Page 18 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)
Valentina
D arragh seems to grow more agitated as the day goes on.
He doesn’t threaten to kill Papà again, but I know he’s thinking about it, because I can hear him talking to Rowan about getting some updates from Tommy.
At one point, Darragh steps into the small courtyard to make a call.
I see him out there as I head into the kitchen for something else to eat.
Rowan is in there, evidently with the same thought I had. He’s holding the fridge open with a massive, meaty hand, but at the sight of me, he lets it fall shut.
“Hi again,” I say.
“Is there something I can do for you?” He says it stiffly.
Grudgingly. Like the only reason he speaks to me at all is because of his boss just on the other side of the glass door at the back of the house.
We’ve been here all day at this point. The sun is setting, brushing Darragh with strokes of indigo and bronze while inky shadows pool at his feet.
He’s got his phone against his ear. He isn’t moving. His back is to me.
“Is he talking to Tommy?” I watch Rowan’s wary look, and flap my hand at him. “Darragh already told me Tommy’s his man in Montréal right now. Is he calling for information on my papà?”
My mouth goes chalky and dry at the question.
I can’t decide if I even want to know what’s happened to papà or not.
Right now, I can exist in a floating sort of limbo.
Nothing’s certain. No decisions have to be made.
A nice little protective cloak of bubble wrap, inflated with ignorance instead of air.
Rowan gives me a slight nod.
I nod back, much more enthusiastically.
“Tommy’s the one who got me on that plane, too, right? And sent Darragh that wedding photo? Ha! To be a fly on the wall when Darragh saw that.”
I’m rambling. I know I am. But I can’t seem to make it stop. Rowan watches me with a flat expression, his eyes flinty.
“What did Darragh do when he saw my wedding photo?” I ask, because suddenly, I have to know.
My abdomen is cramping with the intensity of it.
I squeeze my hands together in front of my belly.
“Did he smash the phone? Or did he do that thing where you expect him to be really mad, but then he laughs?”
“He cried.”
For a second, I think that Rowan’s joking. That he’s throwing out an answer so nonsensical, so absolutely ludicrous, that its whole purpose is to stun me into shutting up. But one look at his face tells me that this is not a man who jokes. Not when it comes to his boss.
“I don’t believe you,” I whisper, even as the memory of Darragh’s earlier words come back to me with painfully breathtaking force.
Dublin is the only place I’ve ever cried.
“Doesn’t really matter if you do,” Rowan says, facing back towards the fridge, dismissing me both with his tone and the turn of his rock-like shoulder. “You asked a question. I answered it.” He opens the fridge, as clear a signal as any that this conversation is over.
Saliva floods my mouth. The bag of stuff Darragh bought me is still in here where I left it. I snatch it from the counter and go rooting around for the painkillers and anti-nausea meds. That’s how Darragh finds me when he comes back in the door.
“Feeling unwell?”
My head snaps up at the sound of his voice. I give a jerky nod.
“We’re done here for the day.” Darragh says it to Rowan, but his eyes don’t ever leave me as I pop an anti-nausea pill and dry swallow it.
He plucks the bag from my grip and then brushes his hand along my lower back before pressing the whole of his palm and fingers there.
His hand is so hot. Like having a heating pad. It feels so hatefully good.
Keeping his hand on my back, Darragh leads me to the front door.
I don’t fight him or argue. At this point, I just want to go lie down.
Outside, the sky at the front of the house is thick with bruise-coloured clouds.
When we reach the sidewalk and start walking, the air shifts suddenly cooler.
There’s a low rumble overhead, then the sky splits open like a punctured water balloon.
I hiss a curse under my breath, scrunching up my face and lifting one of my hands to try to protect myself from the soaking onslaught. Beside me, Darragh’s movements catch in the corner of my eye. Still holding the bag, he’s wrenching off his shirt one-handed.
“Do you really need to be doing that right now?” I shout over the sound of the rain. It’s so loud it sounds like glass marbles dropping all around us and colliding. I shiver, my shoes already drenched and cold. “Let’s just go!”
Once Darragh’s got his shirt off to apparently enjoy the Dublin rain bare-chested, he forces me to take the drugstore bag.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I take it and start walking ahead without him. He’s the one with the key to the townhouse, but at least there’s a little overhang above the door that I can try to stand under while he catches up.
But on those long legs, he catches up immediately. And suddenly, I don’t feel the rain anymore.
I blink water from my lashes and look up to see Darragh’s white T-shirt held taut above my head, like the top of a tent or a tarp.
But instead of posts or poles holding it in place, it’s the inked strength of Darragh’s hands.
He has to walk very close beside me to hold his shirt over my head with both arms like this.
He’s getting absolutely soaked. His hair is nearly black, falling in dripping spikes into his eyes.
His jeans cling to him, heavy from the rain and sliding dangerously low on his hips.
He’s still so fucking big, but his skin looks tighter to his muscles than it should.
Striations of veins make his tattoos buckle and roll on his forearms and biceps.
It only then occurs to me that I haven’t seen him eating once since I’ve arrived here.
“Darragh, stop!” I shout. Even though I’m the one who actually stops.
My legs halt, and I stand to face him on the sidewalk.
Between the rainclouds and the sun setting, it’s gotten much darker already.
Streetlights send their missives out into the night.
They illuminate Darragh, every beautiful, damaged, rain-splattered part of him.
“Put your shirt back on!” I say. My throat catches. I blink and pretend it’s the rain. Even though I can’t feel the rain on my face right now, because he’s keeping it away. “You’re getting all wet!”
“It’s fine, pet,” he says. “I’m not made of sugar.”
Not made of sugar. No, I suppose someone like Darragh Gowan could never claim he was.
But even so, there’s a dark and dangerous sort of sweetness in him. In this. In the way he silently holds his own shirt above my head, no regard at all for himself.
He has to bend his tall frame quite low to hold the shirt in place above me, so despite the height difference between us, his face is very close to mine.
Rain glistens in his hair, rolling down his temples, the crooked bridge of his nose, his jaw.
A streetlight is directly behind him. A halo for my devil.
Angel. Evil. Enemy. Protector.
What the hell is Darragh to me now?
He’s trapped me. He’s fought with me. He’s threatened to kill my father in front of me.
And yet, here he is, soaked from the rain, giving me the literal shirt off his back. I want to cry. Or hit him. Or beg him to stop, because I can’t take these moments of softness. Not from him.
I want to taste the rain on his skin.
It’s that last, immediate desire that obliterates all the rest. I push the handles of the bag up over my wrist so that my hands are free.
My fingers slowly rise. They brush Darragh’s jaw, silken water contrasting with the gentle scrape of stubble there.
Shirtless as he is, I see the way every part of Darragh’s chest, abdomen, and arms go harrowingly taut at my touch.
“What are you doing?” he asks gruffly. I’ve confused him. Knocked him off guard. It doesn’t happen often. His eyes search my face with something close to desperation.
“I just wanted to see if it was true,” I say.
“If what was true?”
“That you weren’t really made of sugar.”
Before he can reply, I slide my hands down to his neck, rise up on my toes.
And kiss him.
Apart from the way I feel the tendons in his neck snap and bulge with a suddenly terrible tension, Darragh doesn’t react to my kiss at all. Not at first. He remains unmoving as I explore the still shape of his mouth with my own, tasting water and whiskey and him.
But when my tongue dares to nudge the seam of his closed lips, he shudders, pulls back a little, then growls, “I know you’re not feeling well, pet.
But if you keep this up…” His eyes are dark and ravenous.
Like his very gaze would swallow me whole if it could.
“Then I am going to fuck you anyway. Whether you’re in pain or not. Whether you complain or not.”
It’s a warning I should heed. A chance to run.
Someone sensible would grab it with both hands.
I grab him instead.
This time, his mouth is hot and hungry and open. His tongue invades my mouth, and desire for him hits my bloodstream like a drug.
What is wrong with me? What has he done to me?
To make me want him this badly?
Rain pummels me anew as Darragh drops his shirt. His hands go to my ribs, my waist, my hips, his touch terrible and urgent. When his hands reach my ass, he squeezes, then hoists me up against the soaking wall of his body.
Instinctively, my legs spread as I’m held aloft.
My thighs lock around his waist, my pussy throbbing at his belly.
Despite Mamma’s near constant comments about me needing to drop a few pounds, Darragh holds me as if I weigh nothing at all, his arms like iron around me.
He never takes his mouth from mine as he walks us towards the door.
I close my eyes and focus entirely on the molten claiming of his kiss, because even though I know he could drop me on my ass in a puddle at any moment, I don’t think he will.