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“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Should it? I have a good arse. So what?”
He said nothing more.
After a while, I added, “My husband’s not bothered, why should you be?”
He didn’t reply and I didn’t look across at him to find out if he was reacting.
“What if I wanted one of them next? Caelan says he’d be up for sharing in future so long as it’s not someone we’re going to have complications with.”
Eric made that noise men make when their teeth are clenched and they grunt from the back of their throat. He was quickly learning that in his absence, Caelan and I had got a lot of things straight. And also, that possession wasn’t keeping someone wrapped up in layers of clothing for only one person to see. Possession was an invisible thing between two people that only came about through trust, love and a shared life.
“I know what he’s doing and so do you.”
“Big deal, you’d swing your dick around too if it were as big—”
Eric didn’t stick around, launching off his lounger and heading indoors.
I vaguely heard some cross words spoken indoors, but Caelan was soon laughing as heavy footsteps stomped up the stairs.
After sunning myself for a little while longer on both sides, I went indoors to see what Caelan had cooked up for lunch. He’d made club sandwiches and some skin-on fries. We ate indoors around the kitchen island while Logan slept in the downstairs crib with the aircon on and his net fully protecting him. After he’d fed me, he made the guys their lunches and yelled, “Scran, ye set o’ vultures!”
They all came running. Caelan was generous with the cheese and sauces and he made the most deliciously salted fries and deep-fried whole gherkins. Even Eric couldn’t resist, grabbing his food before storming back upstairs like a moody teenager.
After they were all fed, the guys outside went back to surveying the land, wandering like dark sentinels in stark contrast with the white house and blazing, white-hot sun they stood beneath.
Caelan and I went to bed for another round of afternoon delight, this time a towel beneath us as he made lazy, disturbingly adept love to me all through the afternoon, his murmurs of, “Those feckers wanted your arse,” or, “They’d have all had boners had yer top come off,” making me come even harder. I didn’t keep my mouth very tightly closed as I yelled his name and begged him for more.
After we got clean and got back into bed for a little snooze, his cuddles were the best thing about the whole event. It felt like Caelan was getting back to himself and didn’t need me to reassure him anymore.
It was little things like he knew what my favourite foods were. He knew how I took my tea. He knew I hated him to linger in the shower with me while I washed my hair. Washing my hair was my own personal treat, my feminine time. He knew that I liked a thick pillow so always gave me the thick one if we had odd pillows. He’d take a thin shitty one with no complaint. He knew I liked him to get Logan in the morning because it was important to me they bond. My bond with the baby was forged in the womb, but I’d encouraged Caelan to build his.
Caelan had accepted that I needed cuddles in the morning before he left the bed, even though he was the type to want to be up and at ’em well before me. He was never bothered if I went to the toilet in front of him, but he never did his in front of me.
The thing I liked him to do most for me was bring me the occasional care package. It’d have a bottle of wine, some chocolate, a fashion magazine or a dirty book, a face mask, a candle, some flowers and a few scratch cards for fun. I loved it that I wouldn’t have had to say a word about how I was feeling—he would just know.
No wonder I’d gone mad while he was in Ukraine. Losing the reassuring presence I’d come to rely on every day had been much more difficult than I could’ve ever imagined.
That evening Eric went out, telling us he was going to find his own dinner, and we didn’t see him again until the next day.
Chapter Fifty
It was Caelan who knew something was wrong before I did. There was a funny smell in the room as we woke up. Like iron, but… rotting.
“Shite,” my husband cursed, and was off the bed before I’d even rolled over.
I turned my head and saw the blood spatter on Eric, then the gun in his hand.
There was no more Nice Eric, then. Only the real one. His clothes, hair, face… but it was more than that. Shadows lingered in his features. He was not feral, or animal, no. He was a demon, but vacant. Empty. His soul somewhere else. Just this husk left behind. Dead eyes. No light. No mask anymore.
Eric sat in a chair by the window, not far from our sleeping son whose breathing could be heard. Logan was still tucked up and hadn’t made a peep yet. Caelan stood there in his boxer shorts, impotent. Unarmed. He could do nothing.
I swallowed hard and sat up, my breasts tumbling free of the bed linen. Even that didn’t so much as move Eric whose eyes were empty, devoid. He would only look at Caelan.
I moved slowly, reaching for a t-shirt, and pulled it on.
“So there’s nae more acting, is that right?” asked Caelan, who was obviously not surprised.
