Chapter 14 Fourteen
Fourteen
The second release caught them both off guard. One moment, she was shuddering over him, her forehead pressing hard to his and in the space of a heartbeat, a single flick, then two, of his fingers, she erupted.
She threw her head back with a cry that filled the room and nearly tipped him over the edge with her.
Yet somehow, he managed to keep it together, despite her knees clenching around his hips.
With her back bowed and head thrown back, her breasts thrust out, and that riot of heavy black curls lit by the sunlight streaming through the windows that dominated the opposite wall, she looked like an enraptured, fallen angel.
He continued to stroke her through the waves of her orgasm, until she slumped in his arms, and the frantic thrusting of her hips slowed to a gentle rock, then came to a stop. He swallowed hard, and though his mouth had gone dry, he murmured, “Absolutely beautiful.”
At first, he wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, but then, she lowered her chin. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes smoldering embers, all that remained of the fire that had erupted through her. Banked now, he guessed that it would take the slightest touch to send it blazing back to life.
His hands rested on the curve of her hips, and he found that he was content to watch her, though the weight of her, slight as it was, pressed on his still-hard cock. Yet his thoughts were not on his own pleasure. Not with that satisfaction glowing in her heavy-lidded eyes.
His thumbs stroked the soft skin of her abdomen as his breathing slowed. Her hands, which had been buried in his hair, started to move, stroking along the curve of his skull as if she enjoyed the feel of the strands sliding between her fingers.
No one had ever just played with his hair before, and the sensation of her fingers gliding along his scalp, massaging gently as she went was equal parts soothing and arousing. He drew in a deep breath and released it. He shifted beneath her to ease some of the pressure.
A corner of her mouth tipped up. She brushed the hair off his brow and bent to kiss him, slow and deep, her tongue stroking almost lazily along his.
Breaking the kiss a moment later, she rolled her hips, the movement sinewy as a snake, bringing those beautiful breasts back within reach of his mouth.
He eased her back on his lap a bit, just enough so he didn’t embarrass himself, not with her. He didn’t want to stop, but his first time with her was not going to happen here on this chair.
“Take a moment, lass,” he murmured against the skin of her breast. The nipple before him tightened from his breath, but he only just kept himself from taking the rosy nub into his mouth.
Her hands slid from his hair to rest on his shoulders. For a moment, she was still taking one long breath after another, and then she moved.
Ciaran glanced up just as her hands slid down his chest, and then she crawled off of his lap and sunk to the floor between his knees.
Her hands darted under the hem of his shirt and slid up his abdomen like two firebrands, the muscles tightening under her touch.
Without warning, she curled her fingers and raked her nails down across the ridge of muscle, surely leaving thin red lines in their wake.
He hissed and his softening cock was instantly at full attention again.
Then her hand slid over the slick fabric of his shorts and the length that strained beneath. “A dhia,“ he muttered as his head kicked back against the top of the chair, staring sightlessly at the ceiling as she stroked him until his breath grew ragged.
She let out a satisfied hum. “That’s right,” she cooed.
He tipped his head, his eyes focusing on her just as her fingertips dipped beneath the hem of his shorts and started easing them down.
“Is this what you want?” Her breath was warm on the skin of his abdomen as she eased the material away and his cock sprang free.
“Jal—“ His voice choked off on a groan when she wrapped her fingers around him.
Her voice was a sultry purr as she said, “You know how much I like how hard you get.”
Ciaran’s eyes narrowed and he lifted his head. Something about her words didn’t sound quite right. He couldn’t see much, just a curtain of black curls covering his stomach and hips, though he was all too aware of where her hand was and what it was doing.
She swept that curtain over one shoulder and looked up at him as her lips closed around the tip of his cock, a quiet moan vibrated down his length.
His balls tightened even as warning bells started going off in his head, for though her expression said she was enjoying what she was doing to him, her eyes were distant and vacant.
Gone was the satisfaction and fire he’d expected to see blazing there.
“Jal, what are you doing?”
She released him with a pop and smiled, but like the expression in her eyes, it was wrong. “Taking care of you, baby, like always.”
Her words were like a bucket of ice water being poured over his head. Ciaran sat bolt upright, and pushed her hands away.
Jal followed, climbing half into his lap to reach for him again. He wrapped his hands around her slim shoulders and pressed her back. For another moment, her hands continued to grasp for his cock until he trapped them between his own. “Lass!” he cried, “lass… Jal, stop!”
“You don’t want me to take care of you?” she asked. A deep crease formed in the middle of her forehead and though her body was coiled to spring at him, her expression eager, her eyes were still hollow.
He’d never seen anything like it before.
Ciaran adjusted his grip on her hands, pinning her wrists to the arms of the chair.
Then, like a gentle breeze on an ember, the light returned to her eyes.
It was faint at first, as if there was some great weight that she had to push aside first. But once she did, awareness flared to life with enough force to yank her out of his grip and she landed on her ass on the floor.
She drew her knees up to her bare chest and wrapped her arms around them. Those emerald eyes, which had started to look on him as more than a persistent annoyance, were wide, but still unfocused.
After a few endless moments, she blinked and shook herself as if to shed the last of whatever hallucination she’d fallen into. It was the only explanation he could come up with.
Jal looked around the room as if trying to remember where she was until, finally, she turned her attention to him.
He’d righted the situation with his clothing by that point, but remained sitting back in the chair to keep from looming over her.
Her hair spread around her like a cloak, doing its best to cover her nakedness, though the points of her shoulders peeked through. She shivered once and he searched around for her sweatshirt, finding that it had only fallen to the floor at their feet when he’d cast it aside.
“Ciaran?” His name was a broken whisper.
He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, though his heart was still beating a mile a minute, his brain frantically trying to figure out what had just happened. “Aye, lass. It’s me.”
She closed her eyes and dropped her forehead to her knees. Another tremor shook her shoulders.
Ciaran shifted to the front of the seat as quietly as he could, though she seemed to make herself smaller with every sound he made. Every twitch of her shoulders was a dagger to his heart. “Are you alright?”
Her chest heaved as if she had been running, each exhale ending in something like a whimper. Of shock, or surprise, or pain, he didn’t know.
Whatever it was, his heart broke at the sound. He retrieved the sweatshirt from the floor and gently wrapped it around her, draping the sleeves over her shoulders. His fingers cupped her upper arms, sliding to her elbows, then back up, and down again.
Under his hands, the muscles of her arms were as rigid as steel. For a moment he thought about sliding off the chair and joining her on the floor, but thought better of it and instead, gave her the space to sort out whatever it was on her own.
Before he could decide what to do next, she was scrambling up off the floor and into his lap, sitting across it rather than straddling him. She threw her arms around his neck and curled up against his chest, her head fitting snuggly under his chin.
He couldn’t help a small grunt of surprise, but his arms came automatically around her shoulders and knees and he held her close, settling back into the depths of the chair. Her shoulders began to shake in earnest, the cloth of his shirt directly over his heart grew damp with her tears.
Ciaran stroked her back in long, slow sweeps, over and over, murmuring quiet reassurances, the kind his Gran would murmur in his ear when he was little. It didn’t matter what language he spoke them in, Jal was like a skittish horse, needing only calm, comforting words and a gentle hand.
Bit by bit, the tension left her body until she at last lay still in his arms. Hers had loosened their death grip on his neck, now only looped loosely around it.
“You don’t have to say anything, lass.” he said into the shell of her ear, his hand keeping up the rhythm of slow, soothing strokes. “Your truth is your own, and yours to tell or not. When you are ready, whenever that is, just know that your truth is safe with me.”
She didn’t speak or even move, though he heard her breath catch. She nodded, just once, and released a long sigh of what he hoped was relief.
Content to just hold her while she was receptive to it, Ciaran adjusted her on his lap and continued stroking her back.
After a few moments, the weight on his chest had become even more boneless, her breathing had smoothed into a deep and even rhythm, and he knew she had fallen asleep.
He dropped his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes.
Since they’d met, it had only ever been about the present or the future, never the past. But something had set her off, and he didn’t know what it was, or how to help her. So, he just sat there, holding her as she slept until his legs began to go numb.
As gently and slowly as he could, he adjusted his grip and stood and headed for her bedroom, carefully skirting the coffee table and nudged the bedroom door open with one shoulder.
Her room was as it had been when he’d climbed in through the window, the bed neatly made, but clothes strewn around on the floor each threatening to trip him up on his way to the bed.
He set her down, placing her head on the simple jade green pillow.
The sweatshirt had fallen away when he’d stood, so he gently removed her shoes and drew the cream comforter up to her chin.
He tucked the blankets in around her and smoothed the hair on her head one more time before pressing a kiss to her temple.
She burrowed a little deeper into the covers and murmured something unintelligible that he took as a thank you.
He left her to sleep and went back to the living room.
Its sunny cheerfulness was not at all dimmed by either the debauchery on that living room chair, or a reminder of whatever horror was lurking in her past that had followed.
He scrubbed a hand over his scalp as his eyes swept across the room, landing on his duffel bag near the door, the gold trophy fallen over beside it. He winced at the dent in the cup, visible even from a good distance away. Who knew how much that was going to cost to fix…
His eyes fell on the dining table, its hidden drawer invisible from this angle, and spotted her cell phone lying on the scarred wood. He crossed the room and picked it up. It was an older model, the casing scratched and a long crack stretched diagonally almost from corner to corner.
Ciaran pressed the button on the side and was greeted by the same strip of photos that was tucked into the frame of her dresser mirror.
There was a small stack of notifications from a group chat, but he could only make out the name of one person.
Elena. Only the first few words were visible, but it looked like an invitation of some kind.
He tried tapping the top tile, but the phone first tried scanning his face, then when he looked nothing like the phone’s owner, demanded a code.
Having no idea what it could possibly be, Ciaran set the phone aside with a sigh, and spotted a notepad and pen tucked under a vase of wilting peonies. He smiled, seeing the florist’s card propped up at its base.
He picked up the pen and left her a note, repeating the words he’d murmured in her ear as she was drifting off to sleep. Her truth was indeed her own to tell, he just hoped that one day soon she would let someone, anyone, in. Preferably him.
He signed his name with his usual flourish and left the note on the table.
As he picked up the trophy and swung the duffel bag onto his shoulder, Ciaran put a hand on the doorknob and surveyed the apartment once more from dated kitchen to closed bedroom door. When his eyes fell on his note, he hurried back to the table and added his phone number to the bottom of the page.
With a small, hopeful smile on his lips, he set the pen down neatly beside the notepad and headed home.