Page 63 of A Trap So Flawless

I come then, breaking apart in his lap, crying out with relief and pain, pleasure and grief. I collapse onto his chest, my nails digging into his skin, as he grabs my hips and slams into my clenching pussy, over and over again. He says something then, something I don’t understand. Something in Irish. Something tender and tortured, the words fraying like torn ribbon when he comes.

Chapter 25

Valentina

Breathing slow and even, I begin to wake up. Warm light nuzzles my face. I can see morning brightness through the thin skin of my closed eyelids. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I catch scents of Darragh.

His bed.

Without opening my eyes, I stretch, skimming my hand across cool sheets, expecting to come into contact with his heat and not finding it.

My body’s reaction is instant and instinctive. A driving panic that jams my heart up into my throat. He isn’t here. I’ve lost him.

“Darragh!” I scramble out of the bed. Shit. I’m naked. Darragh is gone and I’m not even dressed to go and find him. He could be bleeding out somewhere! Every second counts. And I’m painfully aware of every second now, as they pass me by, taunting me as I stand there, frozen with indecision and fear.

My heart is beating so fast it sounds like I’ve got two pulses. But, no. That second pulse is outside me. Rapid, explosive, getting louder every second.

Darragh bursts into the room like a storm, thunder on his face and a gun in his hand. His wild eyes scan the space, locking onto me. His strides eat the floor in seconds. He grabs me tightly, his eyes examining every wall, window, and corner.

“What is it?” he asks. “What did you see?”

“No… I didn’t…” God. I am so embarrassing. I pull myself out of his hold and grab the bedsheet for something to wrap around myself. Like a shield against my shame. Darragh watches me in cool-eyed silence, which doesn’t help. “I just woke up,” I stammer, “and when you weren’t here, I panicked. Silly. I know.”

He still hasn’t said anything. He also hasn’t moved.

“What?” I finally mutter, tugging sullenly at my sheet.

There’s an oddly rocky quality to his voice when he replies. A roughened affection.

“That isn’t silly.”

“It absolutely is!” I scoff. “You’re recovering. You shouldn’t have to run up the stairs like that just because I got all freaked out that you weren’t here.”

“Recovering?” He says, raising his brows. “Valentina, I could be half-dead, chained to a wall in a fucking basement somewhere, if you called I would still find a way to come running. Don’t you ever worry about that.”

“OK. Well. Still silly.”

He slides his gun into place at his lower back, then uses both his hands to smooth my hair away from my face. We tumbled into bed still wet from our bath last night. I don’t even want to think about how my hair dried. But there’s no judgment in his gaze as he strokes the sleep-kinked waves away from my cheeks and forehead.

“The few times I slept in Dublin, it was fucking agony to wake up. Not because I was tired and needed more rest,” he says softly. “But because you weren’t there.” He tucks a particularly stubborn curl of hair behind my ear. His fingers linger at the side of my throat. “So if that makes you silly, I guess I’m silly too.” He smirks. “And I will have you know that I’ve never been silly once in my entire fucking life.”

I bite my lip and nod. Then, without thinking, I blurt, “Can I have a hug?”

Oh my God. If I thought I was embarrassing before…

Now I’m just humiliating myself.

But Darragh’s arms wrap around me immediately. I feel his chin bump the top of my head as he quietly says, “You can have anything you want.”

Well, not anything. Not the one thing I actually want.

To be with Darragh. Not as his mistress, or his nurse, or his prisoner.

As his wife.

I never thought I’d want it. Never thought I’d be the one to crave it. But I nearly lost him once, and now I am terrified of it happening again. I want to be his in all ways. And I want him to be mine, too. Legitimately and legally.

But my actions, my foolish desires, have already put him in grave danger once. I told him what I wanted and he made it happen at terrible cost to himself.

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