Chapter 28
Aoife
The pizza is gone, and I don’t remember eating half of it. That’s how hungry I was, apparently, or how distracted by the man across from me.
Aran is leaning back in his chair now, watching me with that look he gets. The one that’s not quite a smile but makes my stomach dip anyway. Like he’s recording everything.
“What?” I ask because someone has to.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Eat your crusts.”
“I’m done.”
“You left three.”
“I left them for you.”
He huffs out a quiet laugh and reaches across to pluck one off my plate. Crunches it in two bites. I watch his jaw work and decide I am, in fact, a deeply unserious person because the sight of this man eating a pizza crust has my thighs clenching under the table.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he says without looking up.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m dessert.”
“You’re the one who said don’t start anything before the pizza.”
“Pizza’s done.”
“Is it?”
He sets his glass down slowly. Deliberately. The kind of slow that means the next five seconds of my life are going to go somewhere I won’t be able to stop.
“Come here,” he says.
I slide off my chair and cross the small space between us, and he catches me by the hips before I can decide what to do with my hands.
He pulls me between his thighs, looking up at me, and something about the angle undoes me.
This enormous man, all that quiet threat, tipping his head back to look at me like the world outside these walls has ceased to exist.
His hands skim up my sides under the t-shirt.
His palms are warm. His mouth shifts into almost a smile, and he stands.
I have to tip my head back now to keep his face in view.
He tugs the hem of the t-shirt up slowly, his other hand sliding up to the back of my neck, and he pulls me in.
He kisses me. Careful isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
His mouth is hot and slow, sure of itself, and my hands end up fisted in his t-shirt before I’ve even made the decision to grab him.
He walks me backwards. I don’t know where we’re going because my eyes are closed, and honestly, I don’t care. The wall hits my back. One hand is in my hair, the other hand is working the button of my jeans open with a kind of calm competence that shouldn’t be as hot as it is.
He hooks his hands under my thighs and hoists. My legs go around his waist on pure reflex. My hip twinges, and I wince. He feels it.
We make it up the stairs without me getting dropped, which is a minor miracle given he’s also kissing me for half of it, one hand splayed under my ass, the other braced on the bannister. He kicks the bedroom door open with his foot and then shuts it with his shoulder.
He sets me on my feet beside the bed. His bed. Our bed.
I lift my arms as I kick off my shoes. He pulls the t-shirt up and over my head and drops it somewhere.
Then the jeans, which come off with considerably less grace because they’re sticking to me in places that are still tender from the last time he had me out of them.
He goes down on one knee to work them off my ankles, which I realize is both extremely practical and filthy in a way I don’t have the vocabulary for, and when he looks up at me from down there, hands on my calves, I genuinely forget how lungs work.
He stands, and I’m nearly naked before him, yet the hunger in his eyes makes me feel like I’m draped in diamonds. It’s going to take me a long time to get used to this. I’m not sure I ever will.
“On the bed,” he murmurs.
I climb on. I’m careful about my hip on the way. He notices because he notices everything. He follows me up, still fully dressed, which feels unfair in about ten different ways.
“Lie back.”
I obey.
He settles over me on his elbows, not putting his weight on me, careful of my hip even while his hand is skimming up my ribs in a way that is doing absolutely nothing for my ability to form sentences. His mouth finds the hollow under my jaw. Then my collarbone. Then lower.
My bra goes somewhere. I don’t track it.
His mouth moves over my breast, slow and thorough, making me arch up into him with a gasp. His hand presses my uninjured hip back down and that deliberate care is somehow doing worse things to me than when he’s rough.
He sits up and drags his t-shirt over his head in one motion. My brain briefly stops working because I have seen this man shirtless multiple times now, and it hasn’t gotten less stupid. All that ink. The mark I left on his neck.
He undoes the jeans and strips them off.
He comes back down over me, and the feel of his skin on mine, everywhere, all at once, is almost too much. I close my eyes.
“Look at me,” he says quietly.
I open them.
He kisses me then, soft, almost careful, and that nearly undoes me more than anything else he’s done tonight. I can handle him rough. I can handle him filthy. I don’t know what to do with him tender.
My hands find his face. Stubble. Jaw. The small scar at his temple I’ve never asked about. I map him with my fingers while he kisses me, and when he finally pulls back to breathe, his eyes are on mine. They’re dark, serious and something else I don’t have a name for.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” he says.
“You won’t.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I will.”
He reaches between us. I’m already slick, and his jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the skin like I’ve struck a match inside him.
Two fingers. Slow but deliberate, curling just right, making my back arch off the bed.
His eyes never leave mine—dark, hungry, possessive—and I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to.
The pain in my hip dissolves into nothing but white noise beneath the roar of blood in my ears.
He shifts, lines himself up, and pushes in with agonizing restraint, like a man fighting his own nature. Every inch is exquisite torture, filling me completely, and when my breath catches on a gasp that tears from somewhere deep in my chest, he stops, trembling with the effort of his control.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Don’t stop.”
He thrusts deep.
It’s slow like this. I didn’t know it could be slow like this with him. Every other time has been frantic, wall-pinning, teeth-on-skin. This is something else. His forehead against mine. His hand in my hair. Each stroke measured, like he’s proving something to himself, or to me, or to both of us.
He kisses me hard, teeth scraping my bottom lip, and the rhythm shifts. Deeper, harder. His fingers dig into my thighs as he lifts me slightly, angling me just right. I gasp against his mouth, nails raking down his sweat-slick back.
I come without warning, my pussy clenching around him as waves of pleasure crash through me. I bite his shoulder to muffle my cry, tasting salt on his skin.
“That’s it. That’s my girl. Fuck, you feel so good,” he growls, his voice rough against my ear. “I’m coming…”
His hand slides between us, thumb circling exactly where I need it, and I’m already spiraling toward another peak when he thrusts deep and holds, his whole body tensing. “Mine,” he groans, shuddering against me, inside me.
He collapses beside me, pulling me half across his chest, both of us breathing hard.
His heart hammers under my palm, gradually slowing as his fingers trace lazy patterns down my spine.
Then, he strokes up and down my spine, slow, absent.
My ear is over his heart, and it’s slowing down under my cheek.
It’s the most calming thing I’ve ever felt in my life.
The house is quiet. Outside, a car goes past somewhere, and a dog barks twice and stops. His chest is warm under my cheek. His hand keeps tracing up and down my back in that slow, mindless way, and I feel my eyelids get heavy without deciding to let them.
“Sleep,” he says quietly.
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re practically unconscious.”
“Aran?”
“Mm.”
“This is the safest I’ve been in two years.”
His hand stops. Then starts again, slower. “Go to sleep, Aoife.”
“Just wanted you to know.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
I close my eyes properly this time. His heartbeat is steady under my ear. His hand is warm on my back.
I’m here.
In his bed.
On his chest.
Safe.