Page 41 of Intimately Faithful

“It wasn’t my finest moment, I’ll say that.” He half smiled, and her belly did a series of flips and a couple of flops thrown in. To think of him alone and lost to drugs killed her even more. It was all her fault.

His smile was a weapon he didn’t know he wielded. And it found its target in the middle of her chest every single time, leaving her a little more altered and bursting with emotion.

“I have an addictive personality.” He said, covering her hand on his knee. His fingers roamed over her knuckles almost absently. “Remember how I’d go looking for fights sometimes? I didn’t know then, but I was on a kind of high. It was a rush. The same with tweaking cars and getting into all kinds of shite I had no business being in.”

“Me … was I one of your highs too, Danny?”

Holding her breath, there was a passage of time she would have known the answer to every question related to Danny. She’d known she was more than just an addiction to him; she’d felt it every moment.

They breathed for each other. Lived for each other. Existed only to love each other.

He treated her like an angel and his own treasured and adored slut. There was never a moment of their whole relationship going right back to them being toddlers that she hadn’t felt adored and protected by Danny Murphy. He’d been her first friend, first lover. First hero.

Their love morphed from lovely to obsessive to their dark, beautiful twisted version of exploring how to love with all the desire they felt for one another. He taught her how to be his whore and not ashamed of what her body felt. Never ashamed of going to him because she couldn’t keep all that desire under her skin. Only feeling human again when he’d fucked her seven ways to Sunday.

Coming from a small town, that kind of relationship was never on her radar, she didn’t know what they felt… the acts they’d shared were perfectly normal. In Danny’s arms, she was the woman she wanted to be, and he made it okay for her to love. She made it okay for him to be the sweet, gentle boy and also the dark, hungry man who loved putting her on her knees where she loved being for him.

God, her body missed him.

Her heart was bereft without his to hold her close, to keep her safe and cared for.

He smiled.Sadly.

“The biggest addiction yet. It took me a good while to crawl my way back from that.”

Aoife visibly swallowed and dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, enough of that now. No more apologizing. I make my own mistakes and I take responsibility for them. You didn’t shove coke up my nose and pills down my throat.”

“God, Danny.” She nearly sobbed and before she knew it, she’d crawled up onto his lap.

Startling them both.

She compounded that surprise by raining so many kisses over his face and neck. Not altogether in a romantic way, seeing as how she was crying her Irish heart out with great, big gusting sobs at the same time. The torrent just kept on coming. “I’m sorry,” she went on chanting.

When she buried her face in the side of his neck, sagging with emotional fatigue, she would have expected him to dump her bodily on the floor, seeing as how she’d floozy crawled all over him. But as always, she was rendered speechless when all Danny did was gather her in with both arms wrapped tightly around her. “Go ahead and cry it out, sweetheart. I’ve a feeling you haven’t done that in a long while. It’s long overdue.”

She did as he said, and she cried while he went on holding her.

“There we go,” he cooed in her ear, “let it all go, sweetheart.”

She cried so much that she soaked the front of his shirt into a soggy mess.

“Feeling better?” He asked minutes later, his fingers drifted around the nape of her neck giving her shivers and goosebumps all over her flesh.

Did he have a clue what that kind of possessive touch did to her?

Embarrassment stained her face as she pulled back a little and looked at him. There was no judgment on his face. But then, there wouldn’t be. He was Danny. The most selfless man on earth.

“I cried all over you.”

“It was needed.”

“Are you okay now…with the drugs?”

“I’m an addict, but I’ve been clean and sober for five years.”

She felt relief.

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