Page 46 of A Trap So Flawless

It’s weird that it isn’t weird at all.

I was standing on Darragh’s right side, so it’s my left hand interlocked with his. He raises our hands together in the air, observing the way our fingers fit together. His gaze snags on my bare ring finger.

He hasn’t said anything about the ring since Toronto. Hasn’t told me to put it on, or, if he thinks that I don’t have it anymore, told me that he’ll buy me another. Sal got shot in the head. While we don’t know for sure about Papà, there’s no reality where I’m not a widow right now. There’s nothing really standing in his way.

Except the will.

It should be a relief. A relief that, while Darragh obviously wants to keep me with him for now, he no longer seems to consider us engaged.

So somebody fucking tell me why it’s not? Why, instead of relief, instead of feeling like there’s freedom ahead of me, if I can only survive long enough to get there, I’ve only got this empty ache of loss?

Darragh distracts me from the question, tugging me along by the hand.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re nearly there.”

He takes me across an elegantly curving bridge – apparently called the Ha’Penny Bridge – and once we’re on the other side it’s a short walk past old stone buildings to Darragh’s intended destination. It’s a pub, and when Darragh opens the door for me, the smell of beer, meat, and warm bread hit me at the same moment that a fiddle song stops. Clapping and cheering breaks out, and a young server with a moustache hustles over to me.

“I’m sorry!” he shouts over the sound of the applause and cheering. “We don’t have any tables available! It’ll be about a forty minute wait. We’re always really busy on our live music nights, and-”

His words die in his throat as his eyes rise with almost comical slowness to something – or someone – behind me.

“You were saying?” Darragh asks.

The poor server looks like he’s about to piss himself.

“I’ll show you to your table, Mr. Gowan!”

The table is actually a booth raised a little off the main floor. Darragh motions for me to sit, and I slide onto the bench that faces outwards towards the rest of the restaurant. From here I’ve got a view of the bar, the musical duo with their fiddle and drum, and the lower tables.

“I feel a little overdressed,” I say as I hand Darragh his jacket, exposing my cleavage and dress.

“Something tells me that you look precisely the way you want to right now,” Darragh says.

It’s annoying how right he is. How much I feel like myself again with this hair, this dress, the high heels, and the makeup. I expect Darragh to sit across from me in the booth, but I should have known he wouldn’t. He sits beside me, sliding over until I’m trapped between the wall and his body.

“You’re supposed to sit on the other side, you know,” I tell him primly, even as my body reacts with pure pleasure at his nearness.

“And how would you know that, pet?” he asks silkily. “When you’ve never even been on a date yourself.” He grins, his straight white teeth giving a wolfish gleam. “Unless you count that time I crashed your fancy rooftop dinner with fucking Fabbri.” He touches the front of my throat. “That time I ended one life. And claimed another for my own.”

If I save your life, he said to me as I choked in his arms, that life becomes mine.

His grin has faded. His eyes fall to my mouth. His fingers crawl their way to the back of my neck, gripping the base of my skull. My lips part involuntarily, like my body is inviting him in before my brain can catch up.

And even once my brain catches up, I don’t try to stop it.

His kiss is slow, languorous. But there’s nothing lazy about it. It’s a thorough unravelling of my senses, leaving me so hot and dizzy that when he slides his hand beneath my dress, toying with my clit through my panties, I whimper and welcome the touch.

Until the band starts up a new song. And I remember where the hell we are.

I snap my eyes open and try to flee. But the wall is in the way and there’s nowhere to go.

Darragh keeps his hand where it is, stroking idly over my quivering flesh, but he straightens up and leans back, watching the music like he isn’t about to make me come under the table.

The server chooses that moment to return to the table. I squeeze my thighs together so hard I probably cut off blood supply to Darragh’s fingers. I see him smirk in response just before he slides his hand a little further down, letting it come to rest on my knee as he orders himself a Guinness.

“Red wine, please,” I croak. I clear my throat. “And some water. And some food. Whatever you recommend.”

“She’ll have shepherd’s pie,” Darragh says.

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