by Tilly Delane
“He’ll come out of it,” she says confidently.
I wish I could be so sure.
There is still no movement.
I watch on as Rowan looks up to make eye contact with some old balding guy sitting in prime position on a bench opposite from where we’re standing. Next to him sits a man who I’m guessing must be Diego’s father.
The fact Diego is by his side kind of gives it away. He looks pale.
The balding guy nods once, sharply, at Rowan, and then an ugly grin spreads over his face. I can feel Sheena coil with anger beside me, but I get distracted by Silas moving his head.
The sense of relief I feel is second to none.
Rowan leans down to him, talks to him quietly, gently extracts Silas’ mouth guard and then cradles him while he barks at the ref to get his arse in gear and get some water. The ref, who never even bothered counting Silas out, wakes from his trance and springs to action, following Rowan’s orders.
Sheena suddenly vacates the spot by my side and marches over to where the Bensons are. They notice her as soon as she starts moving and the ugly grin on the baldy man’s face falls. When he gets up from the bench to greet her, he is actually blanching. She says something to him.
And then she slaps him. Hard. Not once, but twice.
Right slap, left slap.
Like something from an old movie.
Only in the old movie he’d grab Sheena’s wrist before the second slap and then brutally kiss her or some rapey shit like that. In real life, she lands both of them squarely, then backs away, calling him a depraved cunt, loud enough for everyone to hear.
I’m guessing that’s Cecil O’Brien then.
Kalina nudges me, and I glance at her.
She swallows a bit of French Fancy then looks expectantly at me, her eyes indicating Silas in the pool as Rowan is giving him water.
“Go!” she says.
Silas
Coming around after a choke out is never a joy. You always have a mild headache and feel a bit out of it. But not in a fun way, more in a fucking disorientated kind of way. Like, I wouldn’t advise driving for half a day or so after.
What it doesn’t normally come with is hallucinations but, apparently, tonight it does.
As Rowan cradles me and plies me with water, I watch a redhead with a phenomenally lush arse stuffed into a pair of faded jeans descent down the ladder into the basin. The shade of her hair is the exact shade Grace uses and she’s wearing a cream silk blouse just like the one Grace utilises as lingerie and Grace’s favourite make of boot. From behind she looks just like her and when she turns around, I realise I’m either still out and dreaming or, more likely, I’m awake and tripping from the lack of oxygen. Or maybe I’m dead.
The woman moves towards me and I prepare myself for the moment she metamorphoses into whoever she actually is.
But it doesn’t happen.
Grace remains Grace.
“Silas,” is all she says as she kneels down by my side and reaches out to touch me.
“Grace?” I ask.
She nods.
“I came back.”
And then she’s in my arms.
Blood, sweat, tears and all, soaking her fine silk blouse.
And I’m fucked if I’ll ever let her go again.
Grace
He holds me tight all through the night.
As if he’s afraid I’ll be gone again if he lets go.
As if.
But I totally get it.
As I drift in and out of sleep, each time I wake I touch him all over to make sure he’s alright, he’s breathing, he’s alive. Right now he’s spooning me, and I wriggle around in his arms, turning to face him. I study his face in the diffused light of the early morning that sneaks in around the curtains. His cheek is a bit swollen, but I’ve seen him look worse. Way worse.
I’m glad it’s over, though.
For good.
When we got back last night ─ Kalina and Sheena in the Capri, Silas and I in Diego’s car ─ Sheena put her foot down as soon as we got home and she’d put the kettle on.
She told him straight she’d rather lose the house than for him to carry on fighting. Not that she thinks she will actually lose it. Apparently, Silas has got a stash of cash already and Sheena reckons she’ll be alright covering the rest in the years before she retires. I didn’t say anything at the time because Sheena was on a roll, but if we stay here for a while, then I can contribute, too. There must be bar work in a place like Brighton. Or something. We’ll figure it out.
Silas’ eyes flutter open under my scrutiny and he smiles.
“Hey, beautiful lady. You’re still here.”
“Yep. Not going anywhere.”
“Good,” he says and kisses me.
Languidly.
Igniting the fire in my belly like only he can, leisurely tongue fucking me.
Jesus H Christ, I live for this man’s kisses.
It takes him all of half a minute before I’m sopping wet. Admittedly, it helps that I can feel his hard-on press against my belly. He cups my ass cheeks and pulls me closer against him, pushing a knee between my legs to part them. A second later, I’m riding his thigh and he’s rolling it against my bare lower lips. My clit, buried between them, goes nuts. She’s missed him about as much as I have. I moan into his mouth. He pulls back a little and watches my face as his thigh keeps undulating.
“I love how flushed you get,” he says hoarsely and lifts a finger to stroke it over my burning cheeks. “Here.”
He lets the tip wander down the side of my neck and across the top of my breast.
“And here. So fucking pretty.”
He cups my left boob, palms it and lowers his mouth to suck on my nipple. Hard. A bolt of lightning goes through my body and I buck.
“Good?” he asks, grinning against my flesh.
I pull him back in.
“More,” I demand.
And he gives me more. He sucks and licks, kneading the other nipple between his thumb and index finger until I’m close to coming already. I have no idea how he does this.
Then he retracts, and flips onto his back, taking me with him. I rearrange my limbs so I’m straddling him fully, my clit resting on his shaft. He grabs my hips and holds me while I start sliding my clit up and down his length, coating him in my juices.
“Grace, you’re killing me,” he moans. “I’m gonna come like this if you don’t stop.”
“Uh-uh,” I mutter.
Then I lift myself off him to reach between us and position him at my entrance. I slide down a fraction of an inch, just enough to hold him there with my pussy and look into his eyes. It’s a challenge, a stand-off to see who gives in first, but he doesn’t break. So I clench, suckering him in just a little more, resisting the temptation to slide down his whole length and ride him. Hard. I need hard right now. I want to be taken, want to surrender, want to get fucked so deeply I can feel it behind my eyeballs.
He groans, loudly. But he resists.
I clench again, drawing him in another fraction of an inch.
And then it happens. I can see in his eyes the exact moment he loses his shit.
He bucks up into me, ramming his full length inside, and then he fucks into me from below in long and hard strokes, holding my hips and lifting me up and down in rhythm with him, taking all control away from me.
And I love it.
His hands direct me and tilt me back, and then suddenly the angle is just right. He hits the spot and I start contracting, but I keep hovering on the edge. Then one of his hands leaves my hip, trails around and finds my clit. He flicks his thumb over it. Once, twice, and then I explode.
As the orgasm punches through me, I can feel him jerk up, his cock twitching hard inside me, shooting his come. It hits my cervix like a jet stream, a new sensation that draws out my climax and brings a depth I’ve never felt before.
As I come down slowly from my high, I collapse on top of my shaking man.
His
arms immediately wrap around me and after he’s collected himself, he peppers the top of my head with kisses.
“You’re amazing,” he mumbles into my hair before he falls back again.
I prop myself up and look at him.
“I need to tell you something,” I say, and I feel how he tenses beneath me, expecting some bad piece of news.
I stroke his brow to soothe his fear.
“I love you.”
A smile lights up his face as he slaps me playfully.
“You little cow, I thought you were gonna say something like ‘I’ve gotta go back to the States’.”
Suddenly he frowns.
“Do you? How long are you here for?”
I smile back at him.
“For as long as I want.”
His eyes go round.
“Really? Like, for real? Don’t you need a visa or something? If you need us to get married, we’ll get married, you know.”
I grin.
“Good to know. But, no, courtesy of Mum I already have dual citizenship. I can stay, I can work, I’m good.”
His face falls a little at that and I realize how that sounded. I punch him lightly in the chest.
“Don’t feel rejected. You may still do the whole getting down on one knee business after an appropriate period of courting. But I draw the line at getting married after one month.”
He laughs, flipping us back over, so he’s on top.
“And that, Grace Turner, is why you are the woman for me,” he says.
And then we kiss some more and eventually we fuck some more.
Until the doorbell, followed by a voice like rolling thunder greeting Sheena on the doorstep and the subsequent smell of fried bacon wafting through the house, lures us out from between the sheets and down into the kitchen.
Rowan
I hang around in the pub car park for a while, long enough to watch the postman push some letters through the door and the cute little Polish pixie that Diego won’t shut up about leave, before I muster the courage to approach.
There is something utterly terrifying about knocking on a house that was once your home but where you’re not really welcome any longer, so my heart rate goes through the fucking roof as soon as I actually ring Sheena’s doorbell.
She opens not even a minute later, dressed in a terry cotton bathrobe, pinched from the Palais, and sipping tea from a mug. I already knew she’d taken the day off. I swung by the hotel first. She looks me up and down wordlessly then turns back into the hallway, beckoning me in with a wave of the hand.
My pulse quietens a little as I follow her into the kitchen. At least I’m in. Step one.
“You want a cuppa? Kettle’s just boiled,” she asks me, not really waiting for an answer, or even making eye contact, before she gets a mug from the mug tree, puts a tea bag in and drowns it in hot water. I watch in silence as she dips the bag in and out for a bit and puts milk and sugar in, deciding for me that I’m having both and in what quantities. She shoves the mug at me.
“Take it. Sit down.”
I do as I’m told and take a seat at the table, dumping the small sports bag I’ve been carrying on it. I wait patiently while she gets a packet of bacon out of the fridge and peels apart twelve rashers before placing all of them on the grill rack then goes to wash her hands.
While she is busy, Sol comes through the cat flap and starts meowing by my feet, rubbing up against my legs. I bend down and give him scratches around the neck and the ears until he suddenly, without warning, claws into my hand, drawing a pin prick of blood. He’s been unpredictable like that from day one when Silas and I went to pick up our kittens.
We were fourteen. James had just dumped me on Sheena. Condor, their old greyhound, had not long been put to sleep. And Sheena thought a pair of furballs might cheer us up. They did.
I straighten back up just as Sheena finishes the bacon operation and finally comes over to sit opposite me. She looks at the bag on the table then back at me, taking a sip of her tea.
“I take it, that’s my money in there,” she states dryly, looking at me over the rim of her mug.
I nod, relieved that she’s guessed why I’m here, taking a whole load of awkward out of the situation for me. I always liked that about her. Sheena O’Brien is nothing if not straight to the point.
“It’s not all of it,” I confess. “I still owe you. But it’s a hundred and thirty-five thousand. And I’ll start paying back the rest as soon as I can,” I promise her.
“A hundred and thirty-five?” she asks, her eyes going into slits. “I thought last night’s prize money was a hundred. Where’d the other thirty-five come from? You didn’t borrow it, did you?”
I swallow hard.
“Silas didn’t tell you? I thought that was why you slapped O’Brien last night.”
“I slapped Cecil ‘cause he’s a cunt who should never have been part of making my sons fight each other. I would have slapped Benson, too, given half a chance, but I missed my window of opportunity there,” she responds.
I barely get a chance to feel my heart clench at the fact she still considers me her son before she carries on.
“What did Silas not tell me?”
“O’Brien offered me another fifty grand on top if I won.”
“I thought that was only for killing me,” Silas’ voice joins our conversation.
I turn around to see him standing in the door frame.
“That’s the problem with vague wording,” I answer. “He said to lay you out cold. I laid you out cold. Just not as permanently as he would have liked.”
“And he paid out?” Silas asks incredulously.
I nod, a small smirk forming on my lips. It was an interesting discussion about semantics, to say the least.
“Yup. The whole fifty K.”
“Well, to that arsehole, fifty grand is petty cash,” Sheena says with a sigh and grabs the bag to open it and look at the notes.
Behind Silas, the pretty American redhead appears, slinging her arm around his midriff.
Grace, I remind myself. Her name is Grace.
She looks bed tousled and thoroughly fucked, and I feel the same twinge of jealousy I felt last night in the pool when she came and whisked Silas away from me. But it isn’t the same feeling I had about him and Niamh. It’s not about having a girl steal my best friend, my brother. It’s about possibly, one day, having what they have. One day, when I’m maybe worth it.
Grace starts sniffing the air.
“Does that bacon need turning? Smells, erm, crispy.”
Sheena gets up like a shot and Silas, Grace and I look at each other, all suppressing grins. Grace has clearly already encountered Sheena’s legendary culinary skills. While Sheena turns the bacon, Silas and Grace come further into the room. Grace goes over to the kitchen counter and starts helping Sheena with cutting up bread and tomatoes for a round of BLTs. Silas comes and sits down next to me.
“So what’s happened to the other fifteen?” he asks, nodding at the bag.
I swallow hard for the second time since getting here.
“I need it.”
He bristles but to his credit he keeps his voice even.
“What for?”
I look down at my busted hands.
“Rehab,” I say under my breath, then repeat the last part, louder, turning to look him in the eye while I say it. “I’m going into rehab. There is a residential clinic on the Isle of Purbeck, near Swanage, and they don’t just take junkies and alcoholics, they take gamblers. Well, at least they said they’d take me. But it’s intensive and expensive, it costs ten grand for four weeks.”
Silas holds my gaze and I see a myriad of emotions go through those hazel eyes of his. God, I’ve missed him. Still miss him. Because it will never be the same. The only real friend I ever had and I fucked it up royally. We never talked about what happened with Niamh, and it still embarrasses the fuck out of me even thinking about it. She got to me, got under my skin, made me believe he was in on
it. Why the fuck didn’t I check with him? Because I was thinking with my dick. That’s why. Because I’m a kinky fuck and because the idea appealed to me so much it never occurred to me that it might not appeal to him.
“Whose idea was it?” he asks, reading my mind the way only Silas can.
“Niamh’s,” I answer truthfully and though he flinches, I see in his eyes that he believes me.
He breaks eye contact, nodding absently. Then he looks at me again.
“If you need more time at that clinic, let me know. We’ll pay for it,” he says. “Just don’t take too long. And don’t worry about the rest of the loan. It’s covered. Just don’t get into any more debt, will ya?”
I frown but before I can ask, Sheena and Grace turn up at the table with a round of BLTs. As they put them down, I see the pendant dangling from Grace’s neck. It makes me smile. I remember the day Silas found that. He was fucking made up. I’m glad he’s finally found a rightful owner for it.
I hope he gets to keep her.
He’s a good bloke, Silas O’Brien, and he deserves all the happiness in the world.
∞
Thank Yous, Contact, Begging for Reviews, and What to read next
Thank you...
...to my babies, for being the best and for supporting my hare-brained ideas all the way, always. And for making coffee. Let’s not forget about coffee.
...to the man who gave me those babies. Even if we didn’t get our HEA, we had a fucking good innings and I wouldn’t want my babies to be from any other. Love you always.
...to my sister. She knows what for. And we’re secretive like that.
...to Cheyenne Blue for being my beta. Your input was invaluable. You said you did very little, but it would be a much lesser book without you.
And a big fat thank you to Kathryn Calvert, my proofreader. She is a gem in a sea of pebbles. I highly recommend her. Feel free to contact me for her contact details.
Contact
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