13. Declan
Declan
He doesn’t yell. If he’d yell, I could take it. I’d stand here and let him tear me apart, and I’d deserve every word. But he’s just… still.
His arms are crossed so tight over his stomach I can see the white of his knuckles. Shoulders hiked up to his ears, jaw locked. He’s staring at a spot on the wall over my shoulder like he’s trying to burn a hole through it, an escape route only he can see.
“Shay.” My voice comes out too low, more of a growl than his name.
He flinches. It’s barely a twitch of his shoulder, but I see it, and it feels like I’ve been kicked in the chest.
He finally looks at me, and his eyes are flat. Empty. There’s none of the smart-mouthed omega who spent an hour last week redoing my specials board because my handwriting was a “personal affront.”
“Don’t,” he says. The word is barely a breath.
My hand is still pressed flat on the bar where I slammed it down. I snatch it back like it’s been burned. “I’m sorry.”
He just shakes his head, a short, sharp motion.
“I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“Right.” A thin, ugly sound that might be a laugh escapes him. “You just forgot I was here.”
That shuts me up.
The bar is a mess around us. Empty glasses, a few crumpled napkins.
Some of the gold confetti from the relaunch party is still stuck in the grooves of the bar top, catching the light.
We were supposed to be celebrating. We did it.
The place is full again, the numbers are finally in the black. We might actually make it.
And he’s looking at me like I’m the one thing he’ll never survive.
“I would never hurt you,” I say, and the words sound hollow and stupid as soon as they’re out of my mouth.
His gaze drops to my hand, the one I just pulled back, then travels back to my face. He doesn’t have to say a thing.
Fuck. I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t have an answer for any of this.
The last few weeks, I’ve been telling myself I could do this right.
Be patient. Be steady. Prove I wasn’t like any of the assholes who came before.
As if I could fix years of someone else’s damage just by making sure he ate dinner and giving him the good pillow.
He turns away, toward the end of the bar, and a raw panic lurches in my gut. My hand starts to lift, to reach for him, and I have to fist it at my side to stop myself. The alpha in my head roars, a stupid, possessive sound. Mine. Keep him here. Don’t let him go.
I hate that part of me right now.
“Where are you going?” I manage to ask.
He stops, his back to me. “I don’t know.”
“Shay.”
“What?” The word cracks in the quiet room, sharp and frayed.
I just stare at the back of his neck, at the tight black curls, at the claiming mark half-hidden by the collar of his shirt. My mark. The permanent proof of the one time I let my instincts win completely, because they were screaming at me that he belonged to me.
A claim is supposed to mean safety. Mine just looks like a bruise I keep pressing on.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. It’s all I’ve got.
He breathes out hard through his nose. “You keep saying that. What’s it supposed to do?”
“It’s supposed to mean I know I fucked up.”
“You don’t know.” He turns then, and his eyes are too bright.
“That’s the problem. You don’t know what it’s like when the whole room changes because someone gets mad.
You don’t know what it’s like to start calculating if you should apologize, or get small, or if saying the wrong thing means you’re sleeping somewhere else tonight. ”
“I know you shouldn’t have had to learn that.”
“Do you?” His mouth twists. “Because you were pissed at me for not needing you.”
“I was pissed because you act like me caring about you is some kind of insult.”
“And you keep acting like if you care hard enough, I’ll stop being scared.”
The words land like a punch.
He’s right. Of course he’s right.
I take a step back from the bar. Give him space. It’s the right thing to do. The decent thing.
The distance between us yawns open, and something in his face just… shuts down. It’s not softening. It’s worse. It’s blank.
“Fine,” he says. “You know what? You win.”
“I don’t want to win.”
“Sure you do.” He swipes a hand under his eyes, furious that there’s anything there to wipe away.
“You want me to admit it. You want me to say I’m scared, and I want to stay upstairs in your nice apartment and wear your shirts and let you take care of me until I forget I ever had a life before you. ”
“That’s not what I want.”
“No?” He’s stepping toward me now, and it’s not trust. It’s pure anger. “Then what do you want, Declan?”
Everything.
The honest answer is too big for my mouth. I want him in my bed. I want his shoes by the door and his stupid spreadsheets all over my desk. I want him complaining about my grocery shopping and telling me I’m an idiot. I want him to stop looking for the exit every time something starts to feel real.
I want him to choose me.
But all that comes out is, “I want you.”
His laugh just breaks.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice gone quiet. “That’s the one thing you’ve never had a problem making clear.”
The air goes hot and thick. I should say something better. Something that proves I heard him, that doesn’t make this worse.
Instead, I move.
It’s not even a decision. One second I’m standing there with my hands clenched into fists, the next I’ve got him by the hips and his back is against the bar.
Shay gasps, and my whole body locks up. His eyes fly to mine.
“Tell me to stop,” I say. The words are rough, barely a whisper.
For a long, terrible second, he just stares. Then his chin lifts. Defiant. Gorgeous. Fucking heartbreaking.
“Are you going to?”
“No.”
“Then don’t ask stupid questions.”
That should be enough. It’s not.
“Shay.”
He grabs the front of my shirt and yanks me down into a kiss.
There’s no softness in it. His mouth is angry, teeth catching my lip, his breath coming in short, sharp pants.
He tastes like whiskey and sandalwood and the specific scent of an omega who’s so upset it’s making my own instincts go haywire.
That dark chocolate edge is so sharp it coats my tongue, and all I can think about is the hollow at the base of his throat where his scent always gathers hottest, right where his pulse jumps under thin skin when he’s trying not to want me.
I kiss him back because I’m weak. Because I’m hurt. Because he’s here, and this is the one place we’ve never had to talk.
His hands shove at my chest. “Move.”
“Shay—”
“Move, Byrne.”
I do. He turns, palms flat on the bar, and looks at me over his shoulder. His face is all challenge and sharp edges, but his scent is already changing. That dark chocolate going sweet and thick in the air. My body reacts before my brain can catch up.
The space between us feels measured in heartbeats.
Two inches. One. None. I can feel the heat rolling off his back against my chest even before we touch, and every fraction I close makes my cock throb harder against my zipper.
I want to map the exact temperature of his skin with my palms. I want to press my mouth to the slope where his neck meets his shoulder and feel the way his breath catches when I breathe him in.
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
He laughs, a bitter sound like burned coffee. “You know what I want.”
“I need to hear it.”
His eyes meet mine in the mirror behind the rows of bottles. “Fuck me.”
This is wrong. He’s upset, I’m upset, and we’re using this like a weapon because we don’t know how to say what actually hurts. I know it. I know it, and I still step between his legs.
“Say it again,” I murmur against his neck, lips hovering just above the warm skin without landing, close enough that my breath raises goosebumps along the fine hairs there.
His fingers curl on the polished wood. “Fuck me, Declan.”
“Hard?”
His eyes squeeze shut. The column of his throat works as he swallows, and I fixate on the way the tendon shifts under that smooth brown skin, how the faint shadow of stubble catches the low light right at the hinge of his jaw. My mouth waters with the need to taste that exact spot. “Yes.”
The word wrecks me.
I pull him flush against me, my chest to his back, and his head tips forward as I kiss the side of his neck.
Nowhere near the mark. I can’t touch it.
Not right now. Instead my lips find the delicate skin just behind his ear, the one place I’ve learned makes his knees unsteady, and I drag my mouth there slow enough to feel the involuntary shiver roll down his spine.
My hands bracket his on the bar, not quite covering them, close enough that the heat of my palms radiates against his knuckles.
Four inches between our fingers. Three. The almost-touch burns worse than actually grabbing him.
“You tell me to stop, I stop,” I say against his skin.
“Just do it.”
So I do.
There’s no romance in it. Just fumbling with his belt until he swears and helps me, tearing at clothes until we’re both exposed to the cool air of the bar. This isn’t slow hands and checking in. This is need with its teeth showing.
Shay braces himself over the bar, breathing hard. His skin is warm under my hands, smooth except for that little scar through his eyebrow when he turns his head just so. I can see it in the mirror.
That scar usually makes him look skeptical. Tonight it just makes him look young.
Too young.
The thought should stop me. It doesn’t. I grip his hip harder, thumb pressing into the cut of muscle just above the bone, feeling the way that particular dip fits my hand like it was carved for it. The involuntary clench of his ass against my thigh when I shift closer makes my breath stutter.
“Still want this?” I ask, my voice rough.
“Yes.” It’s a wrecked sound.
I close my eyes for a second. Then I press in.