Page 30 of Cillian

“Me? I don’t know what I’m doing, for now I just follow your lead.”

“Then I must be a fairly good teacher, because you are fucking amazing.” My lips pressed hard against her forehead, pulling her as close to me as humanly possible. Leaving this bed was going to be torture.

“I feel like I’m in a dream I don’t want to wake up from.” Her doe eyes snatching the breath away from me when she met my gaze. “You’re like the best thing that ever happened to me, I swear it. I don’t think someone has ever made me feel this good.”

Studying me with those curious eyes, I expected a difficult question to follow. “So, you haven’t felt anything for anyone you’ve been with?”

“It makes me sound like a horrible person but…no.” I was embarrassed to admit the rest, but when she didn’t let up, I saw it as my opportunity to see if she could handle me being honest.

“I’ve never properly fancied a woman. Or had her fancy me.” Her face drained in color, but it was understandable after what she said next.

“I was always taught you were supposed to love someone when you did it, but because I heard it wasn’t so fun for women. Imagine my surprise for it to feel like that. No wonder everyone wants a woman to wait.”

Sitting up, I pressed her hand to my chest. Having something of her on me calmed my nerves a bit. “Ain’t nothing wrong with waiting. You don’t really get a choice when you’re a man.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Queenie, remember when I told you, things happened to me too? Something I didn’t have a choice with?”

“I do…I just assumed—” Silently, I knew what she assumed. That I’d been touched as a kid by a priest. She watched me kill one, after all. My story wouldn’t gain me a lot of empathy from my brothers, but if I could trust her with this, I’d know she saw me. Know she could feel for me, the way I did her.

“I was the runt of my brothers. Even my sister used to be taller than me. My father was one of them fathers who slapped us around a lot. He said it made us tough, but just made us resentful of him. Fighting didn’t come as easy for me as early as it had for Bellamy. Tadhg didn’t need to because he was big. Paddy? Didn’t take long before he was a bully. But me? My father thought I was soft.”

My throat nearly closed, but Queenie took my hand in hers and squeezed, giving me the courage to keep going. “Told me if I couldn’t fight. I was sure as hell going to learn how to fuck.”

The memories were fuzzy, or maybe I didn’t want to remember them, so they never came clear to me, just the way I’d felt at the time. Anytime I’d ever felt sick, it was trying to make sense of what happened to me back then.

“He took me to my first brothel when I was eight. I don’t remember it like I want to. Maybe it’s my mind trying to protect me from myself. Got so many bad memories at that place, I didn’t realize how hollowed out it made me until I made love to you. Making love has always been one of those things where I just sort of…drift.” The words heavy on my tongue.

“It’ll feel good, but I’ll only be there for the before and after, never the in between. You were my first in between. I don’t think I’d ever been so conscious of how beautiful a woman’s breath sounds. Looking into your beautiful eyes. I ain’t never did that before. But the drift…that just made it easier to get through it. Until I could convince myself I liked it. That I was supposed to do it. For about four years, Pa would force me to go. If I didn’t do it, he’d give me something to cry about. And then he’d call me a sissy. So, I just did it. Even when I didn’t want to.”

I hadn’t even been aware my eyes were welling until the warmth of salt and water rolled down my cheek. “By then, it was normal for me. To just do it. But it grew something dark inside me, that sometimes I need to let out. Not often, just sometimes. I remember trying to make sense of it, waiting until I was fifteen to go back. For some stupid reason, I thought about my first all the time. By then I was better at it anyway, and I came back to see her to see if she could fix what was broken in me. When we were done, it threw me off when she didn’t mention it. Turns out she barely remembered me.”

That part, I remembered vividly. In a fucked-up way, I thought she’d want to be with me. Not just for the sex. But as a steady, so all my memories of her weren’t all messed up. “Not to mention, she made a fool of me. Said I was better looking when I was eight. A moment that stayed with me forever—made me never present for when I actually did lay down by choice—she barely remembered. I didn’t think myself capable of loving a woman after that. I was okay with the drifting, as long as things felt good by the end. You’re the first person to make me not want the drift.”

Without much warning, Queenie leaned into kiss me, wrapping her arms around me and making me feel safe. “I’m sorry that happened to you. It…it explains a lot about you for me. We were forced to do things we didn’t want to because of who raised us.”

“At least you’re still good. Kind. Sweet. I was never going to be those things with a father like mine. It makes scared that I’m going to do something to lose you, or chase you away?—”

“Cillian.” Kiss. “Cillian, look at me.” As she held my face in her hand, locking me in with her deep doe eyes. “There’s nothing you could say, or do, or admit, that could make me not fall for you?—”

“That’s because you don’t know all the dark stuff about me. The despicable shit I like to do.”

“Well, I like you.”

“Oh yeah?” As she pulled apart from me, resting on her stomach, and I caressed her naked back. “What do you like about me?”

“I like the way you talk.”

“So now you understand me?” I teased, drawing invisible shapes on the back of her shoulders.

“I think I said that to be mean. But you don’t talk like anyone I’ve known before.”

“Especially when I’m whispering in that ear to fucking come in you,” I teased, leaning in and bringing my voice to a whisper. She bat me away, but she didn’t deny it.

“I like all of your freckles?—”

“Bullshit!” I interrupted.

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