Chapter 11 Billie
Billie
I've been to Declan's house only a few times in my life. Every time I was inside for under twenty minutes and each time I thought: very clean, slightly insane, and left.
I'm here now and it's still very clean and still slightly insane and I've been sleeping with him for a week so I'm taking the tour at a different pace.
The kitchen counters have nothing on them.
Not almost nothing. Nothing. No mail pile, no random mug, no charger living in the corner because that's where the charger lives.
I open three drawers looking for nothing in particular and everything is exactly where it should be, organized by some logic that is internally consistent and probably proprietary to Declan Maguire.
"Do you have a system," I say.
"Yes," he says, from the living room.
"For the drawers."
"Yes."
"Of course you do." I close the drawer. I open the fridge.
The fridge is stocked with the efficiency of someone who treats eating well as a logistics problem he has already solved.
Vegetables with actual intent behind them, not the aspirational kind that rot in the crisper because you bought them to prove something to yourself on a Sunday.
Three kinds of mustard, which is a personality.
And there, on the second shelf, next to the water: two cans of Mango Tango Celsius.
I look at them.
Mango Tango Celsius. Which I mentioned on stream once, exactly once, six weeks ago, for approximately four seconds, as part of a longer conversation about energy drinks that my chat immediately turned into a poll.
I said the mango one was the only one that didn't taste like a mistake and then I moved on because we were mid-game and I forgot about it before the stream ended.
Theyr’re for me.
I take one. I close the fridge. I hop up onto the counter and crack it open and drink it and look at him where he's appeared in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed, watching me find it.
He knew I'd look. He put them there knowing I'd look and he's watching me look and he is the least apologetic person I have ever met about anything and he is being spectacularly unapologetic about this right now.
That's either the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me or the beginning of a true-crime documentary and I'm choosing the first option because the Celsius is cold and it's the right flavor.
"Good?" he says.
"Great," I say, draining the can.
The living room has a photo I've walked past before without stopping. Him and my dad in their mid-thirties, somewhere with bad overhead lighting, the kind of venue that doesn't exist anymore. Both of them laughing at something off-frame.
I pick it up.
They look genuinely happy. Whatever was funny was apparently very funny. My dad's hand is on Declan's shoulder. Easy. Thirty years of friendship in one gesture.
His bedroom is large and spare and has a huge bed. It puts my Ikea furniture to shame. Everything in this house costs more than it looks like it does because Declan Maguire buys things once and buys them right.
I sit on the edge of it. He leans in the doorway.
Here's what I've established over the past week through what I'm choosing to call research: Declan has a threshold.
There's a version of him that's controlled and deliberate and takes his time, and then there's the version underneath.
The version underneath is accessible via means I've been collecting data on.
Up to now I've been reactive. Receiving information rather than generating it. I've been the player running the tutorial level, learning the controls, getting oriented.
Tonight I'm going to play the actual game.
He's got his mouth on my throat and his hands on my waist and I reach up with full intention and put my mouth to his temple. The silver there. Right there. A simple kiss.
His whole body stops.
Not pauses. Stops. Every muscle. One single arrested moment, and I feel it move through him like I've tripped a wire nobody told him was there.
Oh, says my brain. Oh, that's extremely useful.
I have found the exact exploit in the boss fight that everyone said was impossible. I know where it is. I intend to use it so regularly he's going to start flinching when I lean in and I am completely fine with that.
He pulls back and looks at me.
"Do that again," he says, and his voice is lower than usual and I am adding that to the data set with considerable satisfaction.
I do it again. Slower this time. My lips against the silver at his temple, his name whispered right against his ear.
"Turn over," he says against my skin.
"Ask nicely," I say, because I have some dignity.
"Turn over," he says, in exactly the same tone, because he has none.
I turn over. So much for dignity.
His hands run down my back. My sides. My hips. He gets his hand between my thighs from behind, two fingers finding my clit, and I make a sound into the pillow.
I turn my face and make it again, louder, because I've decided I'm not doing the quiet thing anymore. It's a waste of everyone's time and he told me not to keep it quiet on the first night and I took that note and I'm applying it.
His fingers curl inside me and I gasp and grip the duvet and he works me up slowly.
Two fingers, his thumb, steady and absolutely not at the pace I want.
I push back against his hand and he lets me get nowhere.
This man has the patience of someone who has been doing things on his own schedule and has no plans to accommodate mine.
"Declan—"
"I know, baby girl." He does not speed up.
I press my forehead into the pillow. I am experiencing a full range of emotions about this pace.
Frustration. Want. A grudging respect for his commitment to making me lose my mind.
If I were reviewing this performance on stream, the chat would be losing it.
I would be losing it. I am, in fact, losing it, quietly, into a pillow.
He works me until I stop having thoughts and start making sounds.
Real ones. The ones I can't shape or manage.
That's apparently what he was waiting for because he says “Good girl,” low against my spine and I come with my thighs shaking and his fingers curling inside me and my hands fisted in his very expensive duvet, which I feel slightly bad about, but not enough to let go.
He turns me back over. I am, objectively, a wreck. He looks at me like I'm exactly what he wanted to find.
I look up at him. The lamplight on the silver at his temples. His dark eyes on my face.
"Come here," I say.
He does.
This time I don't go for his temple. I wait until he's kissing me, until his weight is on me and his hand is sliding down my stomach, and I turn my mouth to his ear and I say, very quietly: "I've been thinking about this since Sunday dinner.
About you, at the table, and what I wanted to do to you after. "
The effect is different from the temple. Bigger. His whole body goes taut against mine and his hand tightens on my hip and the sound he makes against my neck is low and wrecked and I feel it in my ribs.
So the temple is the exploit. But the forbidden is the kill shot. Good to know. I am building a very thorough understanding of what takes Declan Maguire apart, and I intend to be the foremost expert in this field. It will be my life's work. I'm accepting the grant money now.
He pushes his cock into me and I stop being clever about anything.
He goes slow. Deliberate. He's thick and I feel every inch of it and I make a sound that has nothing constructed in it, nothing performed, just real. He stays there a moment, fully inside me, not moving, and looks at me in the lamplight and I look back.
This is happening, says my brain, which has maintained operations throughout with the tenacity of a server that refuses to crash. You are in Declan Maguire's bed. You are choosing this. Every time.
Then he moves.
He pulls back slowly, almost all the way out, and I feel every inch of the withdrawal and make a sound I wasn't planning. Then he pushes back in, deep, and finds the angle from the first night. Same place. Same pressure.
I gasp. My hips snap forward to meet him. He does it again and whatever sentence I was building dissolves entirely.
He sets a rhythm. Slow and deep and controlled, his hands on my hips holding me where he wants me, and every stroke bottoms out in the place that makes my whole body tighten.
I try to speed him up. I roll my hips, I pull at his shoulders, I dig my heels into the backs of his thighs, and he lets me get absolutely nowhere. His pace. His hands. His decision.
"Declan, I need—"
"I know what you need."
He does. That's the infuriating part. He knows exactly what I need and he's giving it to me at a pace that is going to make me lose my mind before I get there.
Every slow, deliberate thrust fills me completely, and his thumb finds my clit between us, pressing in time with his hips, and the dual sensation makes my back arch off the mattress.
I would be furious about the pace except I can't hold onto fury when he rolls his hips on the next stroke and grinds against something that makes my vision go white at the edges.
My thighs are shaking. I'm wet enough that I can hear it, the slick sounds of his cock moving inside me, and that should be embarrassing and it isn't. It's the realest thing in this room.
"Please," I say. "Please, Declan, faster!"
He gives me faster. Not much. Enough. His hips driving deeper, his thumb still working my clit in tight circles, and I grab his shoulders and hold on because the bed is moving and I am moving and the sounds I'm making are not sounds I'm choosing to make, they're just coming out of me, real and loud and his.
I get both hands in his hair when I'm close. I can feel it building, the tension pulling tight low in my body, my thighs clenching around him. I pull him down and put my mouth right against his ear.
"Don't stop," I whisper. "Right there. Right there. I need you to—" My breath catches because he's done something with the angle, tilted his hips, and the head of his cock drags against the spot that makes my whole body clench. "Oh god. Declan. Don't stop."
His rhythm stutters. His hands tighten on my hips hard enough that I'll feel it tomorrow. The sound he makes against my neck is rough and wrecked and torn out of him, and I feel it vibrate through my chest into my spine.
He drives into me hard. Once. Twice. I come with my back arched off his bed and my hands fisted in his hair and a sound that fills the room.
My body clenches around his cock in waves, pulsing, and I feel every contraction and he feels them too because his hips slam forward and he buries himself deep and holds there and I feel him come.
The pulse of him inside me, his hands gripping my hips, his forehead dropping to my collarbone, a rough broken sound against my skin.
It sets off another wave in me, an aftershock that rolls through my thighs and my stomach and I hold on to him and ride it out and let it take us both.
After a while the room comes back.
His breathing. Mine.
Through the open door: the photo. My dad and Declan, both laughing.