Chapter 21
Twenty-one
Declan
I drive through the quiet streets with her fingers laced in mine.
Tarryn leans into my shoulder and breathes out through a smile that keeps breaking across her face, like she isn’t sure joy will hold.
The party buzz still hums in my ears. Her words in front of everyone keep running through me.
She chose me. She stood beside me. My hands are steady on the wheel, but inside I’m light.
“I want tonight,” she whispers. “No dodging. No hiding. Just us.”
“That’s what I want.” I squeeze her hand and keep my eyes on the wet road. “My place is five minutes.”
“Good.” Her thumb rubs my knuckle. “Because I’m done pretending I don’t love you.”
We pull into my apartment parking lot. I kill the engine and we run for the stairs under the awning, laughing when a gust of winter rain pushes hard against our backs.
I fumble the keys, catch them on the second try, and open the door.
Warm air and the faint scent of cedar welcome us.
I flip on the lamp. The living room glows low.
She stands in the middle of it and shrugs off her coat.
“I meant every word,” she tells me. “If anyone asks where I was, I was with you. If anyone asks who I’m with, it’s you.”
I lock the door and face her. “Then my goal is simple. Keep you. In every way a man can.”
Her mouth tips up. “Ambitious.”
“Earned.” I let the gravity pull us instead of rushing. “One thing first. I know what forever means to me. I want to hear what it means to you.”
She steps closer, toes to mine. “Forever means we don’t run when work gets hard, when family stirs things, when old scars burn. We fight clean. We make a plan and fix what breaks. We choose each other again and again.”
“That’s my picture too,” I answer. “No half measures. No leaving things unsaid.”
“Then we start now.” She brings my palm to her heartbeat. “Feel that. You’re in there.”
“Kitchen,” I say. “You need water. And I want that ginger tea you like.”
“Look at you, domestic.” She walks with me, fingers trailing along the back of the couch. “I brought you to your own kitchen. That counts as us moving in together.”
“Bold claim.” I fill a glass and hand it to her. “I’ve two drawers you can take over. Socks and chaos.”
“I’ll take the chaos.” She drinks and sets the glass down. “On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You stop keeping your toothbrush in the medicine cabinet. It wants a friend beside it.”
“Done.”
We lean on the counter. The rain taps the window. The silence between us isn’t empty. It’s full of a thousand things we haven’t had room to say out loud.
She breaks it first. “When I walked in tonight and I saw your eyes, I knew I couldn’t keep waiting. The longer I waited, the more room fear had.”
“Me either.” I touch her cheek. “I was going to meet you at the edge of the dance floor and pull you outside. You beat me to it.”
“Not always.” Her mouth twists. “I held back when I should’ve reached for you. I pushed when I should’ve asked what you needed.”
“I did my own version of that.” I roll my shoulders. “I thought protecting you meant holding parts of me back. That was dumb. It only made you work harder to read me.”
She nudges my arm. “We’re both better communicators in a fire.”
“True.” I smile. “Speaking of which. Tomorrow I want to check in with the marshal. Get an update.”
Her shoulders rise. “We can talk to him after breakfast. I don’t want to end the night with Max in my head. I want you.”
“You have me.” I brush a curl behind her ear. “And I want you in my life in daylight. Not only nights like this.”
“Then take me to your room,” she whispers. “And let the daylight find us in the morning.”
“With pleasure.”
We cross the hall. I flick on the small lamp by the bed. The quilt is pulled tight. Her heels click off. She sets them by the door, then steps into me with slow intent.
“You kept the wooden fireman ornament I gave you before you left,” she notes from the dresser. “I can’t believe it.”
“He knows he did good work.” I pull her close. “Like his buyer.”
Her laughter lifts. “That was sweet.”
“I remember the first time you handed me a mug in that barn and told me to warm my hands on it instead of on you.”
“That didn’t last long.”
“It didn’t.” I reach for the zipper on her dress, moving slow, and pause. “If you want to talk first, we can. If you want me first, I’m here.”
“I want both.” Her voice is sure. “Talk while you undress me, and I’ll do the same.”
We stand on the edge and step over together.
“Tell me one thing you want tomorrow,” I ask as the dress slides down and pools at her feet.
“I want to bring you to breakfast. I want my dad to see you beside me and know I choose you as my partner.” She pulls my sweater over my head and traces the scar near my ribs. “I want to hear you call this our life.”
“You will.” I take in the line of her collarbone. “One thing you want next month.”
“A walk through the vines with you on a quiet morning. No crisis. No one but us.” She unbuttons my jeans, slow, steady. “One thing in a year.”
“Keys that match,” I answer. “Yours work here. Mine work where you sleep.” I kiss her shoulder. “And a trip we never got to take. Maui. Sun. Sand.”
“Yes.”
Clothes become a soft scatter across the floor. We move to the bed and kneel on it. The world thins to breath and touch and sound.
“Tell me if you need to slow down,” I say.
“I’ll tell you if I need to speed up.” She grins and arches when my hand finds the path I know by heart. “God, Declan.”
“Here,” I murmur. “Like this.”
She grips my shoulder and answers with a yes that moves through her whole body.
Her fingers at the back of my neck pull me down.
Her mouth meets mine. We learn the rhythm that belongs to tonight.
It isn’t frantic. It’s certain. When I slide into her, she locks her legs around me and holds my gaze and the room goes quiet but for our breath.
We move together until words are useless, until the only language left is the one our bodies speak.
After, we stay tangled and breathe.
She traces small circles on my chest. “I used to think forever would feel like a weight. It feels light with you.”
“Because we carry it together,” I answer.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That we pulled through a storm and didn’t lose the parts that matter.” I kiss the top of her head. “And that I want to build from here. Not tiptoe.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Then there’s one thing I want to ask.”
“Ask it.”
“Are you ready to stop keeping sections of your life off limits to me?”
“Yes, I’m done with that. I thought I was protecting you. I was protecting my own ego. I’m sorry.”
She lifts to look at me. “I forgive you.” A beat passes. “And I want to own my side too. I shut you out when I got scared. I put the vineyard first and told myself it was noble. It was also easier than trusting you with the soft parts of me.”
“I want those parts,” I whisper. “I want all of you.”
Something in her shifts. The next kiss tastes like a promise.
We drift into quiet. I almost think she’s asleep when she speaks again.
“I keep hearing my brothers in my head,” she admits. “They’ll challenge us in the morning.”
“They can push,” I answer. “They can try. We’re a unit. They can have opinions. They don’t get a vote.”
She breathes out and nods. “Then I need you beside me. Not behind me. Not in front of me. Beside me.”
“I like that formation.” I brush my thumb across her lower lip. “I’m big on even flanks.”
She snorts. “Look at you with a battle plan. What’s next? A whiteboard.”
“Already in the closet.” I pause. “Alright. New plan. Tomorrow.”
She props her chin on her hand. “Run it.”
“We set the alarm for eight. Shower. You grab something cozy from my drawer of chaos. We drive to the estate by ten. We walk in together. We sit together. We help with coffee and cleanup because your mom will be doing too much and I want her to like me. After we eat, we take a short walk so we can breathe. Then we meet the marshal at two. We bring him what we’ve found.
We listen. We don’t jump to conclusions.
We ask for tasks we can do that are useful.
After that, we check in with your crew, make sure the—”
“Add one edit,” she says. “We stop at the bakery on the way for maple crullers my dad loves. Bribery isn’t beneath me.”
“Sold.” I grin. “One more thing. I text my captain and swap my Wednesday shift. I’ll owe a double next week, but I want the afternoon clear in case the marshal needs me longer.”
“Text him now,” she says. “Before I distract you again.”
“That’s a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
I reach for my phone and type the request. The reply comes fast. Approved.
“Done.”
“Good. Because I want round two and I don’t want to watch the clock.”
Heat tears through me the second she drags me closer, a needy, greedy pull that makes my breath break.
Our pace isn’t slow anymore. It’s messy and hungry, all heat and breath and the slap of skin as she meets every thrust like she can’t get enough.
Her nails scrape down my back, hard enough to make my hips jerk, and she moans something filthy in my ear that nearly knocks the ground out from under me.
I press her down into the mattress, pinning her wrists above her head, and she arches into me like she’s begging for more.
Her legs tighten around my waist, dragging me deeper, harder, until I’m swearing into her neck and losing whatever control I thought I had.
The quilt slides to the floor again, forgotten, and she laughs breathlessly when I don’t stop, when I lift her higher and drive into her like I’m starving.
She gasps that I’m talented, but the way she says it—wrecked, shaking, desperate—turns it into a dare. I take it. I give her everything. The way her body tightens around me is obscenely good, the kind of good that curls my spine and pulls a low, raw sound out of my chest.
When it hits, it’s brutal and blinding, a hard, dirty snap that rips through both of us. She cries out, I break with her, and we collapse together in a slick, shaking tangle. Breathing hard. Bodies still twitching. The room hot and thick with everything we just did.
She nestles under my arm and draws a line across my stomach.
I pull back to admire her, and I can feel myself getting hard at the sight.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I say, my voice hoarse.
Tarryn smiles shyly and takes a step closer. “So are you.”
I pull her in for another kiss, and this time, my hands roam freely over her body. Her skin is soft and warm, and I want to explore every inch of her.
I dip my head, letting my lips wander over the slope of her neck. Her skin tastes like salt and heat, a quiet invitation that pulls me lower until I reach the hollow of her collarbone. She shivers, and I can feel the sound she doesn’t make. Her breathing quickens.
I slide my hand down her body and slide my fingers inside her. She’s wet and ready for me. My fingers slowly circle her clit. I tease her and she moans softly.
“Please,” she whispers.
Her hand reaches for my cock and she strokes me.
I lick her center before kissing my way back up her body and glide two fingers inside her. She moans loudly, her head falling back.
“You like that?” I murmur, kissing her neck.
“Mmm, yes…” she breathes.
“I’m going to make you feel so good,” I say, sinking my fingers deeper inside her.
I position myself over her, my cock nestled between her folds. She looks up at me, and I enter her slowly. I take her hands in mine, and we clench our fingers together. I feel myself falling deeper and deeper into her, and somehow, I know I’ll never be able to let go.
I pull out of her slowly and roll her over onto her stomach.
I come up on my knees behind her and gather her in my arms. She lets out a low groan as I enter her from behind.
I slide myself in and out, harder and faster with each passing moment.
Her back arches, and I feel myself falling away, lost in her.
After a few minutes, I bury myself inside her one last time, and we explode in ecstasy. When my body is spent, I wrap my arms around her, cradling her as we collapse. I pull the covers over us, lie on my back, and settle her in my arms.
“That was incredible,” I murmur.
I can feel Tarryn smile against my chest. “Yes, it was.”