Chapter 6 Declan
DECLAN
I start looking for reasons to stay in the house.
I postpone meetings. Instead of visiting business associates in person, I call them from my study. I cancel a golf tournament knowing that I won’t be able to focus.
I feel the way I did when I first met Niamh as a nineteen-year-old youth. Excitable. Impatient. Horny. It was an arranged match, we’d have married with or without the mutual attraction, for the sake of our families. But the instant I saw her, I knew I’d struck gold.
With Amelia, it’s the novelty, I tell myself. There’s always that element of anticipation at the start of a new relationship, even one based purely on sex.
But I’m fifty-seven years old. I know the difference between lust and desire, and Amelia has me wanting a whole lot more than a quick fuck in a different room whenever we cross paths.
I sneak up behind her in the kitchen, where she’s dicing vegetables with her earbuds in, and slide my hands beneath her sweater. She isn’t wearing a bra. I cup her breasts and tease her swollen nipples, and she half turns to face me, nuzzling my cheek.
“Orla will be back soon,” she says.
“Why do you think I’m here? I couldn’t wait a moment longer to feel you.”
She sets the knife down on the chopping board and maneuvers herself into my arms, rubbing her hard nipples against my chest. My cock is right there, solid, letting her know how badly I want her.
“Tonight?” I kiss her deeply.
My heart practically sings when I see the want in her eyes too. “My room?”
I’m not fooling myself that this will last forever. Amelia is young, she has her whole life ahead of her, a lifetime of experiences waiting for her out there in the big wide world. But while she’s here, and she wants this as much as I do, I’d be a fucking idiot to let it go.
“Be ready for me.”
She gives me that slanted smile that sets my pulse galloping. “Ready how?”
I lift her jumper and suck on her nipple, unzipping her jeans and sliding a finger inside her. “Naked and wet. I want to see that beautiful pussy when I open your door and know that you’ve been waiting for me.”
She chuckles, a low throaty sound. “Is that an order?”
My erection throbs inside my pants as I kiss her and step away. “You’ll be the death of me, you know that?”
She grins. “I hope not.”
Back in my study, I call my eldest son Ruairi.
“How’s it going, son?”
“I’m finally making progress. I went to the matriarch, Moira Murray, and I’ve arranged a meeting with Caleb for tomorrow.”
“Good work. I never doubted you for a moment.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Pa. There’s no guarantee that the Murrays will agree to an alliance.”
“They haven’t met my son yet.” I chuckle, pour myself a slug of brandy.
“You sound cheerful. Everything going to plan with Eoghan?”
“If you mean, is he still sniffing around Emily Murray, then the answer is yes. Haven’t seen him in days.”
Emily is a foot in the door of this alliance with our longstanding rival family.
I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d set up a date between my youngest son and the Murray princess myself.
But fate played straight into my hands and arranged a meet-cute between them at Dublin Airport, saving me the bother.
Eoghan doesn’t know it yet, but his relationship with Emily will be the frosting on the cake when Ruairi shakes on the deal with Caleb Murray in New York City.
“That’s my little brother,” Ruairi says. “I taught him everything I know.”
“I think you’ll find that you both learned from the best. Me.”
That night, Amelia, true to her word, is naked on her bed when I let myself into her room, languishing as though posing for a nude portrait. She props herself up on one elbow and watches me intently, smiling. “I thought you’d forgotten me.” .”
I swallow hard, leaning against the door. “Amelia… Fuck… Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
“Why don’t you show me?”
I’m trembling as I sit on the edge of the bed and stroke her hair away from her face. “Did you mean it earlier when you said that you trust me?”
“What do you think?”
“I think…” Deep breath. “That you’re a whole fucking lot more than I deserve.”
She has no idea who I am, what I do, the kind of legacy that I’ll eventually hand over to my sons one day. She’s so innocent. So sweet. So oblivious to the kind of world she’s dipping her toes into that I know I should do the right thing and send her home to her mom before she gets hurt.
But I’ve never been selfless. Sure, I’ve already made a silent promise to myself to do everything I can to prevent her from finding her father.
But this… Spending the night with her, keeping her close, showing her the kind of life that she could have if I were anyone else, is purely and utterly selfish.
I never want to let her out of my sight. She’s mine, and I will kill anyone else who tries to touch her. But am I what she needs?
“Why, Declan?” she asks, genuinely curious.
“Amelia, I’m … not the person you think I am.”
She smiles and wriggles closer to me, reminding me that she’s the one who is naked and vulnerable, while I’m the one in control.
Although I feel anything but.
“Declan, I don’t care about anything you’ve done in the past. I care about the man you are now. Because… I like this Declan.”
Guilt is nudging at my rib cage. She deserves so much more than I can offer her. Her father is a fucking monster, and right now, I feel like I’m right behind him.
I can’t do this.
I stand and undress, climb into bed beside her, and hold her in my arms.
“I like you too, Amelia York. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Or next week. Or a couple of months from now. But…”
It’s the fucking understatement of the century.
If this alliance with the Murrays goes to plan, our business will expand across the Atlantic.
I promised the States side of the alliance to Ruairi, but I could theoretically be spending a lot more time in New York than I ever have before, leaving the Irish side of the business in Eoghan’s capable hands.
Meaning that when Amelia’s temporary contract here ends, and she goes back home, it doesn’t have to be the end of this.
Us.
Whatever is going on between us.
I mean, I’m not na?ve enough to believe that it’s forever. But we could at least have a fighting chance.
“…I want you to know that I’m here for you, not just the sex. I meant it when I said that I want all of you.”
She rolls her head across my shoulder to look at me. “You mean that, don’t you?”
“I don’t make a habit of lying to women. Especially not when they’re as fucking beautiful and as special as you are.”
She cups my face with one hand, and drapes one leg over mine beneath the comforter. My erection bobs against my abdomen, reminding me that this conversation might be earning me some gold stars in the romantic stakes, but it hasn’t been satisfied yet.
“You have all of me, Declan. No one has ever made me feel the way that you do.”
I kiss her lips. I’ll take that, for now.
Amelia is asleep when I slide my legs over the side of bed, grab my clothes from the floor, and dress in silence. She is even more beautiful in slumber. The curve of her cheek, her perfect plump lips, her freckles, face framed by glossy brown curls.
I don’t like this furtiveness, sneaking around my own house at the crack of dawn, to get back to my room before Orla wakes up. Amelia deserves better. It’s disrespectful to her, and I was brought up to believe that respect is everything.
The knowledge that we can’t go on like this forever lodges inside my chest like a boulder. I won’t continue this until she accuses me of using her. Or until someone else finds out what’s going on. I won’t do that to her.
I’m also aware that I’m the only one who can change the situation.
I’ve never been a fucking coward. But it scares the shit out of me knowing what people will say.
Declan Byrne is having a mid-life crisis.
She’s only after his money. What else would she see in him?
She’s younger than his sons.
He’s lost his fucking marbles.
I lean over the bed and kiss her cheek softly so as not to wake her.
Her face is still flushed from the multiple orgasms she had during the night.
The mark on her neck isn’t as livid as it was, but it’s still noticeable, flecked with blood beneath the skin’s surface.
She kept it covered. She could’ve flaunted it in front of Orla, forced my hand, made the situation so awkward that I had to come clean.
But she didn’t.
Maybe I am crazy. Maybe this is a mid-life crisis. But I believed her when she said that I have all of her.
Now I need to figure out what to do with it.
I avoid Amelia during the day. I don’t feel good about it, but I’ve been too distracted by her to think about what’s going on in New York, and I need to be focused. For Ruairi’s sake. I’ll make it up to her later.
Orla finds me in my study mid-morning and sits down in the seat across the desk.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
I sit back in my seat. Keep my expression neutral. “Is this about Amelia?”
“You tell me.”
I’m trying to gauge how much she knows, or at least how much she thinks she knows. Orla isn’t easily fooled. But I’m not ready to come clean. For both our sakes.
“I misread her attitude to begin with. I convinced myself that she would be hard work, that we needed someone more like Mary.”
“And now?”
“And now… I realize that this is the twenty-first century, and Amelia York is like throwing open the windows and blowing the cobwebs away.”
She watches me with a steady gaze for several long moments. Then her expression softens. “I’m glad. I haven’t seen you smile this much in years.”
Orla eases herself out of the seat using the armrests for support.
“She’s a good one, Declan. Make sure you look after her.”
She isn’t insinuating anything I tell myself when I’m alone again. Orla doesn’t speak in riddles; if she has something to say, she’ll say it.