Page 44 of A Trap So Flawless

“You think I would let any of this shit into the house if it hadn’t been thoroughly checked first?” he asks, like he’s shocked I’d even suggest it. “I sent Rowan over with the key earlier to check everything. How the hell do you think this stuff was already inside before we got home?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I reply. I frown and cross my arms over my chest, embarrassed. I didn’t realize Rowan had left Callum’s house for part of the day.

Darragh’s gaze slits, then he smirks.

“Oh, don’t go getting all pouty on me now, pet. Not when you were the one throwing your arms around me and kissing me like that. And look what I’ve bought specially for you.” He gives the box a meaningful shake, making the packaged condoms rattle around inside. “There are birth control pills, too. But I know those will take a few days to kick in. Even though you’ll start taking them tonight.”

“You got me birth control? Without me going to the doctor for a prescription?” I ask, focusing on the logistics of the act instead of the imperious “You’ll start taking them tonight” bit.

He crosses the floor to me, stepping over mini mountains of satin and wool.

“I told you once,” he murmurs, “that there was nothing in this world that I could not provide.” Then, he presses the box of condoms into my hands, orders me to, “Hold this,” then drops to his knees. He hooks his fingers beneath the waistband of my leggings, groaning low in his throat when he pulls them down and sees that I am bare beneath them.

Darragh’s mouth is scorching velvet on my clit. I suck in a breath so hard that I’m certain my belly button just about touches my spine. The corners of the box poke into the flesh of my chest, the cardboard threatening to give out as I clutch it. It’s like I’m trying to clutch onto some sort of control, a tether to myself.

But that tether is fraying. Already, my legs are trembling, my pussy clenching uncontrollably as Darragh drags his lips and teeth and tongue across my most sensitive point of throbbing desire.

“You don’t know,” Darragh rasps between greedy, merciless licks and sucks, “how much I’ve fucking missed the taste of you.” He grips my pelvis, his thumbs digging into my groin and spreading me wide. “I’ve been in fucking pain, Valentina,” he says between bruising kisses. “I think I’ve been fucking pining.”

That’s it. That does it. That throws me over the edge.

The thought of Darragh missing me. The thought of him pining.

My abdomen cramps. My pussy contracts. I drop the box, my hands flying blindly to grasp at Darragh’s shoulders and head as I double over with the force of the climax. I’m bent over him, practically hugging him, rubbing myself helplessly against his mouth as I come and shake and moan.

Darragh doesn’t carry me away to some soft bed then. He slides a condom over the jutting, swollen flesh of his cock, and fucks me right there on the floor. Right there, between all the beautiful things that he’s bought me and the door that he’s locked me behind.

He fucks me like he loves me. Like he hates me. Like he’s running out of time.

And maybe he is running out of time.

Maybe we both are.

We can’t stay together like this in Dublin forever. Soon, he’ll have to face the reality of his disinheritance and decide if he will let me go. Soon, we’ll find out what’s happened to my papà.

Soon, we’ll have to go back to Toronto. Back to our worlds that have shifted – shattered – and might never overlap in quite the same way again.

But for now, there is time. Time to feel the cool wood beneath me, Darragh’s heat above me and inside me. Time to hear the way he groans my name, like it’s a prayer, a broken fucking plea, when he comes.

Chapter 17

Valentina

Over the next few days, we fall into some semblance of a rhythm together.

During the day, Darragh continues to work with Rowan, trying to decipher the reasons behind his grandfather’s death. In the evening, I cook dinner for him – for both of us – and watch as sleep and food help to slowly soften the starkest angles of his jaw and cheekbones.

At night, he fucks me, usually more than once. And then he falls into a deep sleep beside me. Sometimes, when he’s asleep, I lie awake and trace his tattoos with my eyes, my fingertips, my lips. He almost never stirs.

Other times, when he’s asleep, I creep away to another bed, just to try to find some distance from him. But whenever I do that, I wake up in that other room with his long limbs locked around me.

I don’t ever hear him when he comes. Sometimes, in the morning after those nights, he seems as confused to wake up in another room as I am to wake up with him beside me in the bed.

It makes me wonder if he sleepwalks.

After a week of this, I decide that I’m as sick of my blonde hair as Darragh is. I take the afternoon to dye it darker. Luckily, Darragh bought enough dye for me to fully colour my thick hair twice. The result is a dense, uniform shade the colour of dark roast coffee. Not a strand of green to be seen, thank goodness. I put time and care into blowing my hair out in big, shiny waves, then put on a short, slinky black dress and do my makeup. I observe the results, alone in this bathroom that isn’t mine, in the city I’ve never visited until now, and feel more like myself than I have in weeks.

When Darragh sees me that evening he stares at me in silence for so long that I start to feel a little self-conscious.

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