Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I’m still not sure this isn’t my brother,” Callum says, as he turns left onto a side road and pulls up beside a small house.
“Are you imagining him climbing an electricity pole with a pair of wire cutters?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I smirk, climbing out onto the gravel. I don’t know how, but I know this isn’t on Jack. He’s an asshole, yes, but I don’t think he’d put people in danger just to be extra petty.
“You know, we might have escaped it,” Callum says hopefully, as he unlocks the door. He reaches inside to flick on a light switch, only for his face to fall when the house remains in darkness. “Or not.”
“Welcome to Ennisbawn.”
“I’ve got this. Wait here.”
“I can help.”
“No. Don’t move or you’ll walk into something.”
I roll my eyes, but the man isn’t wrong. It’s pitch-black inside and, in this dress, I’d like to keep my knees unbruised, thank you very much. I wait by the door as he disappears into the house and emerges a second later with a flashlight to illuminate the space.
“Look at you, all prepared,” I tease, and he grins.
“And they try and tell me I’m not a local.”
He leads me down the hallway to the kitchen, where he goes straight for the kettle before stopping. “Right. No electricity. I guess we could…” He stands in the middle of the room for one long second before turning back to me. “I literally can’t do anything, can I?”
I laugh. It’s one of those times when you don’t realize how much you need electricity until it goes away.
It’s not like when you’re camping when you don’t expect there to be any.
You come prepared. It’s part of the fun.
It’s different in a house where you expect it in every room, in every corner.
Where you realize you can’t boil the kettle or even open the fridge because you need to try and preserve whatever cold air is in there.
“I don’t need anything,” I assure him.
“Well, neither did I, but now I can’t have it, I desperately want it.
Plus, it goes against everything in my being not to offer a guest something to eat and drink.
” He scratches his jaw, looking genuinely perturbed he can’t entertain me appropriately.
“I’ve got some movies on my laptop if you want to watch something,” he begins, but I shake my head.
“You should preserve your battery in case there’s still nothing in the morning.”
He is immediately alarmed. “It might not be back in the morning?”
“One time we didn’t have it for three days.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
“But usually, it’s a couple hours at most,” I reassure him and reach down to unstrap my heels. “Is there somewhere I can change?”
He looks confused. “Do you have other clothes?”
“No?”
He grins. “Upstairs. There are only two rooms so you’re not going to get lost. Take whatever you need.”
“Dangerous words,” I tell him, and use my phone light to show me the way.
The bathroom is tiny, one of those new additions to a house that once didn’t have any indoor plumbing.
With the toilet, shower, and sink squished together, I can just about fit inside, and I wonder how he copes with it.
His bedroom is just as tidy as I’m coming to expect from him.
The bed neatly made; his clothes put away.
There are a few coins on the dresser, a framed photo of an older couple I presume to be his parents, and the same headphones I saw him wearing the day he first came to my house.
I call Granny first, who grumpily assures me she’s fine and that, as assumed, Susan will be staying the night in my room.
I then return to the bathroom, where I carefully extract all the pins and clips I hid in my hair, letting it not so much tumble down my shoulders as fall in clumps, the copious amount of hairspray I used making it difficult to tame.
I probably look ridiculous, but my scalp, which had been aching for the past few hours, thanks me, so I leave it as it is.
With my phone lit up in one hand and my other trailing along the wall, I stride back into the bedroom like I know exactly where I’m going only to immediately walk into the edge of a dresser.
“ Ow. Shit.”
“Katie? You okay?” Callum runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time before coming to a stop in the doorway. “What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” I mutter. “I stubbed my toe.” I hobble over to the bed, muttering a stream of curses that would make even Granny blush.
Callum turns on the flashlight, sweeping it over me as though I’m lying and maybe stabbed myself instead.
“Don’t look at my gross toe.”
“It’s not gross.”
“All toes are gross,” I inform him, but he ignores me, kneeling by my side. He grabs my foot before I can stop him, inspecting it briefly before running a finger along the arch.
I squirm immediately, fighting the tickling sensation with a scowl.
“Callum,” I warn.
“I think you’ll live,” he says solemnly.
“You playing Doctor now?”
“We can play Doctors.” He sweeps his palm up my calf, his touch warm and rough and perfect, and I can’t help but smile as he looks up, meeting my gaze in the dim light.
Slowly, without looking away, he presses his lips to the top of my foot, as though to kiss it better.
Meanwhile his hand doesn’t stop moving slowly up and down my leg, inching higher each time it reaches my thighs.
His mouth follows the movement, gentle, tickling brushes that make my chest grow tight, my breathing shallow as he works his way up.
He nuzzles into my lap and then my stomach, roving upward until he’s kneeling before me, capturing my mouth.
I loop my arms around his neck, holding on to him loosely as he deepens the kiss until we’re both panting. It’s only when his hands travel down the front of my dress, caressing my breasts through the material, that I break away.
“You good?” he murmurs, and I nod, lifting my knee between us and extending my leg until I’m pointing my foot at his chest. He gets the hint and backs away, rising to his feet.
With a steeling breath, I follow him, standing from the bed and reaching for the hidden zipper of my dress. I hesitate for only a heartbeat, searching for an inner reluctance that never comes, and then pull it down.
The noise seems ridiculously loud in the quiet space, but before I can get nervous, I free my arms from the sleeves and let the material pool at my ankles before nudging it aside to stand before him in nothing but my underwear.
I’m about to remove those too, in for a penny and all that, but then I catch the look on Callum’s face and freeze.
It’s a look I’ve never had directed at me before.
An intense, hungry expression that should make me feel like one of those powerful women in Granny’s books, but instead just sends a sprinkle of nerves through me.
Like, if he looks any closer, he’ll see all the little things that I’m told not to worry about, but I still always do.
Cellulite! Stretchmarks! The bulge in my tummy that I sometimes try to suck in even though I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it.
I can’t. And the nerves just increase, and I reach for the dress again and Callum looks so adorably confused before he realizes what’s happening and shoots forward, tossing it into the corner of the room.
“Don’t you dare,” he says, and I laugh a little at how choked the words sound. “You’ve been wearing those the whole time?”
“Nush made me buy them last year.”
“I’ve always liked that girl,” he says seriously, and I grin.
I’d never thought of underwear as sexy before.
I mean, obviously, I knew they could be, but all my life they’ve just been practical daily things.
Definitely not seductive. But the way he’s gazing at the little bow in the middle of my cups at the front has me pressing my thighs together, and the way he swallows tells me he notices the movement immediately, but he doesn’t move, waiting for something, waiting, I realize, for me.
I’m still a little nervous. It’s a good kind of nervous, but one that makes me linger where I am before I make myself take a hesitant step to him.
Only to burst out laughing as he grabs my hand and pulls me forward the final steps, straight into his arms.
* * *
Callum Dempsey has been holding out on me.
I think I’d be forgiven for not realizing it before.
After all, he’d never been shy about letting me know how much he wanted me.
We’d only shared a handful of kisses, but each time we did, it brought out a side of me I never knew was there and left me wanting more until I was almost breathless with it.
But this? This is more than lust. More than smooth moves in the shadows and butterflies in the stomach. It’s all-consuming and overwhelming, and even a little frightening, the depth of what I feel for him, but I wouldn’t stop it for the world. I don’t think I could if I tried.
There’s just suddenly so much of him. So much heat, so much skin.
His hands are everywhere, his touch is everywhere, and I still can’t get enough, clinging to him as he somehow pulls me into him and walks me backward at the same time.
He lowers me onto the bed, his knees digging into the mattress on either side of my thighs as he hovers over me, never once breaking our connection.
His mouth is blazing and insistent against mine, and relief fills me that he’s as eager for this as I am, that he’s not holding back or trying to play it cool.
He lets me know just how much he wants me with every drag of his tongue, every sweep of his hand.
We’re kissing so hard that I’m struggling to catch my breath, but I can’t stop, I don’t want to stop, and honestly, if this is how it ends for me, then I can think of worse ways to go.
He falls to the bed, rolling me above him, a position I take full advantage of as I plant my hands on his chest for balance and grind down, moving my hips against his until he groans.