“I’m afraid so.”
He nestles into my chest. “Mm. You smell like me. My cologne.”
I can’t stop my dopey smile. “I probably smell like sweat and sex and need another shower.”
“Nah.Stay like this.” He glides up and kisses my neck and I’m inclined to agree with him, especially as his hand slips beneath the sheets and closes around my morning wood.
My back arches. “Shit, Loch, rabbits envy your stamina.”
He laughs, reverberations setting off small earthquakes across my skin. “It’s your fault, boyo. You’re too hot. Had to go and be my dream guy made flesh.”
His—hiswhat?
I grab his chin and pull him up to kiss me, rolling us so we’re on our sides, early light white and crystalline through the sheer window curtains. My heart chokes all the things I want to say, the questions I want to ask, and I kiss him because that’s less terrifying and my head rings, rings, rings with those words,my dream guy.
We’ve said a lot of things since I came back from Belfast. This isrealnow, isn’t it? We’re together, everything confessed.
Why does it still feel like there’s something being held back behind a bulging door?
“I’m supposed to leave tomorrow,” I murmur. “But I could… stay. Help you settle things with Malachy. Or prepare for your coronation. You’ll have one, right?”
“Yeah.” Loch releases my dick and moans halfheartedly. “Finn and Siobhán will na let me escape without celebrating this.”
“Good. They shouldn’t.” I pause. “Do you… do you want me to stay after today, then?”
Loch pushes up onto his elbow, dragging his hand up my hip, my side, to my shoulder, leaving a trail of shivers in his wake. “I canna be selfish,” he whispers, eyes on the fraction of bed between us.
“No. You should be. Keep me here so I can be selfish, too.”
His lips crack in a smile. But it’s tainted again, that aching shadow that’s been circling him since yesterday morning.
“You have no idea,” he says to the mattress, “how selfish I’ve been already.”
There’s a knock on the door. A booming, insistent,panickedknock,and Loch’s up and snatching on his pants before I can even twist free of the sheets.
He eases the door open a sliver as I’m stumbling through my suitcase, yanking out clothes that aren’t paint-destroyed.
“What?” he snaps into the hall, and I frown at his back, the way he’s a mix of terrified and angry.
“Malachy’s here,” comes Siobhán’s voice. “He’s screaming about our magic andyouand—”
“Get down here,” Finn barks. God, they’ve both come. “We’ll keep him in the hall. Put some more clothes on.”
Their footsteps thunder away.
Loch holds still in the barely open door. I rip on a shirt, but when he looks back, his eyes don’t meet mine.
“I have to—”
“Go,” I tell him. “Go. I’ll meet you there.”
“Kris.” Now he does look at me. Through his anger and fear, he’s pleading. “If I asked you to stay away—”
“I’d tell you to shut up, you idiot. Of course I’m going. Get dressed or I’ll be down there first and yell at your uncle myself.”
He crosses the room and kisses me. I rock into it, briefly thrown into an abyss by the demanding control of his mouth.
“You’re a stubborn arse,” he says, almost mournfully, but he finally leaves.
