Page 60 of Chain Me
In the aftermath, he went limp, his arms around me. Skimming along my jaw, his mouth found the crook of my shoulder next, his fangs delivering the barest tease of pressure.
Then he stiffened.
“Sir?” a soft voice sweetly called. “We will be experiencing some turbulence. The pilot requests that you buckle up for safety.”
He shrugged me off him, maneuvering me onto my side. A strap of leather fell across my waist, easily secured by his quick fingers. Before I could even register the loss of his touch, he resettled beside me, so close that my face rested against his chest.
As reality reasserted its presence, it became almost impossible to swallow down an irrational panic. Prudish shame nibbled at the flesh of my cheeks, reddening them. Moisture slicked my inner thighs. I could still feel traces of him lingering inside me, and my poor, addled brain struggled to process it all without reverting to the instinct that only now I could admit was a defense mechanism—denial.
Dublin’s hand tensed over my lower back as if waiting for just that reaction. God, it was as though he could truly read my mind, anticipate every action.
So I bit my lip and then blurted out the only question I could. “Should I be worried that your attendant doesn’t seem to mind when you have sex in your private airplane?”
He went still. Then he shrugged. “She’s seen worse. Trust me when I say that this may be a welcome change of pace for her.”
Something told me he wasn’t referring to sex.
And my desperation for any random—safe—topic grew. “Where… Where were you born?”
He stiffened further, but his hand remained, bracing me to his side as the cabin shuddered, buffeted by a sudden tempest.
“Eireann,” he finally said once the motion settled. “Or Ireland—some called it that, even back then.”
A rather obvious realization dawned on me. “Is that why you go by Dublin?”
He shrugged, his fingers fanning out along my spine. “A bit cliché, but it gets the point across.”
I had to admit that it did. But there was more to it. The truth lurking within his name that I’d discovered on a whim what felt like a lifetime ago. How, when unscrambled, the letters composing Dublin Helos formed a morbid phrase—is hell bound.
“Why don’t you live there?”
“Let’s just say…” He trailed off, deep in thought, and a part of me tensed. I’d accidentally triggered something delicate. I held my breath as he withdrew his hand, but a heartbeat later, his fingers brushed my shoulder, teasing the edges of my hair. “I haven’t earned the right to return.”
In my right mind, I might have never pressed him for more. But as the plane jolted again, his arm went around my shoulders, keeping me secured despite the fact that he hadn’t bothered to fasten himself in.
“How long has it been?” I asked if only to distract from his nearness.
“In years?” He tilted his head as if he had never thought back to count the time before. “Centuries?”
“Oh.” I swallowed. Spending even a full year away from Gray Manor seemed too long to fathom. Not out of fondness perhaps—but duty. It was my legacy, the one thing in existence resolutely mine.
I tried to picture how it might look after centuries of absence. Of one day returning to find my family home a husk of its former self. Would I mourn it? Probably.
And the thought made me realize that anything Dublin might have cherished in his homeland was now most certainly dust. He grabbed my hand and I realized I’d been toying with the object on my middle finger—a cheap, plastic ring.
He eyed it wordlessly, raking his thumb across the bead’s dull surface. As he released me, he shifted, pulling me more firmly to his side. The belt fastened around me offered enough slack that I could draw my knees up and rest my head against his shoulder.
“Why did you leave?” he asked, his gaze still on my ring. “When you went to the manor? Let me voice my crude assumption now. François is your lover and you were planning to escape to France and live out your eternity in marital bliss.”
I nearly choked. “That’s a very…specific suspicion.”
“That isn’t a denial,” he pointed out. A muscle in his jaw flexed, stiff with tension.
“Well, you were meeting withKate,” I pointed out. “I remember her, you do realize? The woman whose contract you managed for Raphael. You must have thoroughly enjoyed her ‘services’ in order to invite her to live with you.”
I loathed the raw emotion that leeched into my tone.
My cheeks flamed as his eyes cut down to mine. “You’re jealous of her.” He phrased it like some momentous revelation.
