.
When I pull back, his eyes are dark and his breathing is unsteady.
“That was almost disgustingly sweet,” he says.
I don’t answer. My thumb finds the little scar bisecting his eyebrow. The skin is a faint, raised line, so familiar I could trace it in the dark.
“You’re a menace,” I tell him, my voice low.
His gaze drops to my chest. “That’s a lot.”
“You started it.”
“I didn’t start anything. You’re the one looking at me like you want to—” He trails off, shaking his head.
“I do want to.”
That quiets him. I kiss the corner of his mouth, then his cheek, then the soft skin just under his ear. Shay’s breath hitches when I press my mouth to his neck, right over the healed bite mark. I don’t use my teeth. I just linger there, feeling the faint tremor that runs through him.
His fingers tighten in my hair. “Fuck.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me if that changes.”
He pulls back just enough to give me a look. “I said yes, didn’t I?”
“Okay.”
He shoves my shoulder, but there’s no real force behind it. “You’re impossible.”
“You’re the one who built a nest out of my laundry.”
“You’re lucky that’s all I did.” He says it with a sharp little smile, and then he grabs the hem of the Henley and pulls it over his head.
My breath catches. I’ve seen him naked before, but this is different. He isn’t putting on a show. He isn’t trying to shock me first. He’s just standing there in the low light from the hallway, watching my face.
The lines of his body are lean and strong, and my gaze snags on the hollow at the base of his throat where his pulse is jumping. That one small detail feels more intimate than anything else.
My hands are shaking a little when I reach out and put them on his waist. The size of them against him—my palms spanning nearly the whole width of him—sends a dark pulse of want straight through my gut.
Shay’s eyes flick down to my fingers, then back to my face. “Are you nervous?”
“Terrified.”
His eyebrows lift. “Really? Why?”
Because I can handle a rent increase or a busted tap line, but I don’t know what the hell I’d do if I hurt you.
“Because I want to get this right,” I say instead.
His face softens, the guarded set of his mouth easing for just a second. “You don’t have to get it right,” he says, his voice quiet. “You just have to be here.”
That hits me harder than it should. I kiss him before he can see it on my face.
My hands move over him slowly, learning the things I’ve only seen in flashes. The pale, silvery line of a scar low on his ribs. The way his body shivers when my thumbs find the sharp points of his hips. I drag my beard over his stomach just to hear the hitch in his breath.
“Declan,” he says, and it’s not a word, it’s a sound.
“I’m here.”
I guide him backward until the backs of his knees hit the bed, and he sits in the middle of the rumpled heap of my shirts. He looks down at it, and his jaw tightens.
“It doesn’t mean—” he starts.
“Shay.”
His mouth snaps shut.
I kneel on the floor between his thighs, spreading them with my hands.
He’s already slick, a wet gleam at the top of his ass, his scent so thick in the air I can barely think.
This close, the difference between us is impossible to ignore—my shoulders blocking out the lamp light, my hands nearly covering his thighs.
“Look at you,” I murmur. “Spread out in my clothes like you belong here.”
His eyes immediately flick away. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m some… thing you finally get to have.”
I almost laugh. “No.” My hand settles on his thigh, a grounding weight. “Like I still can’t believe you’re letting me.”
That gets his attention. He looks back at me, and his fingers find mine, lacing through them. “Okay,” he breathes.
I lean down and kiss the inside of his knee, then his thigh, moving higher until he sucks in a sharp breath when my mouth finally closes over his cock. I take my time, licking along the ridge of the head, feeling him jerk against my tongue.
“Fuck,” he gasps out, his hips twitching. “You’re… good at this.”
A broken laugh escapes him. I take him deeper, and his fingers tangle in my hair, not pushing or pulling, just anchoring himself. He’s close. I can feel the tension coiling in his stomach, the way his thighs start to tremble against my shoulders.
I ease off, and he makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.
I kiss my way down his stomach, over his hip bone, nosing at the crease of his thigh where his scent is strongest. “You’re going to let me taste you now,” I say against his skin, and it’s not quite a question.
“Yes,” he says, the word immediate, desperate. “Please.”
I use my thumbs to spread him, and his hole clenches, slick and ready. I press my mouth there and lick him once, a slow, deliberate slide of my tongue.
Shay chokes on a gasp, his whole body arching into the nest. He tastes like salt and himself, a flavour my body recognizes on a level I don’t understand. I hold his hips steady when he starts to buck—easy, he’s so small under my hands—eating him slowly, learning every sound he makes.
His laugh breaks into a raw sound. “You said you wanted us to choose this.”
“I did.”
“Then let me.”
He goes tense under my mouth. I pull back, keeping my hands gentle on his thighs. He won’t look at me, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Hey,” I say.
“No.” He opens his eyes, and they’re dark and defensive. “I just… I don’t know how to hear that without it getting weird.”