Page 55 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
“Greedy slut,” he snarls, his words broken by groans. “You’re going to keep coming for me until I fill you. Until you’re ruined and dripping with my seed.”
The words undo me. My body bows back, my orgasm crashing through me, clenching down on his cock so hard he curses, his hands digging bruises into my hips. He fucks me through it, groaning into my chest, thrusts ragged, desperate now.
“I can’t hold it anymore,” he growls, his voice wrecked. “You’re too tight. Too wet. I’m gonna come, Aoife.”
“Do it,” I beg, grinding down harder, my breasts bouncing under his greedy hands. “Give me every last drop. Fill me until I’m dripping. Don’t you dare stop.”
His roar fills the car as he slams up into me, cock jerking, hot and thick spurts spilling deep. He holds me down hard, buried to the hilt, grinding to push it all in. His mouth latches onto my breast one last time, biting hard as he empties himself, groaning like a man broken.
I milk him with my cunt, clenching, rolling, grinding slow as he floods me, his hips jerking through every last pulse. The wet sounds are obscene, cum spilling, our bodies shaking together until we collapse in a mess of sweat, spit, and heat.
The windows are dripping with condensation, the car reeking of sex. His hands stay locked on my breasts, thumbs stroking lazily over the swollen nipples he mauled, while his cock softens inside me, still leaking, still filling.
I rest my head against his shoulder, marked, sore, and hungry for more. We don’t speak for a few breaths—just the soft tick of the cooling engine and the slow drag of our lungs figuring out where to put the air again. My dress is rucked to my waist, tights around one ankle like a shipwrecked thing, his shirt half-buttoned wrong and damp where I bit his clavicle. He kisses the crown of my head and finally eases out of me with a wet, obscene slip that pulls a shiver down my spine. I groan, low, more protest than complaint.
“Greedy,” he murmurs, voice a wrecked velvet.
“Occupational hazard,” I say, tugging my skirt down and wiping my thigh with the corner of his handkerchief. “Chef. Always thinking about seconds.”
He laughs, quiet and satisfied, then reaches to fix my bra with the absent competence of a man who’s learned the fasteners by heart. I smooth lipstick over the bruised bow of my mouth with a fingertip, catch our reflection ghosted in the fogged glass—two sinners, steamed and smiling like we got away with something.
The wipers squeak once. He starts the car. Winter air slithers in through the cracked window, smelling of salt and old snow. We roll through the iron gates, gravel crunching, the estate rising from the dark like a lesson I never learned the first time. His hand slides to my knee, a claim and a comfort both, and I let it stay.
Then I see the shape on the steps—one of his men, collar up, shoulders tight. He waits for us to sober up. When Declan rolls the window down, he leans in and says only, voice flat as a bell at midnight, “There’s been another body.”
22
AOIFE
Next morning, I wake to the soft weight of my son pressed along my ribs and the heavier, warmer weight of Declan’s forearm draped across both of us, a quiet, possessive line that turns our three bodies into one small, breathing shape under the linen. Liam’s curls are tucked under my chin, his breath sweet and even, the faintest snore catching on the inhale like a hiccup he’s too sleepy to finish. Declan’s hand is splayed over Liam’s back, wide and sure, his thumb moving once in a slow, absent stroke that tells me he’s half-awake and listening to the silence the way he listens to a room full of men deciding whether to lie.
The curtains billow at the open window, salt sliding in with the morning. Somewhere beyond the meadow, the water makes its tireless hush against the rocks, a sound like a lullaby that forgot it was meant to end. I lie there and let the quiet settle into me, and for a beat—one long, disorienting beat—I feel the smallest flicker of peace, the kind that does not announce itself, the kind that just arrives and sits down as if to say,Look. This is possible.
Liam stirs. “Mama,” he murmurs, not opening his eyes, “your hair’s in my face.”
“Your face is in my hair,” I whisper back, and ease a curl off his cheek. Declan’s arm tightens by a fraction, a reflex. His voice, when it comes, is a rough scrape against the bright morning. “Five more minutes,” he says, which is what he tells Liam before bedtime when the story is too good and the world is too big.
“Two,” I counter.
“Three and a bribe,” he says, eyes still closed.
“What’s the bribe?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” he says, and now he does open his eyes, and there is something boyish there that makes me understand how dangerous hope can be.
The country house is smaller than the estate and kinder. White clapboard, deep porch, windows that look like they were meant to frame a sea. In the kitchen, the floorboards are scuffed by a century of boots and bare feet and the kind of chair legs that never learned to sit still. The stove is an old beauty with enamel knobs. The kettle sings like an alto. Declan has brought us here “for air,” he said, after the city felt like it had grown teeth again. “No security,” he promised, which I noticed he delivered the way a magician delivers a trick—quietly, with a flourish you almost miss. If there are men on the road or a boat idling out past the point, I don’t see them. I see only a strip of meadow and a path that runs to the shore and a day so clear I could slice it and lay it on a plate.
Liam pads into the kitchen in his socks and a dinosaur shirt that has survived every spill known to man. He climbs onto a stool and thumps both palms on the counter. “Bread,” he announces. “I am the official taster.”
“Official tasters must wash hands,” I say, pointing to the sink.
He groans as if I’ve asked him to climb Everest, then washes with operatic suffering and returns with dripping fingers. I handhim a towel and set out the bowls. Flour, salt, baking soda for the soda bread twists. Strong bread flour and yeast for the loaf he insists should be “big enough for a dragon.”
Declan leans in the doorway, shirt sleeves rolled, watching like he’s learning a language he once spoke but forgot the grammar of. “You’ll let me help,” he says, not quite a question.
“You can be my sous,” I tell him.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Is there a hat?”
