Page 51 of A Trap So Flawless

I can picture him as a teenager in the Dublin townhouse. But, here, now? This massive, tattooed murderer? I can’t imagine him doing mundane things like having his morning coffee or brushing his teeth in the same bathroom every night. Even when we were technically neighbours on Georgian Bay, he came and went like some spirit from a story. He said he came there to sleep. But I never even saw him do that.

“I just… I don’t know why, but I find it hard to picture you actually living somewhere.”

He laughs. I lean forward, like I can dive into the sound.

“What, pet?” he asks with another low chuckle. “You think when I’m in Toronto, I just crawl through the sewers like a rat? Or is it that you can’t picture me living somewhere, because when I’m not with you, I must not be living at all?”

“I…”

He shakes his head, still smirking.

“I’m not offended. Both those statements have a bit of essential truth to them.”

“It’s true that you’re a sewer rat?”

“And that I’m not really alive without you.”

He tips his head back and closes his eyes. I don’t know if he actually sleeps or not. Be he doesn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the flight.

I don’t sleep on the flight, but I do fall asleep as Darragh drives us to Forest Hill, curled up against the seat heater on the passenger side. It’s unseasonably chilly for early October, even by Ontario standards, and it feels extra cold compared to Dublin’s milder climate. It’s distinctly unwelcoming. Like the very air is rejecting us. Trying to push us back across the ocean.

But the seat heater works just fine, and I lose myself to the world, rocked by the lullaby of wheels on highways and the signs of familiar streets greeting me in a blur every time I blearily open my eyes.

Distantly, I become aware of stillness. The car has stopped. The heat from the seat rapidly recedes. I whimper in complaint, snuggling down closer to the leather, trying to hold on to the last dregs of warmth.

But a sudden gust of frosty wind ruins any hope I have of clinging onto heat. There’s a click, and the release of pressure as my seatbelt is undone for me.

For a twisted moment, I half-dream I’m with Papà. Because for every time he hurt me, or ignored me, or did horrible shit to me, there were also times that he undid my seatbelt for me and carried my small, sleeping body from the car into the house so that I wouldn’t have to wake up and walk through the cold on my own.

But this isn’t Papà’s scent. These aren’t his bulky arms. They’re stronger, longer, leaner. Darragh lifts me easily, cradling me gingerly against his chest. He pauses to grab something – my bag, I think – then closes the car door and walks. I wrap my arms around his neck, nuzzling my nose against his throat. Seeking heat. Seeking him.

Between sleepy blinks, I glimpse the outline of a stunningly huge and even more stunningly beautiful white stone house surrounded by trees. Inside the darkened foyer, Darragh locks the door behind us, then resets an alarm on a pad on the wall.

Then, he takes me upstairs.

He doesn’t turn on a single light. I observe nothing beyond dark halls and then the dark walls of his bedroom. He lays me down on the bed, then straightens as if he means to turn and go.

“Don’t leave,” I whisper, catching his hand in mine. I can barely see him like this. He’s nothing but a shadow. A silhouetted presence in the dark.

But his hand is warm, and his voice is as real as it’s ever been when he rasps, “My heart can barely take it when you resist me, Valentina. I don’t how I’ll survive you if you beg.”

“You’ll find a way. Sewer rats always survive.”

And so does the wolf in my story. The bear in my bed.

“Please, Darragh. Please stay with me.”

I’m being so stupid. There’s no way he’d leave me alone in this house. He’s probably just going to get a drink of water, or to retrieve his own bag. And here I am acting like he’s about to leave me to go off to war or something.

But I’m frantic with the need to keep him with me. In this room, preferably in this bed. I’m suddenly terrified of everything without him. The dark. The strange house. The emptiness opening up in my chest like a wound, sucking everything in.

But not Darragh. He’s too big. He’s got a gravity field of his own. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll keep me from collapsing in on myself entirely.

I sit up, my left hand still holding his. My right hand goes to the crotch of his jeans. Darragh is utterly still. The only sound is the slip of the button through its denim loop, the metal zipper sliding down, the rustle of fabric as I pull clothing away from his thick shaft. It jerks in my hand, velvet and electric.

I lower my head and take his tip into my mouth.

Now he makes a sound. A sharply hissed inhale between clenched teeth. He throbs in me, and it’s a marvel, nearly fucking magical, the way human flesh can grow and stiffen like this. I feel every lurch of his shaft against my tongue and the sensitive walls of my mouth. I taste him in a way I’ve never tasted him before, all strange masculine salt.

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