Page 27

Chapter 27

Declan

My breath comes in ragged gasps as my pulse thunders in my ears. I’m so spent that it’s next to impossible to move, but I know my weight bearing down on Hannah like this probably isn’t the most comfortable and I don’t want to crush her, so I pull out gently and ease back from her.

I examine her throat for any marks while I try to collect myself. I was careful not to leave anything behind, and it looks like my caution paid off because, as far as I can tell, there aren’t any marks or giveaways. Good thing too, because I don’t know what would happen if Coach Dunaway noticed an obviously hand-shaped mark on his daughter’s throat the next time he saw her.

But I don’t think I can say the same for her ass. It’s bright red and physically hot to the touch when I drag my fingers gently across the raised handprint I left there. She hisses and squirms beneath me.

“How do you feel?” I ask softly, and she rolls over slightly to look me in the eye.

“I’m amazing. I have to admit, I’ve never been brave enough to ask a guy to do any of that stuff during sex before, even though I wanted it,” she murmurs.

A flash of possessiveness surges in my stomach at the thought of her being with any other man than me. But it passes quickly, cooled by the fact that she feels comfortable enough with me—and only me—to be so open, sexually and otherwise.

I lean down to kiss her, deep and hungry. “You can ask me for anything you want. Anything at all,” I murmur against her lips, and she shivers beneath me in response as we break apart. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Hannah lazily lifts a finger to point in the general direction, so I climb off the bed and make my way across the dark room to a door that leads to the bathroom. I flip the light switch on, wincing and blinking against the sudden brightness until my eyes adjust, then step over to the toilet to peel off the condom and get rid of it.

And just like I was hoping to find, there’s a bathtub in here. Without asking, I kneel beside the tub and use the plug to block the drain, then turn on the water and use the back of my hands to test the temperature until it’s perfect. Just hot enough to ease Hannah’s soreness but not so hot that it’s going to be too much. I walk back into the bedroom while I’m waiting for the tub to fill, and Hannah pushes herself up onto her elbows and eyes me curiously as I enter.

“What are you doing?” she asks when I stop in front of her, but I don’t give her an answer.

I just scoop her up off the bed into my arms and hold her against my chest and carry her into the bathroom like the precious cargo that she is. There isn’t anywhere else to put her, so I set her gently down on the bathroom counter and she hisses at the coldness of the surface against her still-stinging ass.

“Are you okay?” I ask, and she nods.

“Yeah, it actually feels really good. But I think that water is gonna feel even better.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Do you have any bubble bath or bath bombs or anything like that?”

She nods and taps the under-sink cabinet with one of her dangling feet. “Yeah, in here.”

I kneel beside her, my eyes drawn to her still-wet pussy, and kiss the tip of her knee as I open the cabinet to search for something to put in the water. Just like she said, there are several individually wrapped bath bombs resting inside, so I grab one and tear open the packaging, then toss it into the water with a splash. The water hisses as the bomb starts to dissolve, filling the room with the sound.

“There we go,” I say as I scoop her back into my arms. It’s uncommon, especially in apartments these days, but hers actually has a bathtub that’s big enough to hold both of us.

She links her hands around my neck, and I step over the lip of the tub. The hot water rises up my legs, and it already feels great, so I can only imagine how amazing it’s going to feel for her when we sink into it. The water displaces as we lower ourselves under the surface, rising up over both of our chests. While Hannah adjusts to the temperature, I reach around her to switch off the faucet.

“It’s sweet of you to draw a bath for me like this,” she says as she draws circles in the bubbles with her fingertips. I kiss the back of her shoulder.

“I want to take care of you and make sure you’re not too sore later. We went pretty hard.”

“You’ve already taken perfect care of me,” she says, although she tips her head backward to rest it on my shoulder. Her eyes stare up into mine, and I kiss her forehead.

“I know, but I want to do more. Will you let me?”

Smiling, Hannah nods, so I wrap my hands around her waist to pull her body closer to mine. She’s sitting between my legs, her knees pulled up to her chest. I scoop some of the water and bubbles into one hand and spill it over both of her shoulders. My fingers find their way to her beautiful hair, and I run them through it. She sighs contentedly against me, her eyes fluttering shut.

“Can I wash your hair?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know, hummingbird. Believe it or not, I want to,” I tell her. “I really fucking want to.”

Her eyes open again, something unreadable passing through them for a moment, and then she nods again.

I use both of my hands to cup enough water to wet her hair and let it fall over her head. When it’s good and wet, I reach for the bottle of shampoo resting on the edge of the tub and drizzle some into my palm before working it into a lather. My fingertips massage her scalp in slow, firm circles and work the shampoo into it and her hair. She moans against me, and it’s not sexual at all, but being close and intimate with her like this still turns me on.

And when I later rinse the shampoo out of her hair, she sighs and melts into my arms, content and relaxed. I’ve loved every second of this, but knowing she feels safe and comfortable enough with me to totally relax like this is easily the best part of it. I lose myself in the moment as we float in the warm, soothing water, Hannah’s back bobbing against my chest and her long, dark hair spreading out across the surface.

I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close and holding her there, and her hands float up to mine. Our fingers link, and she gives me a tender squeeze before she moves her hands to my forearms and starts tracing the tips of her fingers up toward my biceps until one of them pauses over a scar on my right arm.

“How did you get this?” she asks softly with her eyes closed as she follows the shape and line of the scar with her finger like she can read it through her touch.

I chuckle. “Oh, you know, the usual stupid little boy stuff.”

Hannah laughs with me. “What did you do?”

“I thought it would be a good idea to race another kid when we were ice skating on this frozen pond near our school one winter. I got up to speed and was leaving him in the dust, and I looked over my shoulder to make a face at him. Next thing I knew, I caught a rock in my skate and went down hard on my arm. I ended up breaking it in the fall.”

“Ouch. Well, looks like it healed okay in the end.”

“More than okay. I remember when they cut the cast off, the doctors couldn’t believe the x-rays. They swore it looked like I’d never broken it at all. But I guess I have my mom to thank for that.”

“Did she take good care of you?”

I laugh. “If you’d asked me back then, I probably would’ve said she took too good care of me. But I love her for it now. If she hadn’t been there to force me to take it easy and give my arm time to heal, I probably would’ve made it much worse.”

“So your stubbornness isn’t new?” she teases, pulling another laugh from me.

“I’m not stubborn. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh. Sure you don’t. That’s why you’re literally being stubborn right this second.”

I squeeze her against me affectionately. “That was a joke just for you. But what about you? Have you ever broken a bone before?”

“I haven’t.” Hannah falls quiet for a moment as she twirls her fingertips across the surface of the water. “But Casey broke his arm once when we were younger.”

My heart tightens at the mention of her brother. She hasn’t talked about him much, and I want to make sure that I’m here for her now that she is.

“What happened?”

“He saved me.”

“From what?”

Hannah chuckles and shakes her head against my chest, her eyes still shut. “It was crazy. We had this neighbor when we were younger who had this kind of out-of-control dog. It was a golden retriever named Cookie, and she seemed like the sweetest dog in the world—until she got angry.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what got into her, but one day, Casey and I had just gotten off the school bus and were walking home from the bus stop. Our neighbors had this huge fence in their yard that kept Cookie away from everyone, but that day something must have really pissed her off because she soared over the fence and came charging right at me.”

“Jesus. Just totally unprompted?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t even looking in her direction when it happened, but thank god Casey was paying attention. He must have heard her barreling toward me or something, and he jumped between us to use himself as a shield. We fell over together, and I landed on his arm and broke it.”

“Wow, so he saved you just for you to break his arm in thanks.”

Hannah laughs. “He definitely didn’t take it that way. But yeah, that’s the gist of it. I’m just glad he was there when it happened. I don’t even want to think about what might have happened if he wasn’t. But he was always like that, always looking out for me.”

My heart aches listening to the potent mix of love and pain in Hannah’s voice as she remembers her brother. Obviously, I never met him, but he must have been an amazing guy if he had such an impact on her. I don’t have any siblings, so I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to lose one, especially at such a young age. But it just goes to show how strong she is, and how strong her whole family is. Sure, they still have their difficult times with it like Hannah’s told me, and they probably always will, but it seems to me like they’re handling it much better than most people.

I kiss the top of her head. “Thank you for sharing that with me. Your brother sounds like he was a really special person.”

Hannah nods. “Yeah, he really was.” She falls silent again, and I don’t know where she went in her mind, but I don’t want to rush her. If and when she’s ready to share more about her brother and what she’s been through, I’ll be here to listen, but it has to be on her time and terms. I’m expecting her to let the conversation pass, but instead she frees herself from my grip and spins in the tub to face me, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“But that’s why I don’t get it,” she mumbles with her chin resting on one of her knees, not looking at me. I reach out to stroke her cheek with my thumb.

“Don’t get what?”

She slowly glances over at me and holds my gaze for a few moments like she’s trying to find the words, or like maybe she’s afraid to say them. The corners of her eyes start to well with tears. “Why he had to die but I didn’t. We were twins, and we shared so much of the same DNA. So why did he get cancer when I didn’t?”

Instinctively, I wrap my arms around her again and pull her head to my chest and cradle her there. I give her several kisses.

“I’m so sorry. Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t have the answers for,” I tell her, thinking of what my mom is going through and if I’ll be able to cope if I ever lose her. It’s not at all the same thing as losing a sibling, but I can still relate. “Survivor’s guilt is a real thing. It’s hard to deal with.”

Hannah falls silent again, letting me rock her against my body. A few beats pass before she looks up at me again and smiles. “Thank you for listening to me.”

“Always,” I tell her and lean in to kiss her.

Our lips have just touched when something crashes into the water, splashing and scaring the hell out of us both. I twist a bit in the tub to find a cat sitting on one of the edges and a small bottle of face wash bobbing in the water.

“Did you do this?” I ask the cat as I lift the bottle out of the water and carefully put it back on the lip of the tub. But as soon as I do, the cat swipes out with its paw and knocks it right back into the water. Laughing, I try again, but the cat isn’t giving up, as if we’re playing some sort of back-and-forth game.

“Ralph, quit it,” Hannah says through a laugh and flicks water off her fingertips to scare the cat away, but it doesn’t move. It just glares at her, unamused. Hannah laughs again and looks at me in disbelief. “I think she’s testing you.”

“Oh really? How am I doing on that test so far?”

She smirks. “You’re basically becoming Ralph’s bitch.”

I bark out a laugh and splash water at her. “Well, I guess that’s fitting because Ralph’s mama has me wrapped around her finger.”

Hannah’s gaze softens as she stares into my eyes, and she cups my jaw in both of her hands to pull me in for another kiss. I wrap my arms around her, feeling every inch of my body react to her closeness and the feelings that are raging inside me.

And when Ralph bats the face wash into the water again, I barely notice.