by A. S. Green
Later in the day, she quietly packed her suitcase and moved it out to the upstairs hallway. Now she, Declan, and Meghan were in the game room, working on the requisite offerings that would have to be made if there was any chance of the council meeting ending peacefully.
“I don’t understand,” Meghan said as Declan scorched a dozen hazel twigs in the fireplace.
“No one does,” Rowan said. “At least not anymore, but we’ll show you.”
Declan waved the bundle of sticks around to cool it down, then he handed it to Rowan. He stood close and whispered in her ear, “I need to talk to ye.”
She shivered as the warmth of his breath hit her neck. “We’re good.”
“We’re not good,” he said, and she nodded.
Ever since his family arrived, she’d felt his apology in every look, every not-so-accidental brush of his hand. They did need to talk, but Meghan was always right there.
Declan went to the fireplace to collect the bowl of ash they would need. His hand grazed across Rowan’s ass as he passed, his touch sending a zing of electricity down her legs and leaving her unsteady.
Meghan frowned as she watched Declan fill the bowl, and Rowan distracted herself from the lingering tingles by giving Meghan a lesson on sídhe council history.
“I’ve only read about the council offerings,” Rowan admitted. “Originally they were intended as a way to win Danu’s favor, but I think now it’s done merely for tradition. Either way, everyone who wishes to speak at the meeting must throw an offering into the fire.”
Rowan showed Meghan how to bundle three twigs with a piece of twine, making a complicated braiding pattern. Once it was done, she slipped the bundle into a linen pouch, filled it with the ash Declan brought back from the fireplace, then tied it all up with another piece of twine.
“One completed offering,” Rowan said, holding up the finished product for Meghan’s inspection. It looked pretty good, even if she did say so herself. “Four more to go.”
She glanced at Declan to see if he were pleased with the result. Instead she got a warm and lusty stare that told her his thoughts were on things far different than the council.
His gaze made her nipples tingle, and she had to clear her throat just to refocus her mind on the task at hand. Declan seemed to have the same idea—that a distraction was necessary—and he began to make his own offering.
“Four more?” Meghan asked. “I don’t plan on saying anything at the meeting. Do you?”
Rowan shrugged as she assembled her next bundle. “You don’t know what’s going to happen or what needs to be said until you’re in the moment. If you don’t end up using your offering in the faerie ring, there’s no harm done. If you need it, but don’t have it…”
Meghan’s face got a faraway look. “Did you know…the first time I saw Cormac, I was standing inside a faerie ring?”
Both Declan and Rowan looked up in surprise.
A self-satisfied smile spread across her face. “It’s true. Maybe you’re all nervous for nothing. Maybe faerie rings are lucky.”
Declan’s face turned grim, “Faerie rings are notoriously dangerous places for pádraigs, Curly. That’s why the council meetings are always held in one. It’s a way to assure privacy. But the truth is, they were often no safer for the sídhe. We need the offerings, and any other advantage we can find to help things go smoothly.”
At that point, he looked down at the half-made offering in his hands. Rowan didn’t think it looked too bad, but he growled in frustration. “My hands are too big for this tiny work.”
“Meghan and I can make them all,” Rowan said, remembering how those big hands felt on her body. Heat crept into her cheeks. “Then I should be getting home.”
“Home?” Declan’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline, and there was worry in his eyes.
Rowan tipped her head to the side and gave Declan a loaded smile designed to say, Hello? We have an audience. “Of course, I’m going home. You’re doing well, and if you have any more withdrawal symptoms, your family is back now. They can take care of you.”
“I don’t think ye should leave,” he said, apparently not caring that Meghan was listening with rapt attention.
Rowan cared. What happened between her and Declan was the most important thing that had ever happened to her. But it was dangerous. Nobody else could know, especially on the eve of a council where peace between the clans was so crucial. “Really, I—”
“Don’t leave,” he said, and his tone sent a chill down her spine.
Meghan cleared her throat and pushed back her chair. “I think I’ll go see how Cormac and Aiden are doing.”
“No,” Rowan said, just to be polite. “You don’t have to go, Meghan.”
Meghan glanced quickly at Declan. Rowan didn’t know what Meghan saw in his face, but she could guess.
“Oh, I think I do,” Meghan said. “Once you’ve got yourselves sorted, you can tell me what’s been going on between the two of you.”
Rowan’s face flashed with heat. “Really, there’s nothin—”
Meghan stopped Rowan with her hand. “Later,” she said, then she winked. Winked!
As soon as she left the room, Rowan whirled on Declan. “Do you think it’s smart letting her think we’re together?”
He smiled. “We are together.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Ye sat on my face last night.”
If Rowan thought her face was hot before, now she moved into inferno territory. In fact, she was beginning to perspire. “I was feeling experimental.”
Declan leaned in, bringing his face within inches of hers. “I told ye you were my anamchara, gave ye your first kiss—a damn fine one, if I do say so myself—ye told me ye felt the same about me, and then ye let me taste that sweet cunny of yours because ye were feeling experimental?”
Rowan wanted to back up. Hell, she wanted to run away. But she held still because she was not about to give him any more reason to think she was funny. “I read about it in a book.”
“Aye?” he asked, his eyebrows rising. “Aiden’s the reader in our family, but I might not mind reading your kind of book.”
Rowan chewed on her lip, wondering what to do next. She wasn’t needed here anymore. On the other hand, if those men from the woods were still in the area, and if they’d really found a way to track them, the last thing she wanted to do was lead them to Dún Laoghaire Manor and her parents.
“Stay,” Declan said, as if he knew where her thoughts had gone.
Rowan nodded. One more night. Her parents didn’t expect her home until tomorrow and, at least for tonight, they were all safer if she stayed put.
“Thank Danu,” he said, exhaling.
“I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Like hell ye will!” he said a bit too loudly.
Rowan slapped a hand over his mouth. “Aiden’s back. I can’t exactly stay in his room anymore. I’ll sleep in here. This couch looks more comfortable than the leather one in the sitting room—and besides, Cormac will probably be working late in there.”
“If anyone takes the couch… It’ll be Branna.”
Rowan drew her eyebrows together. “Won’t she be sleeping with Aiden?”
“Why on earth would ye think that?” His face suggested she’d lost her mind.
“Aren’t they together?” After her run-in with Branna in Aiden’s bedroom, she was pretty damn sure they were together.
Declan nearly choked on his laugh.
Rowan held her hands up. “My mistake. I must have misunderstood.”
“I’d say so. You’re misunderstanding all kinds of things—like why on earth would ye think you’d stay anywhere but in my bed?”
“Um… How many reasons do you need?”
“Save it. I know your reasons, and they’re all stupid.”
Stupid? Stupid?! “Declan MacConall, are you trying to make me hate you?”
A grin that only served to irritate her further spread across his face. “That
would make things easier for sure, love, but I know ye could never hate me.”
“Don’t be so sure. I’m still mad at you for what happened in the woods today. That was stupid.”
“Yeah, it was,” he said seriously. “And I said I was sorry. I meant it.”
Rowan felt instantly chagrined. He’d seemed genuinely remorseful and she didn’t have to keep throwing it in his face. “You did.”
“Peace?” he asked, holding out his hand. “I don’t want ye to be angry with me. Not ever again.”
Rowan stared down at it for a second, then she took it in hers. As soon as she firmed her grip, Declan gave her a yank, pulling her into his body. She landed against his chest with all her weight, but he didn’t stagger back. His warmth sank into her skin, and she placed a kiss against his neck.
“No one can know,” she whispered as his beard tickled the soft skin of her cheek. If she was going to sleep in his bed again, ground rules would be important. She needed them to ward against the reactions he solicited from her traitorous body. The large hands at her waist warmed her whole lower half.
“My sweet daoine princess,” he whispered in her ear, “do ye think I would let anyone ever question your virtue? I’ll tell them ye went home.”
His breath felt warm on her neck, and she could feel her nipples hardening against his chest. “We can’t let things get out of hand.”
“That won’t be easy.” He kissed her neck, and his tongue flicked out making her shudder. “But I’ll do my best.” His right hand slid up her rib cage and his thumb seemed to—not so accidentally—graze the underside of her breast.
She sucked in a breath. “Promise me. Nothing happens in your bed tonight.”
Declan pulled his head back so they faced each other, and his lips brushed against hers as he said, “Ye said something earlier about bringing restraints?”
Rowan’s gaze dipped to his mouth. The bastard was making this so much harder than it needed to be. “Don’t tempt me,” she said. “I’m not afraid to use them and not in the way you’re thinking.”
“Tilt yourself upstairs, love.” He swatted her on the ass, and—Danu help her—she enjoyed the sting.
Chapter Fourteen
ROWAN
Rowan brought her suitcase into Declan’s room from where she’d set it in the hallway earlier. She could hear him talking to his brothers in the sitting room downstairs, though she couldn’t make out the actual words. She assumed he was telling them she’d gone home. He’d promised to do that.
She found her nightie and hung it on the hook in his bathroom. All the stress of the day weighed heavily on her shoulders, and a hot shower was just what she needed to calm her nerves. She turned on the tap and watched as the steam rose.
She knew it was wrong to sleep with Declan, even if they kept things chaste. That kind of closeness should be something she only did with her future husband—Niall, or John, or Daniel, or whomever—but technically, she’d already spent a night in Declan’s bed.
Still…tonight felt different. Tonight, she would start out in his bed as if that was where she was supposed to be. Like a married couple. Like her parents. Except…not like her parents, at all. Even though they’d been married for decades, Rowan couldn’t imagine them ever feeling for each other what she felt for Declan, or what he felt for her.
Life was so unfair.
Rowan stripped and tested the water before stepping into the shower and dragging the curtain closed. She soaped up her hands and ran them over her breasts, then over her flat stomach, moving lower.
She thought of the first time she’d met Declan two years ago. She was just out of nursing school, and Doc had brought her with him on his house call. She remembered the way Declan’s gray eyes flashed when she shook his emaciated hand.
At the time, she thought he hated her. Or he hated Doc for bringing her. Now she understood the truth of his first reaction, as well as all the other times when he held himself rigid as she tapped and probed along his neck, or stroked her thumb over his wrist, looking for a pulse.
Declan MacConall wanted her. Just as she wanted him. By Danu, she wanted him.
Her soapy hand stroked over her breast and pinched the nipple, sending a flash of lightning right through her core. She let out a groan and braced herself against the shower wall, resting her forehead against her forearm as she circled her clit with her other hand.
She imagined Declan speaking dirty words in her ear, just like in her novel when Horatio would speak to Jasmine, then she teased herself again, slowly, letting the tension build. Her thighs shook, and she wondered how bad it would be to let Declan have her.
She’d already been bad. Very bad. And it wasn’t like anyone had to know.
She lifted her face to the spray and let the heat soak into her skin as she jacked herself higher, but as tightly wound as she was, she couldn’t get herself over the hump.
That’s when she felt a flash of cool air across her ass and the sound of Declan’s rough voice moving in behind her. “Need some help with that?”
Rowan yelped in surprise, and her body stiffened at the intrusion. She needed to tell him to leave, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Easy,” Declan murmured, and she groaned as he pressed a kiss to her shoulder.
One of his hands slid around her waist and went low while the other went high. She could feel his nakedness behind her, and it made her legs wobble. She slumped into him, but Declan held her upright just like she knew he would.
“You’re beautiful,” he said and, just like that, the tension rushed back, taking hold.
“Hush, love. I know ye don’t like to hear that. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t make it less true. That’s a gift. Don’t push it away. But also know, it is just one part of ye. I recognized ye as my anamchara not because of how ye look but because of who ye are.”
“Declan,” she whispered, responding to his words as much as to the sensations his hand was creating between her legs—far better than anything she’d managed for herself.
“I know it’s not going to be easy, but I want ye,” he said, thrusting into her with his finger.
She whimpered in response.
“If we have to keep us a secret, I understand. But hear this: I want ye. For as long as I can have ye, I want ye here.”
He was driving her insane—with his hand, with his words—she threw her head back against his shoulder. “I want you, too. For as long as I can. I’ll always be yours, even when I belong to someone else.”
Declan’s fingers bit into her skin, and Rowan turned in his arms, pulling his face down. His mouth crashed against hers, and she felt every bit of his anger and frustration.
She opened for him, and his tongue moved in, creating a kiss designed specifically for the sole purpose of devouring her very soul. She could feel his need building along with hers. The desperation consuming her as his hungry but somehow still gentle hands moved over her body, her jaw, her breasts, her ass, and back to her sex.
She thought she’d wanted ground rules. She told him nothing could get out of hand. Right now, she was throwing it all out the window.
“I need ye, Rowan,” he pleaded. “I’ve needed ye for years. I promise I’ll keep better control of the hound this time, but ye need to stop this now if ye think you’ll regret any part of this in the morning.”
Rowan nearly choked as she tried to force the words out. “I won’t ever regret anything about you. I couldn’t.”
Declan changed the angle of the kiss, then he pulled back, panting. “Make sure ye understand me. I need to be inside ye. That changes everything.”
Rowan understood. There was no mistaking the taste of his need as his tongue thrust against hers, or the heat coming off his body, or the way his gray eyes went dark and stormy as they searched her eyes for her answer.
Rowan reached between them and grabbed his thick, hard cock in her hand. His chest inflated with air, and he watched her as she ran her hand up and over his stunning length. Sh
e’d seen hints of it beneath his pants for years, but it was so much more imposing exposed.
In fact, it looked like it might hurt—a lot—though she knew that concern wouldn’t stop her from going through with this purely selfish act. This was for her. She deserved this one night of passion, even though her selfishness might jeopardize her family’s reputation if rumors leaked. One night to embrace the fantasy of being able to choose a male for herself. One night to know what she was going to be missing for the rest of her life.
Declan kissed her again and thrust his cock against her hand. “Don’t be nervous. I’ll take my time, and ye can always tell me if ye want me to go slower.”
“No,” she said. “Make me feel it. Make it so I never forget.”
Declan clenched his teeth, making a muscle jump in his jaw, then he slipped his hands under her ass and lifted, pressing her against the shower wall. He positioned himself at her entrance and pressed in.
There was a pinch, but it wasn’t too bad. What was more worrisome was a completely different thought. “You’re not going to fit!”
“I’ll fit,” he said, his neck straining—with exertion or restraint, she couldn’t tell. “I’ll fit perfectly. Wait and see.”
Then she realized what he was doing. He was rocking against her, only taking an inch at a time, waiting for her body to stretch and accommodate before thrusting farther into her channel. She studied his face, mesmerized by his beauty, as he looked down at their joining, watching and measuring his own progress.
She smoothed her thumb over the tense muscle in his jaw, and he looked up, catching her gaze, though not stopping his rhythmic progress. His eyes darkened and glazed over with a lust she felt deep in her bones.
“Just feel me,” he said. “I’m almost there. Feel me slide into ye. Feel us joined together. Then watch what ye do to me, love.”
Declan pushed into her again, this time harder, and she gasped when she realized he was fully seated, buried so deep inside her, she was sure she could feel him in the back of her throat.