Page 69 of Fight for Love

Eric looked devastated. “But I thought—”

Caelan still didn’t turn to look at Eric. “Tomorrow, Ogarkov is going to squeal. When he does, you’ll be bumped to the top of their most-wanted list. So as a courtesy to an old friend, I’m now giving ye twelve hours to get the fuck someplace else. Or, ye’ll find yourself in less pleasant company come tomorrow evening. Do we ken one another at last?”

Eric looked broken, defeated… a husk. Then he lifted his head and looked right at me with those tearful eyes. “I really do love you, Flora. And I don’t believe you deserve him. Nobody does. You know what he is now. We both do. But we can’t help ourselves.” He seemed to stare at me as if to say, “Look at what he just did to me.”

I watched, horrified as he gathered his things, got dressed and left the place. The front door banged shut downstairs, and I thought, well, that’s that. He was guilty, after all.

Or he wouldn’t have left at all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I slept in the next day and then spent an hour staring up at the ceiling, reliving the previous night. It was the mouth fucking I thought of mostly and the violent nature of the act. How he’d stayed fully hard throughout. Perhaps he’d really been able to vacate and imagine it was my mouth or another woman’s mouth. Or maybe men weren’t like that and any mouth at all would do, so long as it was wet, warm and willing. If not those things, then the scent of sex in the air, the things we’d all done together. Maybe they were what had kept him so aroused.

What I was yet to entertain fully was this notion that it had been the violence of the act that’d kept him hard. I didn’t want to believe Caelan was like all the other men in his family. I also didn’t want to believe he had ever done that to a woman.

There was no doubt in my mind that the pair of them were engaged in a battle of wits and I was caught right in the middle of it. Caelan had wanted to prove that Eric was only doing this to get close to him, while Eric had been hell-bent on showing me Caelan’s true nature.

That look in his eyes right before he left last night still haunted me.Look at what he just did to me.

I’d watched the whole thing. How Caelan had stuffed himself far deeper into Eric’s mouth than seemed possible. Caelan’s muscles had tensed and his veins were popping by the time he was coming. Sweat was slick down his body. He’d enjoyed it a lot.

Was that what he really wanted from me?

She’s no ready for that side of me yet.Perhaps a side of him only another man could take.

Caelan brought Logan into the bedroom at around 11am and handed me the baby.

“We’ve had a lovely father-son morning. Lots of cuddles, and he’s had a couple of bottles of your frozen stuff… we took a bath. Played on the mat. He’s getting so big, Flora.”

It was these moments that made me forget about everything else. That light and pure joy in Caelan’s eyes ousted all bad vibes. That fatherly pride was pure magic. Whatever else Caelan was, the one thing I could say for sure was that he was an amazing father. This role was the one he’d waited for his whole life.

“I have to go to work today.” He stared into the distance. “But it’s nearly over, I swear.”

“We have a lot to talk about, Caelan.”

He turned his head and surveyed me like he’d nearly forgotten I was still in the room. “Aye, lass.” And there was gentle, Scottish Caelan again. A different beast.

“Did you push him very hard in training? Is that why he fell for you?”

Caelan looked down at his own hands. “I saw myself in him and decided he could take it.”

“You made him like you?”

Caelan sighed and dragged a hand through his unruly hair which had gotten unkempt of late, having not been cut since well before Ukraine. His beard he’d trimmed, but the wild-man look I actually kind of enjoyed.

“I had to choose someone who’d one day take up my place, if the time came, like it did for Logan. But nobody is me Flora, that’s the point. Ye ken why they come to me, Flora. Why they always come to me.”

There really was only one of Caelan. “And you? Why are you the way you are?” I kept my voice impassive.

“I ask myself that all the time and always come up with the same answer.” He gave me a grave look then and grunted. “It wouldna matter where I was born or to whom or how, this is me. With this brain, these hands… and this desire to vanquish.”

I inhaled sharply and shuddered. “I agree.” I reached out for his hand and he teased his fingers between mine, a loving husband bidding good morning to his loving wife.

Or so it seemed.

“I don’t want Logan to be anything like you, Caelan.”

His eyes snapped to mine and that feral animal stared back at me.

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