I wrinkle my nose. “Barf.”
He chuckles. “The opposite is also true. Even the strongest man needs a woman. We’re made for each other.”
“How do gay people fit into that gendered philosophy?”
“They’re made for each other, too. It’s not about tab A fits into slot B. It’s about who you are as a human. What turns you on. What you need. Everyone has a match. A fit. Yin to yang, light to darkness. It’s when we fight it and judge it that we run into problems. Open your mouth.”
He’s nudging my lips with another forkful of salad. I’m too caught up in the conversation to protest. Around a mouthful of salad, I say, “How is it possible that despite your rather caveman approach to things, you almost sound liberated?”
“Maybe I am. Is that so hard to fathom?”
“This from the man who ordered me off a plane with a rocket launcher. Where did you get that thing, anyway?”
“I keep an arsenal of weapons in the back of every SUV. You never know when you might need the odd machine gun or hand grenade.”
I say drily, “Right. How silly of me. One needs to be prepared. What a Boy Scout.”
He chuckles again. “Believe it or not, I was. Ireland’s version, anyway. I was involved with Scouting Ireland almost until I went into the military.”
Surprised by that tidbit of information, I raise my brows. “You were in the military?”
He pauses to take a bite of the salad for himself. It seems deliberate. Like an avoidance tactic. After he swallows, he simply says, “Aye.”
He’s not meeting my eyes.
“Declan.”
His wary gaze flashes up to meet mine.
“We can do Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell if you want. We don’t have to share our sad stories. It’s probably safer that way.”
“Safer?”
I’m flustered by his penetrating look. It seems to say he knows I’m trying desperately to protect myself from him. “I meant smarter.”
Examining my expression, he sweeps his thumb over my lips. “Don’t hide. When I said you were safe with me, I meant it.”
“Okay, but only if you don’t hide from me.”
He caresses my face a moment longer. “The difference is, you haven’t said I’m safe with you. Which is good, because we both know I’m not.”
“So this total trust thing only works one way? From me to you?”
His brows pull together. “Do you want me to trust you?”
“Could you?”
Our gazes are locked together. The air between turns crackling.
His voice low and rough, he says, “If you gave yourself to me and meant it. If I knew you’d be loyal to me the way you are with your girlfriend, Natalie. Then aye. I could trust you. But if I did, it would be with everything, including my life. I don’t do half measures. I wouldn’t hold back. And there’s a lot of ugliness my trust would expose you to. There are many things you’d discover that might make you regret ever meeting me at all.
“So before you ask for my trust, think carefully. Because if I give it to you, it means I’m yours. And you’re mine. For good. There’s never any getting out of that, even if you asked me to. Even if it got to be too much and you wanted to run away.”
His voice drops. His gaze drills into mine. “Because I take the words ‘until death do us part’ literally.”
I don’t know how we got here. One minute we’re chatting about feminism, and the next we’re falling down a rabbit hole of marriage vows and death pacts.
“Okay. Wow. That’s a lot.”
“I don’t see you running away, though.”
There’s a challenge in his tone. A challenge in his eyes. A look that says I should decide right now how this is going to go.
My heart hammering, I moisten my lips. “No. I’m not running. But I’m not promising I won’t want to.”
He smiles. “Good enough for now. If you change your mind, let me know.”
“And you’ll let me go when I ask you to?”
“If,” he corrects. “If you ask me to.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself there. I do have a life to get back to, you know.”
He gazes at me for a beat. Then he takes another bite of the salad, thinking. When he swallows, he looks back at me with something in his eyes I’ve never seen before.
Pain.
“I’m a lot older than you, as you keep pointing out. I’ve traveled more roads, many of them dark. I’ve learned that no matter how well you think you know yourself, you can still be surprised. You can’t control what moves you. The only thing in your control is the choice over whether or not you surrender to it.
“I think you realize, deep down, that you can trust me. The only thing you’re really on the fence about is if you’re willing to trust yourself. Because up till now, you haven’t met a man who knew how to handle you. Who could see what you are behind that ivory tower you’ve built around your heart. But I see you. And I know you’re scared seven shades of shite to let me in.
“I can’t convince you to. That’s a leap you have to make yourself. And I can promise you that it’ll be messy. You, me, what that would mean to everyone else…messy. But worth it, at least in my opinion. Because this half-dead gangster of yours has seen a lot in his time, but nothing as fine as this.”
When I only sit there swallowing around the lump in my throat, he says, “Now let’s finish this horrible bowl of rabbit food and go to bed.”
“Okay.”
He looks at me with an arched eyebrow.
“I mean…yes, sir.”
When he leans down and kisses me tenderly, I realize exactly how much trouble I’m really in, and how right he was about the ivory tower I’ve built to keep my heart safe.
A heart that’s safe would never ache with so much longing.
26
Sloane
Declan removes my handcuffs before we get into bed. He removes the shirt he put on me, too, then gets undressed himself and pulls me down on top of him. He settles us under the covers and presses a kiss to my forehead, ordering me to go to sleep.
“How can you sleep with me on top of you? Aren’t I heavy?”
“Aye. Camels weigh a bloody ton.”
“Ha.”
“Stop worrying about me, and do as I tell you.”
We lie there in the dark, my head on his chest, listening to each other breathing, until the whirlwind in my head makes me sigh. “I don’t think I’m tired.”
“I’m sure you have some kind of ridiculous breathing trick that will help.”
“I usually do a flow visualization when I have trouble falling asleep, but there’s something I’m freaking out about, so I know it won’t help.”
Declan had been rubbing his hand up and down my spine, but he stops. “What is it?”
“We haven’t had the STD talk. And we didn’t use a condom last time.”
He says immediately, “I’m clean.”
“Good. Me, too.”
“I can get tested if you don’t believe me.”