Page 11 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
“Declan,” I breathe, and it comes out more like a plea than I intended.
He lifts his head just enough to look at me, his gaze dark and focused. “If I start, I will not stop tonight.”
The way he says it is not a question. It is a warning wrapped in a promise, and it makes my thighs press together. I answer by leaning up to kiss him again, slower this time, letting him feel the intent in it. His hands move at last, one cupping the back of my head, the other sliding under the hem of my dress to rest against my bare thigh. His fingers are warm, steady, and the slow drag of them higher leaves a trail of heat in their wake.
I breathe out, my forehead resting against his, feeling the weight of the moment settle over us. The rain is louder now, or maybe I am just more aware of the silence between each drop. His touch stops just short of where I ache for it, his thumb stroking slow circles as if testing how far he can take me before I break.
“Tell me to stay,” he says, his voice a low growl against my mouth.
I do not tell him anything. Instead, I kiss him again, my fingers slipping up to the nape of his neck, holding him to me as if that could be an answer. He makes a sound, deep and satisfied, before lifting me with startling ease. My legs wrap around his waist, my dress sliding up, and I feel the hard press of him through his trousers as he carries me back inside.
The fairy lights turn his hair to bronze as he stops just inside the doorway. His mouth never leaves mine until my back meets the wall, and the way his body fits against mine makes the rest of the world irrelevant. His hand slides up my thigh, pushing my dress higher, his fingers finally brushing the edge of my panties. I shiver at the touch, my hips tilting into it.
He pauses there, his lips on my ear. “Last chance, Aoife.”
I press my mouth to his, answering without words, and feel his fingers slide beneath the lace. The touch is slow, deliberate, and the first stroke makes me gasp into his mouth. He swallows the sound, kissing me harder, and I can feel the restraint in the way he moves, as if he is holding back the full force of what he wants.
And then he pulls back just enough to look at me, his thumb still moving with infuriating patience. The hunger in his eyes leaves no doubt about where this is going.
We are right there—balanced at the edge, the air heavy with rain, heat, and everything neither of us is willing to name yet—when I realize that I am not going to stop him.
5
DECLAN
“Bedroom,” she whispers, and the word is not shy. I let her slide down my front until her feet touch the floor, keep one hand at the small of her back and the other cupping her jaw to draw one last deep kiss from her parted mouth, then follow her when she turns, the thin hem of her dress brushing her knees, the fairy lights throwing soft gold across her shoulders while she walks down the short hall with that quick, determined stride that tells me she has decided, and when she glances back I see her pupils blown wide and shining and I feel something dangerous and quiet uncoil inside me.
Her room is small in the way city rooms are small, all angles and clever compromises, but the bed is generous, dressed in linen that smells faintly of soap and citrus and something warm I cannot name, and there is a window that takes the whole wall, a pane of night itself that lifts the room into the sky, the rain feathering down its surface in fine silver lines, the balcony beyond beaded and slick, the city spread below as if it has drawn nearer to watch. She stops at the edge of the mattress and turns to face me, the fairy lights catching in her hair, the rise and fall of her chest just a shade too fast, and I put my hands on herhips and feel the living heat of her through the thin fabric and say, low enough that the glass might hold the words inside the room, “My spitfire,” because that is what she is tonight, a bright, hungry heat wrapped in soft skin and sharper wit, and the way her mouth curves tells me she likes how the name sits on my tongue.
“Your timing is suspiciously perfect,” she says, and there is a quiver of a laugh in it that makes me want to press my lips to her throat. So I do, tasting salt and the edge of rain and the sweetness of the orange she cooked with earlier. My hands slide to the back of her thighs to lift her onto the bed.
I kneel on the rug and take her ankle in my palm, feel the strong line of tendon under warm skin, and kiss the inside of her calf, then the hollow of her knee where heat collects and nerves wake quickly. When she inhales at that, I feel her heel press, gently but insistently, against my shoulder as if to draw me closer, and I follow the word her body speaks, my hands easing her knees apart so I can fit between them, my fingertips smoothing the hem of her dress up, inch by inch, the fabric whispering over her thighs like a tide on a quiet beach. She is breathing in long slow pulls now, the kind of breaths a person takes when they are letting go of the day one rib at a time. When I look up I meet her eyes and hold them, because I want her to see the sort of man I am here, measured and certain and already undone by the taste of her skin.
“Tell me what you want,” I say, not because I need the map but because I want to hear the route in her voice.
“You,” she says, that easy, that bare, and the word drops through me like a stone through deep water.
I push her dress higher and lean in, press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, and feel the muscles tighten and then loosen under my lips. I take my time there, shaping kisses that are more like promises than demands, settling my hands at her hips tosteady her when she shifts. When I finally edge closer she tips her head back and closes her eyes, a small sound escaping that does not ask for permission and does not apologize.
I draw the softest breath I can and give her more of my mouth, enough to make her fingertips knot in the sheets and her knees flex around my shoulders. I listen, because bodies speak when mouths do not, and hers tells me she wants both pressure and patience—that sweet, impossible combination. So I alternate, a slow rhythm that builds and breaks and builds again. The music of it is the hush of her breath turning shaky and the fragile pop of her lips parting on my name.
“Declan,” she says, and it is a thread I can wrap around my fist.
I answer with my tongue and the edge of my teeth and the hours I have spent imagining this, the quiet dark cadence of a man who was raised to work with his hands and understands that worship is not a weak word. It is simply attention sharpened into devotion. When she arches and grips the back of my head like she means to keep me there until every last thought leaves her, I let her anchor me. I let her ride the crest that keeps forming and breaking, until the tremor that begins low in her legs rolls upward in one clean sweep. Her breath catches and breaks and she looks at me as if the city has fallen away under the window and there is only this room and this bed and my mouth against her.
I stay with her as the tide of it ebbs, easing the pressure, soft kisses now. A hand smooths down her thigh to ground her again, the other sliding to her waist because I want to feel the shiver there. When she opens her eyes I see them refocus in the fairy light, and the look she gives me is not coy. It is relief mixed with dark hunger and something like gratitude that turns my chest hot.
She sits up and reaches for me, palms on my face first, a tender pause that cuts through the heat with an intimacy I did not expect to feel so hard. Then her hands go to my collar, undoing the buttons with deliberate slowness as if each stitch was a ribbon she has a right to untie. When she pushes the shirt off my shoulders I hear the faint hiss of fabric leaving skin and her breath leaving her in a small appreciative exhale. I let her look, let her map me with her fingers, because I know what she is doing and I want her to memorize all of it.
“My spitfire,” I murmur again, and this time the words are rougher, gratitude buried in them, and her mouth tilts into something bright and wicked that makes me grit my teeth.
I haul her up, not roughly and not sweetly either, simply with the efficiency of a man who knows what he wants. I kiss her standing, my hands under her dress gathering it high—not to strip her yet but to feel the smooth skin of her waist and the way her back curves when she arches into me. She answers with a low sound that vibrates against my tongue. I turn her once and she goes willingly, her palms meeting the cool glass of the window as I step in behind her. The city smears into streaks of light where the rain draws its own maps. She looks at our reflection there, not coy at all, more curious than anything, as if seeing us from a stranger’s perspective thrills her. As if the knowledge that anyone on a rooftop across the street could raise a pair of binoculars and watch makes her breath catch in a way that is not fear.
“Do you need them open,” I ask at her ear, “or closed?” She shakes her head quickly, hair brushing my cheek, and says, “Open,” with a certainty that makes me smile like a sinner.
The glass is cool under her palms and I lay my hands over hers to align our fingers, our reflections a dark double in the rain-blurred pane. I hold her there, poised at the lip of everything, and do not let either of us fall. I keep her wristspinned high above her head, my body flush to hers, my cock heavy and throbbing against the heat of her through what little’s left between us. She’s breathing like she’s already fucked raw, chest rising fast, nipples hard enough to press through the thin lace I’ve shoved her dress down to expose. I lean in, my mouth at her ear, and let her feel every word against her skin.
“Fuck,” I growl, the words rumbling low, “look at you. Begging without saying a damn thing.”
