It was nice, as well, to get two different perspectives on things.
Mom and I, well, I didn’t think we’d ever be super close. When she’d chosen Dad over me, when she wouldn’t come to Ireland with me, she’d really let me down. We had a lot to overcome before we could ever really be close. But I was trying. So was she. For Seamus’s sake, at any rate.
But, along the way, as we went out for coffee together, and she’d helped me decorate this place too, she gave me insight into things, and it was so easy to see how Lena and I were on the same wavelength.
Mine would give me trite advice on marriage that made me feel like I was back in the seventies or something.
Lena?
She regularly told me that men deserved a slap upside the head from time to time to make them see sense.
Of course, I didn’t always agree unless Declan really goddamn deserved it.
I wanted to be friends with both my mom and Lena, though, so I was trying. Sometimes it was easier than others because opening up was hard, but I knew Seamus needed outside help, and Lena, in particular, with her past, could give him what I couldn’t.
Hugging her back, I told her, “He’s in the living room.”
Lena had been helping Seamus get through what he’d seen. She’d gone through it herself, gone through worse, in fact, and together, they were working on giving him some peace. I never interrupted their time together, I let them be, but I liked to check in with Shay before and after. Make sure he was doing okay. As okay as a kid could be when he’d seen a woman being raped and murdered…
At least we knew who that woman was now. That had given him some closure. Not much, but some. Putting a face to the name had helped him, if not the Satan’s Sinners’ MC—the Five Points’ allies.
As I neared the living room though, which was at the back of the brownstone, I heard the shooting and growled under my breath.
Storming into the room, I snapped, “Seamus O’Neill O’Donnelly! What the hell are you watching?”
His head whipped around, and I saw the guilt on his face as he quickly turned the channel over. But even as I glowered at him, something on the TV caught my attention.
“Breaking News: Three lost classics have been miraculously returned to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where two of the returned paintings were originally stolen. Vermeer’s The Concert has been named as one of the works of art. Considered the most expensive missing painting in the world, its return has stunned museum workers—”
“Now, what’s your mother told you about watching that kind of thing?”
Lena’s voice was a dash of cold water on my face as I gaped at the screen where our paintings—that I’d thought were still in the safe back at the apartment, just waiting on a climate-controlled vault to be installed here—were suddenly being broadcast to the world as they were placed onto a wall in the museum, surrounded by happy faces all around as excited staff and what looked like a few local politicians applauded their return.
In a daze, I twisted away and shuffled back up the stairs to where my studio was.
When I moved inside, I saw Declan was peering down at the street, and I threw myself at him.
My mouth connected with his the second he’d twisted around, and I fucked his mouth, fucked him even as my hand scrabbled at his fly, even as I pulled out his cock and jacked him off. Like always, he was ready to rock in seconds, and I groaned, my panties wet, my pussy molten with heat and the need to have him inside me.
“Like your gift?” he rumbled, evidently understanding where my sudden need had come from, as he jerked away from me and started to lift up the skirt of my dress. When he hauled it overhead, he groaned as my tits spilled free. He buried his face in them, making me moan as he bit the tips of the nipples a little rougher than I could bear when they were so sensitive.
I arched up on tiptoe, my hands sliding through his hair as I hauled him closer, needing to be cleaved to him. Skin to fucking skin.
His hands moved to my panties, and he dragged them down a little before his fingers slipped between my legs. The second he touched my clit, my entire body lit up like the Eiffel Tower. I hissed even as I rocked into him, but it wasn’t enough.
Never would be where he was concerned.
He groaned as he felt how wet I was, then he moved me away from the easel that housed a portrait he’d been patiently sitting for over the past three months as I worked on perfection, and shuffled me over to the sofa that was a new item in here.
Before, there’d only been worktables and closet space for my gear, but now, he insisted I take naps.
It was surreal having him around for this pregnancy. Surreal but wonderful. A burden shared was a burden halved. I’d never have known that if it wasn’t for this time together.
Carefully, he lowered me onto the sofa, and he slipped between my thighs. When his cock brushed against my heat, my back arched, and I let out a soft cry as he thrust into me with an ease my body facilitated.
I groaned as he filled me, and then he started to fuck me, his beautiful face looming over me as he gave me what I needed.
Him.
His mouth dropped onto mine, and he rasped, “You remember that day at The Cloisters?”
“How could I forget?” I rumbled, thinking back to the day when we’d made an ancient monastery witness the grandest passion of all time.
Ours.
“Well, tomorrow, we’re heading up to Boston. I got us the same deal.”
“We can fuck there?”
His smile was filthy. Just like him. “We can fuck there.”
My pussy clenched down around him, tight to the point of pain as he tunneled through willing tissues that wanted him, but wanted to orgasm more.
As he leaned down and nipped my bottom lip, I dug my hands into his suit-covered back, and rumbled, “I love you.”
“And I love you, laoch.”
When I came, it should have come as no surprise. This man got to me like no other, better than the best BOB. I shoved my palm into my mouth to cover up the sounds I was making, biting down on the soft flesh as I was shoved through an orgasm that beat the many thousands of orgasms he’d given me in our time together.
When he came, he buried his face in my throat, and the heat of him, his breath on my skin, it was perfect.
Just perfect.
I clung to him with my arms and legs, needing to hold him even as I tried to assimilate what was actually happening.
When he peered at me, his eyes softened. “I didn’t notice you were wearing this again.” He reached up, touched the stick in my hair—the very first gift he’d given me—and murmured, “It suits you.” Then he reached for my wrist, turned it over, and kissed my tag.
I’d gotten the hair stick and the tattoo on the same day, after all.
I’d buried the tiny jade ornament in my jewelry box a long time ago, but with us back together again, it hit me in the feels to wear it on the regular.
Because he was looking at me in a way that kind of made me want to cry—stupid hormones—I muttered thickly, “I thought you were building a safe for them and leaving them at the penthouse until it was ready?”
He shrugged. “It’s time the world got to see them again.” He instantly groaned when my pussy clenched down on him. “Like that, huh?”
“I do,” I whispered. “But…”
“But?”
“I missed them. I liked fucking in front of them.”
He snorted and reared back. I loved that he wanted to let go of me as little as I wanted to let go of him, and he helped haul me upright so that I was still impaled on him, and his hands were on my butt as he carried me from my studio to our bedroom.
“The safe was finished before we moved in,” he told me.
I gaped at him, then slapped him on the back. “You lied!”
He grumbled, “No, but an empty safe is a boring safe.”
My eyes twinkled at that. “You didn’t?”
He grinned at me. “Gift number t
wo.”
The bedroom was a lot more normal than the old one. A regular-sized bed, nice and high so that I didn’t have to crawl on hands and knees onto it, with lovely and solid four posts that gleamed with an antique patina that couldn’t be replicated.
Amid the curtains that swayed in the breeze when the window was open on a beautiful spring day, was a scarlet and cream Persian rug that was three hundred years old, stolen, of course, and worth a couple of hundred grand.
The nightstands had small bronze pieces on them, two idols that had been stolen from a temple in Tibet back in the fifties. As much as I loved the warriors that were armed with swords and shields, I was working on getting him to return those ones too.
My pack rat of a husband had these little gems tucked in all corners of the house. His jade collection and the kintsugi pieces were on recessed shelves around the room, backlit to show their true beauty for all to behold.
Above the bed was Master of Dawn, the portrait of him that was my first piece of art and depicted him in profile, covered in shadows and light—just how I saw him.
But I knew the safe was in front of the bed where the TV was hooked up.
I genuinely thought it was still being made and was going to be installed when it was, but to learn he was fibbing?
I’d have to make him pay later.
Although, he was the one about to walk around with the wet spot on the front of his pants…
“What’s in there?” I breathed, unable to deny my excitement.
As much as I wanted the stolen pieces to be back in the museums that housed them, I couldn’t deny the adrenaline buzz it gave me to have them here.
He moved the TV away, revealing the stand that hooked it onto the wall. I frowned though, because he looked at me expectantly. “What is it?”
“Press your finger here.”
I did as he asked, pressing it to the TV stand, and when some mechanism whirred to life, a giddy excitement whirled through me.
He stepped back as a part of the wall opened up beside the TV, a retractable shelf making another appearance as two portraits were revealed to me.
I gaped at them, then at him.
“You didn’t.”
His eyes sparkled. “I did.”
And then, I had no choice but to kiss him.
And work hard on making that wet spot even wetter.
DECLAN
THE FOLLOWING DAY
As I led her into the stateroom where our paintings were sitting, a part of me felt a pang of remorse at their loss, but it couldn’t be compared to having this woman at my side as we walked down the path of art that led to our personal Mecca.
When she saw the Vermeer, she stopped in her tracks, her hand grabbing mine as she twisted to look up at me with tears of joy in her eyes.
I’d done that.
My woman was a complicated mixture.
As much as she loved the thrill of owning things no one should own, she liked them to be where they belonged too.
I got it. I wouldn’t be able to stop, but I could shuffle my personal collection around, give us both what we needed, while slowly returning the pieces to their rightful owners, and picking up others that satisfied my artist’s soul.
I mean, I wasn’t turning into a saint, and I’d do this until the day I died, but if it pleased her, I’d let some of my treasures go.
As we made it to the Vermeer, I watched the joy on her face and felt it inside my soul.
It made this feel right.
So perfect.
The world was changing, and we were with it. Allies were being torn apart and being forced to rebuild, we had rats inside rats inside rats, and though Dunbar was on our side now, feeding us information that kept us safe, that kept the wolves from the door, that didn’t mean the damage wasn’t done.
But just because violence was a part of our world, that didn’t mean beauty wasn’t too.
It was there. In front of us. Timeless.
And as we stood there, appreciating the view, as Conor had arranged, people drifted out from behind us, and she was so floored by what she was looking at, by the breathlessness of the moment, she didn’t even notice.
Until she did.
Her head whipped around, and her eyes flared wide as she saw her parents and mine. Shay, my brothers, their wives…
She blinked up at me, but I shushed her, pressing one of my fingers to her lips as I slipped her engagement ring onto her left hand.
Some questions didn’t need to be asked.
Some answers didn’t need to be given.
She didn’t need a ring.
I didn’t need a piece of paper.
However… we were still Five Points.
That crotchety old bastard, Father Doyle, who Conor—the organizer of this little event—had to bribe to agree to this, slipped out from the shadows too, and rumbled, “We are gathered here tonight…” and I made her my wife as I stepped up to the plate for the best job in the world.
Being her husband.
Afterword
o.O
Y’all, I sobbed when I wrote that ending.
Just FYI.
I hope you loved Declan’s story just as much as I adored writing it.
Thank you for reading, thank you for your support, and thank you for frickin’ ROCKING.
Much love,
Serena
xoxo
P.S
Brennan’s book is next.
And you can grab it on preorder here: Filthy Sex
Can you guess who his woman is going to be? ;)
If you want to read the whole universe, even though you don’t have to as each series is stands alone, here you go…
Bound
All Sinner No Saint
Filthy
Nyx
Link
Filthy Rich
Sin
Steel
Filthy Dark
Cruz
*Unannounced Sinners’ Novel*
Filthy Sex
Free eBook ALERT!!
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Secrets & Lies is now free!
Meg’s love life was missing a spark until she discovered her need to be dominated. When her fiancé shared the same kink, she thought all her birthdays had come at once, and then she came to learn their relationship was one big fat lie.
Gabe has loved Meg for years, watching her from afar, and always wishing he’d been the one to date her first and not his brother. When he has the chance to have Meg in his bed—even better, tied to it—it’s an opportunity he can’t refuse.
With disastrous consequences.
Can Gabe make Meg realize she’s the one woman he’s always wanted? But once secrets and lies have wormed their way into a relationship, is it impossible to establish the firm base of trust needed between lovers, and more importantly, between sub and Sir…?
This story features orgasm control in a BDSM setting.
Secrets & Lies is now free!
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About the Author
I'm a romance novelaholic and I won't touch a book unless I know there's a happy ending. This addiction is what made me craft stories that suit my voracious need for raunchy romance. I love twists and unexpected turns, and my novels all contain sexy guys, dark humor, and hot AF love scenes.
I write MF, Menage, and Reverse Harem (also known as Why Choose romance,) in both contemporary and paranormal. Some of my stories are darker than others, but I can promise you one thing, you will always get the happy ending your heart needs!
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Serena Akeroyd, Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3)
Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3) Page 39