Page 83 of Craving Sin

The silence stretches on, becoming more uncomfortable by the second. “I hope so,” Conan finally says. “For him, I hope so. I’m hungry. Would you like something to eat?” Conan stands, and I take his question for what it is—he’s extending an olive branch. Right now, that’s all I can ask for.

“Sure.” I stand too and go with him into the kitchen. He makes sandwiches while I cut up some fruit, and we sit at the table together and eat. “Do you think Cillian will be okay with Rian and me?” I find myself asking.

“Cil wants his father to be happy. He loves him. They love the same—the two of them—big and all-consuming. Cillian will understand because of the way he loves Ollie, and ultimately, Rian and Cillian are a lot alike. They’re both good men who will do anything for someone they love, so yes, he’ll be okay with it as long as you treat his father well. If you hurt him…well, let’s say I won’t be your biggest concern.”

Maybe that’s meant to scare me, maybe it should, maybe I’m getting more fucked up by the second because it doesn’t. “You’re not so bad, Conan.”

“Fuck off,” he says, and I swear, it almost looks like he’s biting back a smile.

“Any news on who wants to kill me?” I joke, trying to keep the conversation going.

“We’re working on it. You don’t have to worry, though. Rian won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I know,” I admit. “I trust him.”

“Good.”

The sound of the front door unlocking, then opening, grabs both our attention.

I turn just in time to see Rian come through the door. My body immediately tenses, nervous about what he’s going to say…about how Cillian took the fact that his father is—I still don’t know what we are—but that his father is something with me.

Rian turns and approaches us in the kitchen, brow raised as he looks back and forth between Conan and me.

“We came to an understanding. I’ll tolerate him now,” Conan says with a quiet and understated playfulness to his voice, but I can’t laugh. Can’t joke around. All I can do is look at Rian.

“Well, that’s good to know…because he’s mine, C,” Rian says, his gaze holding me. “I want him, and he belongs to me.” I tremble at his words, this new need he’s brought out in me. Though maybe it’s not new, it’s always been there, but it took Rian to bring it to the surface—how much I want to belong to someone…no, to him. How much I need to be wanted by him.

“I do,” I say. “I’m yours. No matter what.”

Rian walks over to me, takes my hand, and pulls me to my feet. His response has to mean good news. It must be okay, but I don’t have the strength to ask.

He smiles—the biggest, happiest smile I’ve ever seen from him, and my spine relaxes, the tension in my body dissipating with that big, beautiful smile from this beautiful man. “We’re okay,” he says. “Hell…I think…I think this may have even brought Cillian and me closer together…him knowing that I’m in love.”

The words suck the air out of my lungs, but at the same time, they give me air too, make my heart pump through my body. They give me life. “I love you too.”

He cups my face. “I know.” A soft smile. “You told me in your sleep.” And then he leans in, and Rian is kissing me, his tongue deep in my mouth, his hands digging into my hips, body pushing me against the table. “I want you,” he says against my mouth, my dick throbbing and needy in my pants.

When he pulls back again, I suck in a breath, Rian having kissed it out of me. “What about…” I turn to look at the chair that had been filled not long ago, and it’s empty, plates taken off the table and moved to the counter.

We’re alone.

“He’s very quiet,” Rian says, a lightness to his voice that I want to hold on to.

“And I’m very yours,” I tell him. “Show me.”

“My fucking pleasure.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Rian

I lift Abbott and set him on the table before the energy in the room fuses our mouths together again.

I want to devour him, to consume him, to be so intricately entwined with him that there is no beginning or end to either of us. We’re just an extension of each other, this thing we need to live, because he has brought me back to life.

Abbott’s arms wrap around my neck, legs around my body. My tongue pushes into his mouth, tasting what has become so familiar to me in such a short amount of time.

One of his hands slides off my shoulder, then moves between us, his palm grinding against my pounding erection.