Chapter 28 #2
Something about the way Niall carried himself told her it wasn’t the bedroom. This wasn’t about sex. It was about so much more. What exactly, she didn’t know. And honestly, the anticipation of whatever it was charged her tip to toe.
Across the landing and along the corridor they padded. Niall stopped outside his old bedroom. The room where they had their first time.
He opened the door. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be two seconds.’ Moments later, he returned holding something.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, but he held it down by his leg out of sight.
‘You’ll find out soon enough. C’mon.’ He slipped his fingers between hers again and began walking. Stopping outside his mum’s romance library, he pushed the door open, stepped aside and motioned for Carli to enter. She walked past him and stopped.
‘What is this Niall?’
‘It’s a romance library.’
‘I know that but…’
‘Just get inside,’ he said. ‘So I can shut the door.’
Carli’s whole body pulsed. Niall’s voice was loaded with intent. She’d never heard him so assertive and there were times she’d seen him pretty sure of himself. But that was the cocksure assertion of a teenager. This was the rock-solid definitiveness of a man.
Niall shut the door, clunked the key in the lock. In the past, the door had only ever been locked when they needed privacy. Like when things got heated. They’d closed the curtains on days like that. Niall didn’t seem interested in closing any curtains today.
‘Carli.’ He came towards her. She wasn’t scared of him, not remotely, but somehow she found herself backing up towards the bookshelf, the one with the filthiest books of them all. And he’d called her Carli. Niall never called her Carli. It was always Cass. Always.
‘What?’
He was so close now. She could smell the intent of him, feel the fire she’d ignited in him, and sense how hard his heart was beating.
‘You know what this is?’ Niall held up a book the size of a school jotter.
‘It’s a jotter? With, um,’ she squinted, ‘Rabbie Burns on it.’
‘Aye, right so far. Do you remember that day I stole a jotter from Mr Davidson’s desk and replaced it with one of those books?’ He nodded to the bookshelf behind her.
‘Yeah.’ Carli remembered all too well. She’d never laughed so hard in her life as she had when Niall told her what he’d done that day and when he’d done impressions of Mr Davidson at home reading The Maltese Prince’s Stubborn Virgin Bride to his wife.
‘Well, this was the jotter. I brought it home and do you know what I did with it?’
‘Um… no.’ Where was this leading? Niall’s jaw was set like it held the answer and she would have to wait and find out.
‘I’ll tell you. I printed off stupid fucking pictures of Rabbie Burns and stuck them on the front. Then, because I was a lovesick wee laddie, I spent time when I should’ve been doing homework, copying poems into this book. And I did it for you. Do you know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I loved you, Cass. I loved you so much.’
Carli blinked back the salty sting of tears and pressed her lips together, as if that would hold the remotest sway in stemming the emotion.
‘I was going to give it to you to take to Australia, but then I hadn’t finished it, so I decided I’d send it to you, but then things went tits up.
But I never threw it away. It’s been up there in a drawer the whole time, along with your letters, and letters I never sent to you and all those leather bracelets.
’ Niall held up his wrist and Carli saw that he was wearing a leather bracelet like the one she’d made for him. He must have put it on in the bedroom.
‘What is all this?’ she whispered.
‘What is all this?’ Niall slapped the jotter into his palm. ‘This…’ he said, taking a step towards her, ‘is “Ae fond kiss, and then we sever”. Right? That’s what you think I want, isn’t it?’
‘Niall, come on. It’s not about what I think you want, it’s about what you need.’
‘Okay, but how about you let me decide what I need, Carli? What I can cope with.’
Her heart thundered at his calling her by her name again.
‘Because I’m not a wee laddie anymore. As well you know.’
‘I… I do.’ Carli couldn’t believe how weak she sounded, but the thrust of Niall’s intent, it completely threw her.
If she’d supposed for a moment that his feelings for her weren’t strong enough to withstand whatever else was going on in his life, she was realising that she might very well have underestimated him.
‘I asked myself why I never threw this scrappy wee book away,’ he said, ‘despite everything else from that room being gone. And the answer is simple. Because I never wanted to let go of hope. Of you. I know we can go the distance, but it only works if you believe it too. If you’re going to falter because you’ve got zero faith in me, then we’re fucked, do you understand?
And I don’t want us to be fucked.’ Niall took a moment and steadied himself, like his own words were too much for him, but then he regained his momentum and drifted his face to hers.
‘So…’ His words came out on the hot murmur of his out breath, floating to her lips.
‘“Ae fareweel, and then forever”! Right?’
Carli could barely speak. No, scratch that. She couldn’t breathe. Did she want Niall to kiss her and then leave? Say goodbye forever. He was challenging her. Asking if that was what she wanted.
‘I’m waiting,’ he said, his mouth vibrating with intent at hers.
‘You say it and this will be the last kiss. If you can walk away, I’ll let you.
Because if you’re able to let this go, then maybe it isn’t what we imagined.
But I am telling you something, Carli Caselli, you are not getting out of this thing without me making it abundantly fucking clear just… how…much…I love you.’
Oh, my God. What? Carli’s knees buckled. Niall saw it and caught her, palms gripping her upper arms, questioning flashing in his eyes as if afraid he’d hurt her, but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. He was perfectly aware of what his words had done. Oh Jesus. She was done for.
He met her gaze. It was a yes or no he wanted, but it didn’t have to be spoken. Just an assent. An acknowledgement that she trusted he understood his own heart. And she had to. She did. His love was smouldering out of him like smoke out of a volcano.
She nodded.
He smiled, a subtle trace of one. Maybe a little bit cocky, but, oh, he had her crumbling. God, she loved him. So goddamned much.
Niall dipped his head to her neck and murmured into her skin.
‘“But to see her was to love her, love but her and her forever.”’
She closed her eyes, heaved in a breath, heaved in this man that she had loved since she was fifteen years old when he was all long legs and mussed-up hair and misdirected attitude. She would let him love her. There would be no more arguments about that.
Niall brought his face back to hers, the intensity in his irises searing into her.
She’d never seen those flecks of green burn so fiercely amidst the blue.
Niall the sixteen-year-old had loved with a boyish intensity, this man loved with masculine ferocity.
And she loved him back like a series of arrows right to the centre of his heart, for everything he was and everything he wanted to be, for her and for both of them.
And he deserved to know that. He truly did.
‘Oh, Niall, I—’
‘Shh,’ he said, for some reason blocking her words, even though his need for them was flaming through his whole being, holding unremitting tension in his shoulders. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘But—’
‘Shh.’ He grasped the hem of her jumper, tugged it up over her head.
Did the same with the layers she wore underneath until she was in only her bra and leggings.
He yanked off his own top and for a moment roamed his gaze over her body, her face.
Then it was back to the clothes: her bra, her leggings, his jeans, his underwear until the only piece of clothing between them was her panties, and the way he felt about her was unmistakable.
He pulled cushions from the nearby couch onto the floor. ‘Lie down on the cushions,’ he said.
Every fragmentary motion of Carli’s was conducted by the electricity in Niall’s words; in one fluid movement she was on her back on the soft velvet, and Niall in all his magnificent, naked glory was there facing her.
Tenderly, he reached for her panties, pulled them down over her ankles and cast them aside.
He moved over her, broad and heavy but taking enough of his own weight so as not to hurt her. Taking care of her.
When his eyes met hers, he asked only one question. ‘Okay?’
She nodded assent. Everything that had gone between them was foreplay enough, his words rendering her more than ready.
Niall reached for his jeans, but Carli stopped him.
‘We don’t have to use one. I’m on the pill cause it helps with my Fibro symptoms. If we’re all good and clean then let’s go bare?’
‘Aye, Cass. We are all good here.’
And then he was back, gaze locked on her, urging his thickness into her soaking, swollen core, a near silent ‘fuck’ rasping out of him, the only loss of control she’d seen him elicit this whole time.
Carli swelled even more as he filled her.
He found her hand with his own, raised it to the side of her head, slipped his fingers between hers and squeezed.
She squeezed right back.
Niall moved slow. Oh, so slow. And it drove everything through Carli. Each millimetre he moved into her broke her for him a little more and her experience was being mirrored right back to her. Neither of them exchanged a word. They didn’t need to.
She was inflamed everywhere for him. Not only between her legs, but her whole being. If love could have cured illness, he’d have mended her in moments.
Niall clocked the saltwater pooling in her eyes. ‘Cass?’
‘I’m good.’ A tear rolled down the side of her cheek. ‘Really good, Butler.’
‘Tell me if anything hurts, anywhere,’
‘I will.’
Nothing hurt. Not a single thing. Not with Niall here, fucking her like he loved her, because he did.
He’d told her that. And it was there in every measured thrust of his hips, every crease on his face as he fought not to vocalise what this was doing to him.
She could see how much he was gone. And she loved him for it. Needed to tell him.
But then he pulled out of her, and she was desperate for him again, ached for him to make up for that void inside her in the way no one but he could. Was he trying to tell her something? Remind her how much she needed him? How it would be without him.
As if giving her the answer, Niall thrust himself hard and deep back into Carli, and she reeled. His jaw clenched and he lifted his chin to the bookcase behind them, a man trying to stay in control of all that possessed him.
When he came back to her, he spoke, rough and raw.
‘Tell me now,’ he said commanded, low and loaded.
And Carli understood why he’d cut her off before. Oh, this was so Niall. She should have known he’d want to do it this way. Should have known that nothing but peak feeling was enough for this man. With her free hand, she reached up and held the rough graze of his stubbled face.
‘I love you, Niall Butler,’ she said, not a second of this lost on her either. ‘So, so much.’
And the light, but also relief, in his face at her words.
It was beautiful. His way of doing things had been the right way, even if he’d taken a gamble on her saying the words back.
His compass was aligned exactly north. To her.
He brought his mouth to hers and kissed her deep and desperate with such fervency, filling her fuller than she’d ever been.
‘I love you, too, Cass,’ he said. ‘This is the best sex of my life. I’m burning up for you. Although this slow thing is killing me.’
‘Just fuck me like you love me, Niall. That’s all that matters.’
‘I can’t do anything but.’ He held her knee and pistoned his hips. Never once did he take his gaze from her, and they fixed on each other as he claimed her for his own, showed her exactly what he could do to her body, and ruined her for any other men. Although that had happened years ago.
Other people, mere rooms away, meant only hushed words were exchanged between them, but the library itself was heaving with emotion.
Love and angst and desperate, urgent want spilling into the space for every one of the years, months, minutes they’d spent apart.
For all the time they’d spent without each other, longing, wanting, aching for these moments they never thought they would have again.
‘Fuck, Cass,’ Niall groaned low. ‘I love you so much. I’m going to come.’
‘I love you too, Niall. Come for me and I’ll…
’ The words had barely fallen from Carli’s lips when her orgasm flew in like a cyclone and everything was the bliss of climaxing with Niall rock hard and detonating inside her.
The romance novels were flying off the walls, pages being torn open, all the declarations of ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m coming’ within the chapters congregating in her swollen sex at once as she clamped onto his erection, a silent series of ‘oh my Gods’ hurtling out of her.
And the sight of him coming too. The man who loved and fucked with such intensity, who had taken sex and turned it into something so meaningful it made her cry, was coming, roaring silently but with no less fire than she’d have expected from him, lifting Carli right over into another thunderous climax that had her tearing her nails down his back and gripping onto him, the way she planned to do – forever.