Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
brIDGET
“We could get a hotel?”
Declan doesn't have a poker face to save his life. Every emotion writes itself plainly across his features. I mean, I’ve seen him school his features, just not around me. Never around me.
Maybe if I offered myself to the McCarthys outright… Maybe if I could come up with enough money to be useful on my own terms… Maybe if I could make a convincing case that having two Kavanagh sisters embedded in the same family is an asset, not a liability.
But it isn't true, and I know it. So does he.
I could tell myself we never pursued anything because we were just friends and it was always uncomplicated. That sounds excellent. It's also a lie.
Declan parks his car a few miles from the hotel and calls a taxi. It’s almost like he’s planned this out.
“Sure about this?” he whispers as the taxi pulls up. “I can tell them to take you home. I can tell them—”
“I'm sure.” I interrupt, then lean in and kiss him. He kisses me back with his hand behind my head, bracing me, his lips gentle and tender as the cab pulls to a stop.
It only takes a few minutes. In the back of the cab, his hand is warm against my thigh. My head is on his shoulder. How can something feel like we're on the verge of forever and the verge of goodbye at the same time?
The taxi drops us off at a hotel I've never been to. Outside the hotel entrance, a man is leaning against the wall smoking. Dark jacket, cap pulled low. Declan goes still.
“Everything alright?” I ask in a low whisper.
The man turns, stomps out his cigarette, and walks away, hands tucked in his pockets.
“It’s nothing,” Declan says, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “Seeing ghosts. Come, lass.”
He opens the door, his hand warm on the small of my back.
My shoes click on the polished floor as we walk hand in hand through the lobby without hesitation.
“James and Mary Murphy,” he tells the woman at the desk. “How much?”
She gives him a price that sounds like a lot to me, but he doesn't even blink. “How many nights?” she asks, as if she doesn't notice we have no bags and doesn't see that there's no way we're spending more than one night here. She doesn't ask for any ID either.
“Just the one,” he says quietly. He pays with banknotes from his wallet.
I press my lips together. I have a strong urge to giggle my arse off. He glances over his shoulder at me and raises an eyebrow.
“Something funny, Mary?”
“Not a thing, love,” I say with the sweetest smile I can manage.
Then she's handing him a key card, and he's pulling me along. I'm trying to keep up with his quick steps through the lobby when my phone buzzes with a text from Erin.
Erin
All right. Tell me when you get in safe. I'm exhausted and heading to bed.
I text her back.
I’m in safe. Good night, love you.
Even though I'm deliberately misleading her, it's not entirely a lie.
I am safe. I'm with Declan.
The room is large and spacious, genuinely lovely, actually, with floor-to-ceiling windows and glass accents on every gleaming surface.
It smells faintly of lemon. I cross to the window immediately, pressing my palm flat against the glass and looking out at the lights below.
“Oh, it's gorgeous,” I say, mostly to myself.
I turn around. “Have you seen the toilet? Can I look?”
I don't wait for an answer. The bathroom is all white marble and chrome fixtures and has one of those rainfall shower-heads I've only ever seen in magazines.
There are tiny bottles of everything lined up in a little row—shampoo, conditioner, body lotion—and I pick one up, smell it, set it down, and pick up another.
A fluffy white bathrobe hangs on the back of the door. I press my face into it.
Declan shrugs out of his jacket, drapes it over the back of a chair, then turns and looks at me the way he looked at me in the club…
and in his car. The way I used to fantasize he'd look at me when I was alone in the hospital, grasping for something to give me hope.
He looks at me now with nothing short of adoration.
“Are you going to smell every bottle in the bathroom,” he says from the doorway, “or are we doing this?”
“I'm appreciating the amenities,” I tell him primly, setting down the lotion. “I want to… savor.”
He watches me for a long moment, then pushes off the doorframe and crooks a finger at me. “We're on borrowed time, love,” he says. “Come here.”
When I reach him, he brushes his knuckles across my cheek, then holds my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You can still go home,” he reminds me. “I won't be upset with you. I'll take you home myself. I don't want you to feel like you have to do something you don't want.”
I tilt my head to one side. “What's possibly giving you the idea that I don't want this?”
“You’re trembling, love.”
“Don't misunderstand me, Declan,” I whisper. “I'm trembling with anticipation. Not fear. Because I can't quite believe we're here, alone together, and that you want me.”
“Want you?” he says, low and rough. Both hands frame my face, holding me in place. “I've never wanted anyone more in my entire life.”
Something in my chest cracks open at that, slow and irreversible.
“Then tell me what you want, Bridget,” he murmurs. “I want to hear you say it.”
I'm not used to anyone asking me this. I'm used to wanting things quietly, privately, and not saying so. I'm used to folding my hopes away so they take up as little room as possible, because everyone else's always seemed to matter more than mine. But Declan doesn't want that. He never has.
“I want tonight,” I whisper. “Just tonight.”
He doesn't rush. I don't know why I love that about him so much.
My childhood was drawn in frantic measures—my mother trying to make us into people we weren't, my father running with a crowd that terrified me.
I grew up on the edges of things that could kill you.
But with Declan, I feel something I haven't felt in a long time.
It’s like… I'm allowed to be me. Like I'm safe enough to stop performing.
“Just tonight,” he whispers, like a promise. He tilts my chin up and studies me slowly. “I need you to tell me if anything I do is too much or not enough.”
Oh, Declan. As if anything from him could ever be too much?
Heat floods me, my pulse is racing, and I damn near squeeze my thighs together because I want him.
“Can you do that for me? Can you communicate with me? I don't want you to be afraid. You're safe with me.”
“Yes,” I breathe out. “I promise.”
His mouth curves. “Good girl, sweetheart.”
My whole body goes warm at that. Why do I love it when he praises me? It's like stepping into sunlight. Like the approval in his voice fills in something I didn't know was hollow.
“I saw that,” he says, then kisses my cheek.
“Saw what?” I whisper.
“The way you melted when I called you a good girl.” His voice drops, close to my ear. “Do you have a praise kink? Mo chuisle,” he says softly.
I’m still too caught up in praise kink to try to decipher the Gaelic. I’ll look it up when I’m alone. Instead, I shrug, shaking my head and nodding at the same time, awkwardly, making a complete mess of it.
“Don't know what that means,” I manage.
“It means”—his mouth comes to my ear—“are you aroused when I approve? When I praise you? Do you feel yourself go warm when I say you're doing well?”
I swallow hard, my mouth dry, and manage to nod. “Aye. So much.”
He reaches back and drags the desk chair out, drops into it, and pulls me onto his lap. “Take off your top,” he says softly. “For me. That’s my girl.”
It's just a little tube thing held on by friction and a prayer. I lift my arms, and it slips free. I toss it aside.
He makes a low sound in his throat that does something devastating to me, and his gaze tells me he likes what he sees. “My god, you're more gorgeous than I imagined.”
“You imagined?” I say before I can stop myself.
“Look how beautiful you are,” he says instead of answering, one warm hand sliding slow across my waist. “You’ve got a butterfly tattoo.” He kisses my shoulder. The heat of it travels. Then he sighs. “Look how you fit right here,” he murmurs, watching me come apart under the smallest attentions.
He's right. I'm already on fire.
Then his mouth meets mine again, careful and deliberate, and my fingers are curling into his shirt. I'm basking in the praise falling from his lips as if I've been waiting for this my whole life.
“I’m going to go slow,” he says against my ear. “I’m going to learn every inch of you.” A pause. His hand tightens slightly at my waist. “And when I’m done, you’ll know exactly who you belong to.”
His mouth meets mine, and we kiss. His hand finds the back of my neck, his tongue against mine, and I swallow the low sound of approval he makes in his throat, barely stifling one of my own that would embarrass me entirely.
“That's my girl,” he murmurs into my mouth. “That's right.”
I can't help it. I moan outright when his large hand comes to my breast, his thumb circling my nipple. I cry out louder when he bends his head and takes the peak between his lips, lapping and circling, slow and deliberate.
“Aren't you a beauty,” he whispers. “Tell me if you need me to slow down.”
“Declan, don't you dare slow down,” I tell him, my voice barely my own. “Please trust me when I tell you.” I gasp.
He smiles against my skin and reaches for the zipper on my jeans. I climb off his lap and stand in front of him.
I’ve spent a long time making peace with this body—the one that felt like it betrayed me, that wasn't supposed to survive but did anyway.
And I won't flinch from it now. But there's one small moment, under his gaze, when I feel the old instinct to hide, to cross my arms over my elbows, to angle away, to make myself smaller, because years of hospital rooms and unknowns leave an invisible scar.
“Push them down,” he says softly. The only reason I push past my fears and obey is that I am craving his approval. I live for his praise.
And when I obey, he makes a sound of approval. “Good girl. Just like that. Lovely.”