His gaze penetrated mine with all the precision of a laser. Then he rumbled, “Drop the robe.”
I gaped at him. “Huh?”
“Drop. The. Robe.”
“I have to get Shay to school—”
“Drop. The. Robe.”
My heart stopped as I saw the fire and the rage and the want and the love etched into his expression… We didn’t have time for this.
We really didn’t.
I let go of his neck and tugged on the knotted belt around my waist. As it parted, he didn’t take his eyes off mine until I shrugged and the silky folds drifted to the floor.
He grabbed me by the waist, turned me around, then said, “Place your hands on the counter.”
I complied.
My pulse beat like a drum in my ears as I watched him move behind me, his gaze drifting over my reflection in the mirror.
I was getting bigger. The line had appeared recently, the one that bisected my belly from the navel down, and my tits and my nipples were massive, but he looked at me like I was a model on the front cover of Sports Illustrated.
Heat raked down my limbs, burning me up as he watched me.
Then he tugged at the towel around his waist and bared himself. Not that I could see. Not when I was covering the good stuff.
One hand went to my shoulders, and he pressed me forward so I was bending over the counter.
The other went between my legs.
I flinched when he slipped his fingers through my folds, hating that I was so wet already when all he’d done was turn caveman on me. But no one did Neanderthal like Dec. No one could piss me off and turn me on at the same time like he could.
A soft grunt escaped him, and I watched his eyes close as he explored my sex, rubbing my clit, playing with my labia. His expression reminded me of someone who’d found inner frickin’ peace, but that was definitely not what my pussy was. It might be many things, but not inner peace.
I rocked my hips back, straightening and lengthening my spine to encourage him to do more than just touch, but the hard fuck I’d anticipated morphed when he thrust his thumb into my pussy as his fingers stroked my clit.
“You think I could live without this? Without you?” he rasped.
For a second, I didn’t process the words, mostly because my panting breaths were all I could hear.
“I’m not asking you to live without me,” I retorted, spreading my legs and pressing back against him. “It’s one evening, Declan. One evening.”
His other hand gripped my hip and steered me so that I could feel his dick rubbing up against my ass. “One evening in a political hotspot.”
“It’s the White House! It’s the safest place on earth!” My growl turned into a yowl as he corkscrewed his thumb inside me, jerking me onto tiptoe as I squirmed against him.
“You wouldn’t be taken to a fucking bunker if something went wrong, Aela,” he snapped. “You’d just be—”
Dropping my hand between my legs, I grabbed his wrist and awkwardly shoved away from him. Then, I twisted around, pushed my chest against his, and spat, “You’re being crazy.”
“You make me crazy,” he snarled. “The idea of losing you—”
“I’m not going anywhere!” I howled. “It’s one evening. A fucking boring party with tedious people. It will take a couple of hours of schmoozing then I’ll be back with your insane ass—”
He snagged me by the waist, hefted me onto the bathroom counter, then spread my legs and moved between them.
Before I could finish my sentence, his dick was inside me and his face was pushing up against mine. His breath was hot and heavy as he ground out, “You’re never allowed to leave me—”
While I wanted to scream with how fucking fast his cock was tunneling in and out of me, I grabbed the back of his neck again and shoved our foreheads together.
“I’m not going anywhere!” I growled even as my heels dug into his ass and I used my grip on his nape to force his mouth into joining with mine.
As he nailed me against the counter, I tongue-fucked him, fighting fire with fire, refusing to back down when this was important to me.
Like a furious beast, he claimed me and re-claimed me. Over and over. Each thrust imprinting on me, taking me, binding him to me.
But that was what he didn’t understand.
He’d imprinted on me almost two decades ago.
He’d taken me and bound me to him before Shay was even a twinkle in my fucking eye.
I was his.
And he was mine.
Years had been stolen from us, but nothing else would be.
I wouldn’t let it.
As I fucked him back, not just with my tongue and teeth and lips but by thrusting against him, screwing him as much as he screwed me, I felt the orgasm creep up on me with all the finesse of a hammer to the temple.
This time, when I howled, it wasn’t with outrage, it was with relief and release.
My pussy clamped down around his dick, demanding his seed, demanding he fill me, demanding he brand me with his heat, and when he exploded inside me, only then did I pull my mouth from his, did I let go of his nape, and did I embrace him in a fierce hug as we both flew away, broken apart by pleasure, rebuilt again by love.
And as I slumped against him, and as he sagged into me, I whispered in his ear, “You’re stuck with me until the day you die.”
His arms folded around me, and he hugged me tight. “Is that a promise?”
“Bet your ass it is.”
Fifteen
Declan
I was supposed to wait for her on the jet.
Not happening.
I couldn’t do it. I didn’t care if it was crazy, but I needed to be close by.
I had the worst fucking feeling, and I knew I was being paranoid, but nothing about the last twelve months had been easy. The world was crumbling down around us and my woman had just waltzed into the epicenter of the crisis to shake hands on a business deal.
A fucking business deal.
First Ladies didn’t invite artists to state functions the day before the event.
They didn’t discuss business at said state functions.
They danced with dignitaries.
They talked bullshit with politicians from across the globe.
They ate fancy food and drank fancy champagne while plastering on a fake fancy smile.
They did not discuss glassware with a woman whom the Secret Service must have identified as having ties with the Five Points.
Acuig and the O’Donnellys were slowly and steadily becoming mainstream, but fooling a bunch of Manhattan socialites was one thing. The president? The Secret Service?
No.
They knew what and who we were.
But I’d let her go anyway.
“You fucking idiot,” I rasped under my breath, scrubbing a hand over my face as I waited for her to come back to me. As I waited, like Chicken goddamn Little, for the sky to fall around me.
In a car a block away from Pennsylvania Avenue, contained within the limo’s confines, a stranger driving us, more strangers guarding us, I felt like a pressure cooker about to go off.
After burning off some of my frustrations with Cillian Donahue, I should have been feeling triumphant. The bastard had ruined my life, and I’d ended his. But the buzz from torturing him, from working with Finn to make the fucker’s final hours as excruciating as physically possible, had faded.