“Do you like it when I’m so damn crazy for you?” He closes his fingers around her throat just a little.
“Yes, sir,” her voice comes out distressed from the light pressure he exerts on her windpipe.
“Do you want me to help take those tights off?”
“Yes, sir,” her voice is high and strained, and so fucking sexy, he’s near keeling over. He would if he wasn’t holding onto her for dear life. But he has to, he has to get her naked.
“First, Miss Hanson. Cleaner turnout, from the hips,” he tells her, sinking to his knees behind her. “Thank you.” One at a time, he gets her tights off, making her point to get them off her feet. “Such a good girl.” She purrs, quite literally purrs above him.
“Attitude devant,” his voice barely caries, deprived as it is of air. “Put your foot on my shoulder.” As she does, he runs his hand up her legs slowly, hooks it in the crook of her knee and bends it so her hips come closer, almost into his face. It’s the best sense of déjà vu. “Ma belle, ma petite ballerine. You want my mouth?” He feels her nod reverberate through her body. “I can’t hear you, Sunshine.”
The ‘Sunshine’ was a slip, a private, personal thing. Another relic from their teenage years, when Declan thought he was a lot more mature and grown up with the two years he has on her.
“Oh god. Yes. Please,” she huffs each word like a gunshot and so she doesn’t seem to mind him calling her that.
“What do we say?” He hisses.
“Sir, please,” she corrects herself dutifully. “I need you.”
He does his thing on his knees on the floor under her, reveling in her until her sighs and moans fill the living room and her knees give way and he turns the chair they used as a barre over for her to sit on. With a distinct pull, he gets her on the edge of her seat and continues with his explorations until he can tell from her writhing and her fingernails on his scalp that she’s close - and stops. Her eyes fly open, cast down at his in irritation but he just grins.
“You’ve been very easy to crack today, Miss Hanson,” he tells her.
“Fine, yes, you win,” she huffs, instantly frustrated. “Just don’t stop, damn it.”
“Language,” he warns, taking her hand. “Come here. Petite belle. Lie down for me.” After she has heeded his directions, her back on the walnut floorboards, he hikes her leg up, holds on to her knee and tucks it between her bodies, before he starts teasing her again. Right until she can’t take it anymore.
“Please, sir,” she whimpers. He loves it, uses his hand to build her up, and when she starts shaking again, like she’s once more close to coming, he stops, kisses her hard for a long time, like he could live by her lips alone. His own body tingles and shivers from his head to his toes, cowering above her with his fingers dancing on her skin and bolts of electricity coursing through his veins. He’s so fucking turned on by her pleading tone, it makes it hard to hold on to the act.
“Declan,” she squirms eventually.
“No Declan here, only sirs,” he hums.
“Just fuck me,” she pushes, pulling at his hair, scratching his arms and back, and this is why it was easier doing this with her while her arms were tied. He doesn’t move and she knows why. “Just fuck me, sir. Please, please just…”
He kisses her again hard, cutting her off. “So damn hot when you beg me. So eager, babe. So beautiful.” Once more he crashes his lips down on hers before he lets go of her, puts her deg down so both her feet are on the ground, with her knees in the air while he sits up to shove his pants and underwear down ... and then he fucks her into the floor, pulling out all the stops. She doesn’t last long because he seduced her just right. Like she wanted him to.
He thinks she might still be shaking from aftershocks when he gathers her up from the floor and lifts her up to carry her back into the bedroom like a bride. It takes her a while of breathing deeply in his arms under the blankets until he thinks he can get through to her, until he’s calmed down himself too for that matter. He didn’t come yet, so he’s still a live wire but that’s so not what this is about right now.
“Did I do fine?” he asks, hopeful for some good feedback. “Was that what you imagined?”
“Oh god.” she groans.
“I went a bit overboard with the sir, maybe?” This is what worries him, even past the haze.
“No. It was perfect, and the French, good God,” she’s still short of breath. “Seventeen year old me is having a victory party right now.”
“Shit, Rinny, if I’d known you were fantasizing about this then, I don’t know if I could have stayed away from you,” he tells her, wrapping his arms closer around her, breathing in the scent of her hair, and that mix of coconut and sex and sweat. He’s so hard still, he doesn’t know how his body is still able to keep this up, only that he doesn’t think he’ll ever not want Karin, ever.
“Did you ever fantasize about me?” she asks. “Like that?”
“All the time,” he doesn’t even wait a blink to answer her, he’s bare and open now. He always is after they make love. “If not exactly like that. But I wanted to ... you know, touch you. Make you mine.” He pushes his pelvis against her thighs, so she feels him, still ready for her. “Hear you beg a little. Just the thought of that now ... makes me want to go again in the shower. I fucking loved that just now.”
“Me too,” she smiles, he feels it against his chest. The smile first, the kiss next.
“I love you,” he confesses, for the millionth time, tangling his fingers into her hair and pulling.
“I love you, too,” she says coming up from her hiding place. “So shower? And next time, I’ll tie you up?”
“If you’ve not killed me before,” he puffs out list last breath, from the feel of it. The mental image of her tying him up alone is nearly enough to get him to pop. “God damn it, woman.”
Two days later, they are packing to go back to Tennessee to go meet the new Shelton baby when Dustin calls and tells them it was a false alarm and that his Karin has been sent back home to wait for actual labor to start, which means another fun night at the lake cottage. The morning after, they head out for Scanlon at first light, trading off driving duty halfway down the highway. The baby is still not coming, probably deciding to give his parents the night to watch his uncle live on national television.
At midday, they arrive at The Stardium, the entertainment venue where the finale is broadcasted from, to fans already loitering around the stage door. When Karin and Declan walk from the parking lot to the back entrance, they’re immediately crowded. Declan handles it as best as he can, knowing that Rinny tenses up when this happens, the attention overwhelming her. Shoving her discreetly behind his body, Declan smiles and chats with the people, signing autographs and taking photos until finally, a security guard decides to do his job and ushers them inside.
They’re met by a grinning, already dressed-to-the-nines Brody, who inquires how they are and how they’ve spent their time off. Declan tells him honestly that they hid out at the cottage but mentions that Karin hogged the master bedroom for herself and he had to retire to the kids’ bunk beds, just to be safe. Brody doesn’t seem suspicious, which is fortunate. Next they go through hair and makeup, reuniting with a beaming Abigail in their dressing room.
Once they’re done and on their own again, Karin steps up to him, catching his eye in their reflection from the full-length mirror. Their clothes match subtly, as they were bound to because Rinny picked out the outfits. He likes it, more than is probably considered cool for a guy, but there is something about looking like a unit, like he’s the other half of Karin that tugs at his heart, warming his body from the inside.
“They’re all going to hate us by the end of the night,” Rinny mutters, leaning against his shoulder.
“Yes,” he nods, feeling a familiar rumble low in his belly, foreboding and uneasy. “You ready for that?”
“For a million dollars I’m just about ready for anything,” Rinny quips but he can tell from
the determined look in her eyes that she’s completely serious.
“Fair enough,” he shrugs. After all, they’re so close to winning and he so needs the money. “So we’re doing this?”
“In if you’re in,” she tells him earnestly, her fingers closing around his.
“In,” he replies.
“Then it’s show time,” she declares and squeezes his hand, just once. There’s no time to linger, they’ve got their old and remaining competitors to meet again and rehearsals to run.
It’s hugs all around when a new PA leads Karin and Declan to the large backstage lounge where Kaelan and Kaidan, Courtney and Bobby, Aileen and Rickard, Savannah and Iver, and Grace and Mimi are. Obviously, the kids from Tennessee are the last couple to arrive. The others don’t seem to mind though, there is happy chatter, everybody catching everybody up on what they’ve done since they all last saw each other but Declan feels the undercurrent of tension, especially radiating from Courtney and Bobby. He’s quite certain that they will be the ones to beat that night and they seem to think so too.
His suspicions turn out right, hours later, when the first moving graphs of the televote show that Kaelan and Kaidan are the lovers that the country does not believe are the real deal, mostly, probably, because of what Courtney said in the last evaluation in episode four. Declan hadn’t watched the episode but Karin had and told him about what bits and pieces made it into the final shot. Apparently, he and Rinny came off quite well after all. The stage light hammering down on them hot and relentless, Declan tries to control his features when Tag says an emotional goodbye to K and K and the two men come over to hug the final two couples. He’s sad that their shot at the win is over but then of course, he’s giddy and bursting with adrenaline for having made it to the final two.
He’s barely able to process the studio atmosphere, the audience reactions or the cameras filming his every move, because he’s so nervous as they’re setting up the games he and Rinny are going to have to beat Courtney and Bobby at. As the lights are being reset slightly during the commercial break, Declan glances from the crowd to the special stands right of the stage where the other couples sit, and to the left of the stage Sinea and Foster are lounging together with the families from the baby sitting challenge. Everybody is there, everybody is beaming. Next to him, Karin is in the zone. It takes just a second of looking at her to know that she is ready to kill each and every challenge that will be put in front of them.
The challenges are, in order: a timed IKEA-furniture assembly contest that Courtney and Bobby win by a hair, a three-round-couple’s quiz that Karin and Declan win two to one, and a sports parkour that goes to Courtney and Bobby on a mere technicality, Declan believes. But it is what it is. He thinks they can still win it, even when Karin beside him has her jaw squared and her dance-smile on. Still dressed in the sports wear for the parkour, they’re standing next to Tag, who is wedged in between the two remaining couples as the audience animators on each sides of the stage conduct the studio crowd into clapping and cheering for them.
“So by points,” Tag declares as the noise dies out, stopped short by the animators waving their hands sharply. “Courtney and Bobby are in the lead by one point which they are going to take into the voting count as twenty percent, where Karin and Declan start out at ten. The lines have been open since the beginning of the show and will be for another ten minutes to see what the people have to say about those percentages. We’ll be back after the break to find out ... who has won the Heart Roulette!”
After the break, they make time for the voting and also to create tension, by interviewing the couples that have been eliminated before, the babysitting-challenge couples, and Sinea and Foster. They all say a whole bunch of nothing but Declan supposes that saying anything of substance right now is not encouraged. The audience is supposed to have made up their own minds by now, and to be glued to their TV sets, so the ratings stay as impressive as they’ve been so far.
Finally, after changing back into their matching show-clothes, Karin and Declan are back on stage with Tag and Courtney and Bobby. Their host beams at the camera trained on his face again: “The suspense is killing me, it’s killing us all, isn’t it? Lines are open for thirty more seconds, call in, text in, and then we’re counting down, alright?” He moves about, engaging the audience to count with him. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…and the lines are closed. The voting is over! You all have chosen your sweethearts.”
While the votes are being run through the computers for the final count, the pop-rock band who wrote the show’s theme plays it live and Declan stays close to Karin, trying to calm his nerves. They’re so close now. Nothing is in their hands anymore. They’ve done their best, did their job, and now all they can do is wait for the verdict of the Canadian people. There’s maybe two minutes between them and finding out if they’ve won a million dollars.
Then the moment is there. “I am just hearing now that the votes are all counted,” Tag announces and then turns to the couples at either side of him. “Are you ready to learn whose love story has made the country believe in true romance most?” Declan finds himself nodding dumbly, in sync with Karin tucked under his arm. “Are you ready?” Tag encourages the roaring audience reaction. “Let’s have a look at the numbers!”
They all turn around to have a look at the giant LED screen beside them that shows two graphs rising, both equally for a while, until one takes the lead while the other stops and keeps rising and rising and rising, until it’s clear that whoever won, did so by a landslide.
“Oh, as you can see we got quite a gap there,” Tag notes, turning back to face the crowd and the cameras. “In just a few short seconds, we will know who has won the Heart Roulette”
The fifteen second commercial they play to keep the suspense alive is the longest fifteen seconds of Declan’s life so far. He knows how his face must look, feels it set into tension, his brow furrowed, his eyes slits, studying one of the replay-screens facing the stage, the one that shows the graphs where soon, a set of names will appear under each vertical line. Rinny is frozen stiff in his arms and he can’t really say if she’s breathing or not, so he drops a kiss on her head to steady her, never taking his eyes off the screen. Tag is saying something but Declan’s not listening. He just wants to know.
Then he does. He blinks once and as he opens his eyes again, the crowd erupts. There, under the bigger graph, it says ‘Karin and Declan.’ And that’s it. They won. He yells in triumph, scatters forward a little to throw his fist up and then snaps right around to grapple for Karin. He’s hugging her tight, lifting her up off her feet, shaking her.
“We did it, we did it,” he nearly yells in her ear and holds her as tight as he can, as tight as she holds him. The noise of the studio disappears when she laughs into his neck, loud and roaring, like she had when she was just a little girl.
“People, you have chosen!” Tag blares and Declan feels a hand patting his back, letting him know to set Karin down and turn her back out to the audience, her mascara a little smeared, so he bends down to smooth it out as much as he can. “Karin and Declan, you are the winners of Heart Roulette What do you say?”
“This is incredible!” Declan blurts and Karin offers: “I can’t believe it!”
The cheers are so loud, Declan half wants to cover his ears.
Five hundred thousand dollars for him. He can hardly believe it.
“But now the big question still hasn’t been answered yet, has it?” Tag goes on, looking at the camera and then at Declan. “The big question of who the fake couple is.”
“We sure can’t wait to find out,” Declan replies, like he was told to in rehearsal. Whoever was going to end up the winner, was supposed to say it, and he’s very proud of himself that he remembered, even past the rush of success, of knowing that now all his debt will be paid in full, that he’ll be able to finish the renovations on his house, and also past the pervasive little voice in the back of his head that tells him
how he and Karin will now have to figure out a way to convince the nation that they are not a couple, when they had just tried for a month and succeeded at convincing everybody and their mothers that they were.
There’s little time to work through the triumph or the musings attached to it, not even time to devote more attention to Karin, who’s just radiant on his arm. Before he knows it, they’re standing in a line-up on the stage, couple next to couple next to couple. Each couple under one moving head spotlight, drenched in white, bright lighting.
“You have watched them for four weeks, they watched each other, we all tried to figure out how to tell real love from pretend affection, now we are going to find out, if we were right ... or not,” Tag announces. “The fake couple on this first season of Heart Roulette is…”
In true TV show-fashion, the lights overhead start flickering, over every couple until it’s clear that the lights run over all of them, one by one, rushing down the line-up. Who could it be? Is it Kaidan and Kaelan? Courtney and Bobby after all? Or could it be Grace and Mimi? Was it Aileen and Rickard? Or the first couple to leave ... Savannah and Iver? Surely, it couldn’t be the winners, surely, it’s not Karin and Declan.
The lights flicker faster, running, running, into a frenzy. Until Declan is blinded, holding onto his best friend as the light stops on them, drowning them in revelation. Now everyone knows.
For a long moment, there is complete silence in the studio, the only sound is the slight buzzing of the lights overhead and the rustle of technicians operating the cameras. But then ... then the dam bursts, the exact second someone in the back mutters a disturbed “No” that carries through the entire studio. Its end is drowned out by the audience chiming in. There is actually screaming. No one boos, but Declan thinks they’re not far off. There’s too much stuff happening to process it, it all sounds like mayhem and the few glares he catches look like it, too. Beside them, Tag is already trying to reel the audience in, to swiftly lead into the intro of their revised home story, the one where they reveal that they’re not together, the one that shows Declan sitting beside her in her apartment saying “We’re best friends but we’re not together. It’s not like that between us.”
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