Page 22 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)
Valentina
T his plane ride is about a million times more comfortable than my flight into Dublin.
The crappy thing is that I’m too numb to appreciate it.
Now that the shock of Papà’s death has had time to filter through me, I just feel hollow.
I’m not sad. At least, not right now. I can’t say I’ll be able to maintain that numbness once I see Mamma.
I have a feeling that her grief will be the catalyst to my own.
At least I’m not alone, though I would have come on my own if I had to. But Darragh’s here with me. I still can’t quite believe it. I thought he’d scoff at my request to come with me to Toronto, laugh in my fucking face, then lock me away and burn my passport.
But instead, he’s arranged everything. He lounges on the creamy leather seat across from mine, one elbow on the armrest, his chin atop his hand as he glares grimly at the window.
And I really mean at it, not out it. Because I don’t think he registers anything beyond the flat darkness of the glass. Not even his own reflection in it.
My bag sits between my feet on the floor. Darragh chucked the ring into it back in the parking garage. But he hasn’t mentioned it once since then.
And neither have I.
I’m so tired.
I should try to get some sleep.
But instead, I speak, because I can’t continue looking at the brutal, regal outlines of Darragh’s profile, marred by the scratches I’ve left. I can’t continue sitting here while he keeps his gaze glued to the window instead of me.
“So what happens when we land? I’ll go straight to my house?”
Weird how I say “my house.” Weird how I don’t say “home.”
“No.”
“No?” I bristle. “We’re not flying back to Toronto just so you can hide me away somewhere or hold me prisoner.”
“That isn’t what I said.” Finally, he looks at me.
Only I find I’m not prepared for it. Not prepared for the way his eyes can pin me.
Strip me bare. “We’re going to be landing in the middle of the night Toronto-time.
I doubt your mammy will be in a state to receive you.
And we don’t even know if she’s left Montréal yet or not. ”
“OK. All of that is true. But even if she’s still in Montréal, I can go to the house and-”
“You’ll be sleeping at my place.”
I sit up straighter.
“Your place?” I don’t even know where Darragh lives. Besides the cottage beside ours, I’ve never seen any of his properties. “Where is it?”
“ Them, ” he corrects. “You can take your pick on where we stay. I’ve got houses in Rosedale and Forest Hill. Plus the condo in Yorkville.”
“Not the condo,” I tell him immediately. Even though I’m sure any condo Darragh owns will be spacious and luxurious, I can’t stomach the thought of sleeping in a box in the sky tonight. Not when Papà is in a box of his own now.
Keep it together.
“We’ll go to the Forest Hill house,” he says. “That’s where I usually live.” A faint smile touches his lips. “You look surprised by that statement.”
I can picture him as a teenager in the Dublin townhouse.
But, here, now? This massive, tattooed murderer?
I can’t imagine him doing mundane things like having his morning coffee or brushing his teeth in the same bathroom every night.
Even when we were technically neighbours on Georgian Bay, he came and went like some spirit from a story.
He said he came there to sleep. But I never even saw him do that.
“I just… I don’t know why, but I find it hard to picture you actually living somewhere.”
He laughs. I lean forward, like I can dive into the sound.
“What, pet?” he asks with another low chuckle. “You think when I’m in Toronto, I just crawl through the sewers like a rat? Or is it that you can’t picture me living somewhere, because when I’m not with you, I must not be living at all?”
“I…”
He shakes his head, still smirking.
“I’m not offended. Both those statements have a bit of essential truth to them.”
“It’s true that you’re a sewer rat?”
“And that I’m not really alive without you.”
He tips his head back and closes his eyes. I don’t know if he actually sleeps or not. Be he doesn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the flight.
I don’t sleep on the flight, but I do fall asleep as Darragh drives us to Forest Hill, curled up against the seat heater on the passenger side.
It’s unseasonably chilly for early October, even by Ontario standards, and it feels extra cold compared to Dublin’s milder climate.
It’s distinctly unwelcoming. Like the very air is rejecting us.
Trying to push us back across the ocean.
But the seat heater works just fine, and I lose myself to the world, rocked by the lullaby of wheels on highways and the signs of familiar streets greeting me in a blur every time I blearily open my eyes.
Distantly, I become aware of stillness. The car has stopped. The heat from the seat rapidly recedes. I whimper in complaint, snuggling down closer to the leather, trying to hold on to the last dregs of warmth.
But a sudden gust of frosty wind ruins any hope I have of clinging onto heat. There’s a click, and the release of pressure as my seatbelt is undone for me.
For a twisted moment, I half-dream I’m with Papà.
Because for every time he hurt me, or ignored me, or did horrible shit to me, there were also times that he undid my seatbelt for me and carried my small, sleeping body from the car into the house so that I wouldn’t have to wake up and walk through the cold on my own.
But this isn’t Papà’s scent. These aren’t his bulky arms. They’re stronger, longer, leaner.
Darragh lifts me easily, cradling me gingerly against his chest. He pauses to grab something – my bag, I think – then closes the car door and walks.
I wrap my arms around his neck, nuzzling my nose against his throat. Seeking heat. Seeking him.
Between sleepy blinks, I glimpse the outline of a stunningly huge and even more stunningly beautiful white stone house surrounded by trees. Inside the darkened foyer, Darragh locks the door behind us, then resets an alarm on a pad on the wall.
Then, he takes me upstairs.
He doesn’t turn on a single light. I observe nothing beyond dark halls and then the dark walls of his bedroom. He lays me down on the bed, then straightens as if he means to turn and go.
“Don’t leave,” I whisper, catching his hand in mine. I can barely see him like this. He’s nothing but a shadow. A silhouetted presence in the dark.
But his hand is warm, and his voice is as real as it’s ever been when he rasps, “My heart can barely take it when you resist me, Valentina. I don’t how I’ll survive you if you beg.”
“You’ll find a way. Sewer rats always survive.”
And so does the wolf in my story. The bear in my bed.
“Please, Darragh. Please stay with me.”
I’m being so stupid. There’s no way he’d leave me alone in this house. He’s probably just going to get a drink of water, or to retrieve his own bag. And here I am acting like he’s about to leave me to go off to war or something.
But I’m frantic with the need to keep him with me. In this room, preferably in this bed. I’m suddenly terrified of everything without him. The dark. The strange house. The emptiness opening up in my chest like a wound, sucking everything in.
But not Darragh. He’s too big. He’s got a gravity field of his own. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll keep me from collapsing in on myself entirely.
I sit up, my left hand still holding his.
My right hand goes to the crotch of his jeans.
Darragh is utterly still. The only sound is the slip of the button through its denim loop, the metal zipper sliding down, the rustle of fabric as I pull clothing away from his thick shaft.
It jerks in my hand, velvet and electric.
I lower my head and take his tip into my mouth.
Now he makes a sound. A sharply hissed inhale between clenched teeth.
He throbs in me, and it’s a marvel, nearly fucking magical, the way human flesh can grow and stiffen like this.
I feel every lurch of his shaft against my tongue and the sensitive walls of my mouth.
I taste him in a way I’ve never tasted him before, all strange masculine salt.
I’ve never done this. I probably don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
I worry that I’m terrible, that he’s going to roll his eyes and push me away when I start to clumsily suck him.
But he gives a bone-deep groan, gripping the back of my head with his free hand.
His chest heaving above me, he starts fucking into my mouth fully hard, like stone made living flesh.
“I’ve imagined being in your mouth so many times,” he admits between panted breaths. “Never thought you’d do it willingly. Always thought I’d have to pin you down and fuck your throat without permission.”
My pussy clenches at that image. I wonder why he hasn’t tried.
On an especially urgent thrust, my teeth make contact with his flesh, and there I have my answer. It’s not like I haven’t bitten him before. That kiss in the club. I made him bleed.
“Touch yourself.”
I moan around his dick at the harsh command. I slide my hand beneath my sweatpants rubbing my clit fast and hard.
“Good,” he groans, massaging my scalp. “I want you dripping. I want you so fucking messy for me, Valentina.”
I think I already am. Moisture soaks my panties, dampening my fingers through the fabric. I’m going to come already. Somehow, he must sense it. Because he immediately growls, “Not yet,” then fists my hair and pulls my head away.
I cry out at the mingling pain and pleasure, the sharpness at my scalp. He lets go of my hair just long enough to strip me of my clothing. Hoodie, bra, panties and sweatpants get discarded in a heap.
And then he’s standing over me, shoving me by the shoulders until I’m pitched backwards onto the bed.
Darragh grabs my legs and hauls me closer to him, so my ass is right at the edge of the mattress.
It’s a high bed. Even with Darragh standing up on those long legs, he doesn’t have to bend awkwardly.
As easily as breathing, as automatic as a heartbeat, his cock finds my entrance and plunges inside. Plunges home.
My back bows right off the bed as he fills me completely. He’s in me to the hilt on his first thrust, and I am broken. I am whole. I am everything and nothing.
Nothing but his.
Even if I never wanted to be. Even if I fought him every step of the way.
That agonizing truth erupts over me as I climax on Darragh’s bare cock. His rhythm hitches in response. So does his breath. And then he’s driving harder, spreading my thighs wider as he leans over me, bracketing my head with his forearms.
He presses his forehead to mine when he comes.
And I dig my nails into his back.