Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
DAMIEN
C lo was determined to get inside that house, and I knew if I didn’t help her do it, I was going to have to carry her kicking and screaming all the way back to the train station.
The place was abandoned and looked like it had been for years. Backlit against the flashing thunderclouds, the shape of it was fucked. The walls buckled. The roof sagged and had saplings growing out of it. But Clover couldn’t wait to get inside that death trap, which meant I was going in with her.
The wooden trim was so rotten that I didn’t even have to kick the door in. One firm shove was all it took.
I’d planned on making her wait outside while I checked the place out, but before I could enter, something about the barn next to the house caught my eye. It seemed strangely familiar, but while I stood there, staring, Clo ducked under my arm and disappeared into the pitch-black gaff.
Shite.
“Dammit, Clo.” I bolted in after her, but hadn’t made it more than two steps when the strike of a match stopped me cold.
Illuminated behind it was the awestruck, wide-eyed face of my girl. “I … I remembered where the matches were.”
Silence stretched between us as I struggled to rationalize away this new piece of information. The rope, the bench, the cottage … those could all be details in one of Darby Donovan’s books—at least, that’s what I was telling myself—but the drawer she’d kept her matches in?
There was just enough ambient light from the windows and open door for me to make out the basic lines of a kitchen—cabinets and counters, a sink, a refrigerator.
Of course. Every kitchen has a pack of matches in one of the drawers. Clo just got lucky.
Waving the match out before it burned her fingers, she lit another one, then turned and opened one of the cabinets. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I could hear the match pop and hiss as the light grew brighter around her.
Turning to face me, Clo held two lit candlesticks and handed one to me. “I knew where these were too,” she said quietly.
My blood ran cold.
I accepted the candle without a word and followed Clover through the house. Normally, I would have been in front, shielding her from whatever might be lurking in the shadows, but I couldn’t see more than a meter in any direction. Clo, on the other hand, moved through the space like she’d lived there her entire life. The only thing that surprised her was when she stepped in the occasional puddle or felt a drip from the leaky roof.
The place smelled like mildew and groaned with every step we took, as if our presence was causing it physical pain.
I felt the same fucking way.
Clover headed straight down a hallway and into a bedroom, where she immediately located and lit at least six more candles as if she could see them in the dark.
I just stood in the doorway and watched as she sprinted around the room, touching every object, smelling them, clutching them to her chest. Every glint of familiarity, every gasp of recognition felt like another hole being torn through my paper-thin veil of denial.
But I clung to it anyway. With both fucking hands.
“Damien, I can’t believe this. It’s all still here. Nobody has touched a thing since we”—she glanced up at me—“ they died.”
Clover tore through every drawer, every shelf, every shoebox under the bed. There was an urgency behind her actions. An intention. This wasn’t just some walk down memory lane. Clo was on a mission, and I didn’t fucking like the direction it was headed in.
“I wonder who owns this place now.
“Why has it been vacant this whole time?
“Maybe everyone thinks it’s haunted.
“Why on earth would anyone want to kill them?
“I wonder what room it happened in.
“Were they shot? Saoirse didn’t show me that part. Why wouldn’t she show me? Did she think I’d be upset?
“Oh my God, Darby’s journals.”
Clo began pulling notebook after notebook off the top shelf of the wardrobe, tossing them on the floor until she found one that struck her as important. Flipping to the back, she thumbed through a section of blank pages until she found the last entry.
“God, her handwriting even looks like mine.” She smiled.
Then, her face fell as her eyes swept back and forth across the page.
“She was worried about you. You’d been acting paranoid but wouldn’t tell her why.” Her eyes found mine. “I know the feeling.”
She was speaking about me like I was him again. It was definitely time to go.
Closing the notebook, Clo leveled me with a suspicious stare.
“What did you see? In the lake.”
I shook my head, feeling my blood heat and my heart pound at the very mention of that experience.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
I shoved a hand through my hair and pushed away from the door, needing to move, needing to bolt.
“Damien, whatever you saw, Saoirse showed it to you for a reason,” Clo said. “We are here for a reason. And I think that reason is for us to right a wrong. To finally get justice for what happened to them. To us .”
“The only us that matters is us ,” I said, jabbing a finger back and forth from my heart to hers. “And if we don’t get the fuck off this island, we’re going to end up just like them .”
Clo winced and jerked away from me.
Regret roiled in my empty stomach as I took a deep breath and tried to calm the fuck down.
“Maybe not,” she said quietly. “Maybe we can stay here, in Glenshire. Use fake names, lie low. It’s a small village. The Russians will probably leave it alone. We can get jobs in town—”
“Stay here? Are you fuckin’ serious, Clo? This place is pure evil. I can feel it on my skin. I can feel it slithering into my brain. Everything that has happened since we got here has been fucked, and the sooner we leave, the—”
My stupid diatribe died on my tongue as Clo’s face suddenly fell. Not because of my shitty tone or my refusal to support her little murder mystery mission, but because something in the wardrobe had caught her eye.
And mine.
Sliding a shiny black flight jacket off a hanger, Clover held it up in front of her with both hands, then hugged it to her chest and burst into tears.
And I almost did the same.
I’d seen that jacket in my nightmare. I knew the weight of it, the way it always felt cool to the touch. I knew that it had orange lining and a tear on the right sleeve. But mostly, I knew the pang of bitterness I felt in my chest every time I was wearing it instead of her.
Sitting on the floor, surrounded by Darby’s journals, Clover pressed the jacket to her face— my jacket—and wept.
Setting the backpack down, I knelt before her and watched her mourn, unable to speak, unable to bridge the gap between the revelation taking place in my soul and the rationalization that had taken root in my mind.
“I feel so far away from him.”
Clover’s words were a dagger through my chest, pinning my heart to my rib cage like a fucking ransom note. For the second time in as many hours, I felt that organ bleed out, only this time, death wasn’t coming to take away my pain. This time, I had to fucking live with it.
I wanted to grab her face and force her to look at me. I wanted to tell her that he … I was sitting right in front of her. That she wasn’t crazy. That I was beginning to remember too.
But accepting that reality meant admitting that I was the reason she’d died. It meant admitting that I was putting her in the exact same position again. And I couldn’t. Not while her blood was still warm on my hands.
Pulling her into my lap, I held her sobbing body and felt every gasp and shudder like a fist to the chest.
“You have his eyes, but you don’t feel like him. Nothing feels like him. He’s just … gone. He’s gone.”
The next words that I spoke came through me, not from me, and it wasn’t until Clo’s eyes lifted and found mine that I realized what they were.
“ Is fíor bhur ngrá .”
Saoirse’s blessing.
And Kellen’s final words to his wife.
Clover’s tear-streaked lips fell open, and my mouth crashed into them like the bursting of a dam, flooding her with all of the confusion, certainty, desperation, and terror that my body could no longer contain. A purging of poison that she accepted with pleasure.
Clinging to my damp shirt with both fists, Clo kissed me back with an urgency that rivaled my own, and something inside of me stirred.
Awakened.
And fucking roared.
Breaking our kiss only to peel her wet dress off over her head, I laid Clover down on the pile of scattered notebooks and continued my assault on her mouth as her fingers made short work of the buttons on my shirt and trousers. We seemed to move in synchrony—every swirl of our tongues, every suck, every sigh was a perfectly choreographed dance that I didn’t remember learning.
Although I’d spent hours with my hands on her body and my mouth on her mouth over the last two days, it hadn’t been enough for me to learn the things I suddenly knew. She’d felt unfamiliar to me—everything had. Every touch, every position had been a first of epic proportions. But this time, when I cupped her tits and traced her perfect pebbled nipples through the fabric of her bra, I knew exactly what sound she was going to make before she made it. I knew the way her moan would vibrate against my lips when I sucked the tender flesh just below her jaw. And I knew the way her back would arch when I kissed my way down her neck, unfastening her bra as I went, and lavished both straining pink peaks with my tongue.
But when Clo unzipped my trousers and took my length in both hands, I realized that she knew me even better. Echoes of some unknown fear engulfed my body in an instant, boiling my blood and seizing my throat, but it passed with every gentle, comforting stroke. Clo touched me like she’d known that I would have that reaction before I did, and the significance of that knowledge hit me like a battering ram.
“Oh, Damien, the things he did to you …”
The shame and rage and nauseating helplessness of a past I couldn’t remember ignited my skin, seared my eyes, but Clo was there to soothe it away, to free me from a burden I hadn’t known I’d been carrying.
And I wanted to free her as well.
I wanted to use this fire that burned beneath my flesh to make her melt, to reduce her to a writhing puddle of ecstasy so that when she finally cooled, she’d be new again. Cracks sealed. Whole and happy.
Kissing my way down her stomach, I hooked my fingers into the sides of her underwear and peeled them off as Clover’s gentle fingers slid through my wet hair.
Her touch felt like home, her thighs, her soft gasps. When I’d tasted her down by the lake, the experience had been a first for me. I hadn’t known what I was doing, and I certainly hadn’t known how she would respond. But now … it was as if I was operating on muscle memory. I knew exactly what to do, how she would moan when I flicked my tongue against her swollen clit. The way she would arch her back when I swirled it around her dripping entrance, greedily chasing the salty-sweet memories that were just beyond my reach. And I knew when those moans turned to whimpers and her legs tensed on either side of my head, that two fingers, thrust in to the last knuckle, would make her come so hard that her legs would shake, and her hips would buck, and her nails would dig into my scalp.
At least, they would have, before .
Now, I kept my hands where Clover could see them. Splayed across her stomach, wrapped around her thighs, pinching and rolling her tight nipples between my fingers. And as her back arched and her breathing quickened, I flattened my tongue and applied more pressure until she did exactly what I’d imagined. Clover clutched my head, sank her nails into my scalp, and rolled her hips against my feasting mouth as the last shreds of my denial burst into flames. My body had just proven what my brain hadn’t been willing to accept. That this woman was mine and had been long before I spotted her across the Irish Sea. That I’d loved her before. I’d lost her before. And I’d cut out my own heart for the chance to be here, doing it all over again.
As if I could feel her watching me, I glanced up to find two awestruck green eyes flickering in the candlelight.
Sliding her hand from my hair down to my jaw, Clover lifted my chin as she slowly sat up, never blinking, never once taking her eyes off mine.
I pushed up onto my knees as her massive black pupils darted back and forth between mine. Then, a sweet smile unfurled across her tear-streaked face.
“Kellen,” she whispered, her chin buckling as her eyes dropped to my lips.
This time, when our mouths collided, it was Clo’s darkness that fed me , her despair that I so hungrily consumed. I wanted to take it all from her. All the pain I had caused, in this lifetime and the last. All the pain she’d suffered while we were apart. I wanted to suck it from her parted pink lips, and when she straddled my kneeling thighs and slid her slick flesh along my cock, I knew she wanted to do the same for me.
“Take it, angel,” I rasped against her lips. “Take it from me. Please.”
And with that whispered plea, Clover held her breath, stared into my eyes, and did exactly as I’d asked.
She took my pain away.
No drug, no anesthetic could possibly compare to the mind-numbing bliss that enveloped me the moment Clover’s tight, warm body welcomed me in. Clutching the back of my neck with both hands, she whimpered against my lips as she began to rise and fall, taking me just a bit deeper each time. I kept my hands above her waist—rubbing her tits, cupping her jaw, gathering her hair in my fist—anything that would keep me from grabbing her arse and filling her with one feral thrust like I wanted to. After everything she’d been through, Clo needed to be handled gently. She was too fucking sweet for this world, an angel in the flesh, and I …
I was even less worthy of her than I’d feared.
I wasn’t just the man who’d destroyed her life.
I was the man who’d destroyed her life twice .
Clover’s soft moans of pleasure pulled me back into the present, but it was too late. My pain had returned, along with two lifetimes’ worth of guilt and self-hatred.
But the deeper I spiraled, the higher Clo climbed.
Cradling my face with both hands, Clover whimpered against my lips as she finally sank all the way onto me. Stretched to her limit, she stilled and pressed her smiling lips to mine, as close to me as she could physically be, while emotionally, I was as far away as I could possibly get. Clo had found what she’d been missing her entire life, and witnessing that joy, being a part of it, was the only thing keeping me out of the darkest corners of my mind.
She might not have deserved a selfish, murderous piece of shite like me, but my sweet girl deserved to feel good. And I could do that for her.
Using all the self-control I could muster, I grabbed Clo’s arse with both hands and slowly rolled her hips back and forth so that her clit ground against my pelvis. Her soft, throaty moans vibrated against my lips as she sealed her mouth over mine, and the sound alone was enough to have my cock leaking pre-cum inside of her.
I wanted so badly to lose myself in her, to pound out all of my fears and regrets and failures until I was nothing more than a sweaty, mindless animal, and my resolve was slipping. With every passing second, my movements grew faster; my pressure increased. Clo’s moans grew louder. Her pussy clenched. Nails pierced skin. Fists pulled hair.
But it wasn’t until my girl captured my bottom lip between her teeth and cried, “Kellen,” that my willpower snapped completely.
Diving to the floor, I sank into her and unleashed everything I’d thought she was too delicate to handle in an uncontrollable torrent of thrusts and grunts and growls and moans. I clung to her body with white knuckles as I tried to exorcise the ghost of my past, and Clo clung to me just as tightly for the opposite reason.
She couldn’t get close enough to it.
Digging her nails into my back, Clover sank her teeth into the curve of my neck and whimpered through an orgasm that made her entire body contract around me like a fist. She held me as tightly as she could with everything that she had—her limbs, her mouth, her throbbing cunt—and in that moment, I realized that Clover wasn’t the delicate one.
I was.
Because her strength, her unconditional love and acceptance—it fucking broke me.
When I thrust into her fully, a flood of pleasure and unspeakable pain surged through my body, exploding in a river of hot cum and silent, blinding tears. And my angel took it, just like I’d begged her to. She drank my darkness, welcomed it in, but relief never came. The past still festered like a cancer in my soul. I could feel it growing, gnawing at my consciousness. It demanded to be acknowledged. It demanded to be seen.
I held Clo’s soft, warm body until her breaths slowed and her eyelids began to flutter. Then, I picked her up and laid her on the bed.
Our bed.
I didn’t remember sleeping there. I didn’t remember a single thing about that house.
But I remembered the barn.
And it was fucking calling to me.