32. Gavin

THIRTY-TWO

gavin

THE SOUND OF a heartbeat, steady and strong, filtered through my dream. In it, I was lying draped over Daire, my head on his chest, and one of my legs tangled with his. Even in sleep he had a protective hold on me, his arm wrapped around my waist, keeping me close.

I didn’t want to wake up.

Here, I could pretend I’d spent all night in his bed as he took me over and over again, never getting enough. Here, I could imagine he’d wanted me to stay for as long as I wanted to. To wake up together, like we were more to each other than a quick fuck. That it wasn’t just our bodies that fit together so well.

I felt so safe. Protected. Wanted. Desired. Why would I want to be anywhere else?

With a happy sigh, I curled into him, shifting carefully so I didn’t wake him. But Dream Daire roused anyway, his eyes still closed as he began to slowly run his fingers through my hair.

Yeah, this was definitely a dream. The move was too gentle to come from Reality Daire, who had nothing gentle about him. Not his words, not his personality, and not at all the sexy, sharply defined muscles I’d spent half of my dream tracing with my tongue.

Just the thought of doing that again had my heart beating a little faster.

Wait—that wasn’t my heartbeat that was speeding up. That was⁠—

I opened my eyes as the hand in my hair ran down my neck to my back. The pulsing beneath my ear belonged to the warm body I was lying across, his chest serving as my pillow.

As the dream faded and awareness began to kick in, I realized where I was.

Dark grey walls with even darker curtains. Metal accents spaced throughout the large room, giving it an edgy street style. And wood floors that were bare except for the heap of clothes Daire had taken off us.

Holy shit, I hadn’t been dreaming at all.

With a start, I jerked my head up, and Daire’s eyes flew open in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” Even barely awake and his voice gravel-rough with sleep, Daire lifted up onto his elbows like he was ready to jump out of bed and take care of whatever the emergency was.

There wasn’t an emergency. Unless you counted the shock rolling through me.

“I’m…” I swallowed, blinking him into focus as the morning sun sliced a path across the bed. “I’m in your room.”

Daire tilted his head to the side, dark brows slashed low. “Yeah. And?”

“I was here all night?” I wasn’t sure why that came out as a question when the answer was obvious, but my brain couldn’t seem to wrap itself around this. I’d rarely set foot in Daire’s room, much less slept there. He’d said so many times around the guys that he wasn’t the “see you in the morning” type.

He dropped his head back on the pillow, pulling me along with him so I was lying on his shoulder.

“You seem surprised,” he said. “Need a reminder of what went down last night?”

Before I could answer, he lowered his mouth to my ear.

“Namely me.”

Now that I remembered in full, picture-perfect detail. It would be stamped there for all eternity, because nothing, nothing was hotter than Daire Connery with my cock in his mouth.

When my dick jerked against his thigh at the memory, Daire’s rough chuckle vibrated against my cheek.

“Glad you enjoyed it,” he said, moving his hand to my bare hip and brushing his thumb across my skin. “Because I sure as hell did.”

He touched me freely, and it felt so good and so right that all I could do was melt into him, even though there was nothing soft about his body. I fit against him perfectly, and I couldn’t have forced back my happy sigh if I tried.

Closing my eyes, I let my hand drift over the contours of his stomach and up to his smooth and hairless chest.

I trailed my fingers between his pecs. “You don’t have any hair here.”

“That’s because fuckers will grab on to whatever they can to win a fight.”

“Even body hair?”

“Anything.” A beat passed. “That bother you?”

“That people might rip your body parts off?”

“No.” He chuckled. “That I don’t have any body hair.”

I looked down at the ink decorating his skin and traced my fingers over his upper arm, over the intricate design of a lion with a barbed-wire crown.

“I like your tattoos. I like looking at them.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doin’? Looking at them?” He eyed my fingers. “Feels more like you’re coloring them in.”

“Maybe I just like touching you.”

Daire shoved up off the bed and rolled me to my back. “And maybe I like having you touch me.”

My breath caught as I stared up at him, studying his harsh features and the way his hair almost softened them as it fell down into his eyes. “Maybe?”

“Definitely. But don’t think that means I’m going soft or anything.”

So tough. That was Daire. Even when he was in bed with someone who was naked and vulnerable, opening themselves up, he was always on guard. I’d have to work on that.

I hooked a finger around the chain dangling from his neck and drew him down, grazing my lips over his.

“I don’t think there’s anything soft about you.”

His lips curved against mine, and I chuckled.

“And I don’t just mean that.”

“Yeah, but you have to admit, that is pretty impressive.”

I did, and would if anyone asked, but as far as I was concerned that secret would stay with me for as long as possible. The last thing I needed was for other guys to work out how good Daire was in bed. I’d just gotten my hands on him, and I wasn’t about to let someone else snatch him away.

My stomach dropped at the thought. The idea of someone else kissing or touching Daire was like a knife twisting in my gut.

“Gavin?”

I blinked his face back into view and saw a frown of concern marring his brow.

“You okay?”

“I…” I tried for a smile but ended up nodding. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Daire’s eyes narrowed, and he rolled off me to settle by my side, propping his head in his hand to stare down at me.

“Then what was that about?”

“Uh, nothing.”

“Why are you lyin’ to me?”

“I’m—” I clamped my lips shut and let out a sigh. He was right—I was lying. But the idea of telling him that I didn’t want anyone else to touch him the way I just had made me nervous.

Daire wasn’t exactly the pour-your-heart-out, monogamous kind, and getting him here—naked beside me—hadn’t been easy. So the idea of admitting I wanted not only to do this again, but wanted him to only be with me, had me fumbling.

“Gavin? Did I hurt you last night?”

“What? No.” Of course that was where his mind went. Ever the protector. It was just one more reason for my heart to do that little skip it did whenever I thought about him. “You didn’t hurt me. Last night was… It was perfect.”

The concern from seconds ago slipped away behind a wall I was all too familiar with. The idea that he was the reason for my happiness was something he wasn’t comfortable with at all, and that was both heartbreaking and incredibly frustrating.

Why couldn’t he see what an amazing human being he was?

“You don’t think it was?” I asked, not sure I was ready for the answer. Because if he pulled back, if he shut me out while I was lying here naked beside him, I wasn’t sure I would ever recover.

But when he rolled to his back and said, “I didn’t say that,” my chest tightened.

I scooted in closer to him, keeping my eyes on him as he stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t want to spook him. I just wanted to get closer, and that was going to take care and patience. I needed to tread lightly here.

“Sooo you might possibly want to do this again?”

Daire’s lips twitched. “Yeah, I think I might want that.”

“With me?”

“You see anyone else in this bed?”

I grabbed hold of the covers and lifted them up, looking down at his phenomenal body. “Nope. No one else.”

Daire snorted and tugged me into his side, and I laid my hand over his steadily thumping heart.

“There better not be. I’m the only one allowed this close to your naked body.”

Heat swirled in my stomach at his claim. While he might not freely admit to having softer, gentler feelings, this showed me he cared.

How much? Well, that was another question. One I needed to ask. I needed to know where he stood with all of this.

Was this a casual thing? Or was it more?

“D?”

“Hmm?”

“What was last night?”

His chest rose beneath my hand on a deep inhale. “Do we have to analyze it?”

Not exactly the answer I wanted. “I don’t want to analyze it. I just want to know what it meant to you. Was it just last night? Or do you want more?”

I closed my eyes and held my breath, my heart pounding a mile a minute as I waited for his answer.

“I’m no good at this stuff.” Daire’s voice was reflective as I lay there willing him to say more and then he added, “But I don’t want this to be it.”

I let out a breath, squeezing my eyes shut as I gave a mental fist bump to the air.

Holy shit. I’d just gotten Daire—Daire—to admit he wanted more than a quick roll in the sheets with me. This was huge. It was…monumental. And I needed to calm down or he was going to freak out.

Steadying myself, I opened my eyes and, with much more calm than I was actually feeling, smiled. “You don’t?”

“No. Why, do you?”

“No.” I quickly shook my head. “No. I want to do this again. Like, many times, again. I just want to know, I mean, if we do this, I just want it to be us.”

Daire jackknifed up in bed, a thunderous scowl settling onto his features.

“You think I’m gonna sit here and watch another guy touch you in front of me? Fuck that, Gavin. I don’t do threesomes, and I don’t fuckin’ share.”

My eyes popped open at his outburst. That was so not what I was getting at.

“Daire.” I had to bite down on my lip to hold back my laugh as I reached for his arm, trying to calm him. “I didn’t mean that. I meant I don’t want to see anyone else—or sleep with them—while I’m with you, and vice versa.”

“Oh.”

I couldn’t help my chuckle then. “But for the record, I’m not into threesomes either.”

“Better fuckin’ not be,” he grumbled, and leaned back against his headboard. “I kind of like my freedom.”

I shifted up the bed until I was sitting beside him. “No need to kill anyone. I just want you.” I laced my fingers through his. “It’s only been you for a while now.”

The room fell silent, and for a moment I thought I’d gone too far—until I heard him let out a steady breath. Was that relief? I hoped so, because that was how I felt knowing that he was finally mine. Well, for the time being, anyway.

I studied him closely as he sat there with his eyes closed. His angular jaw line, the dark shadow covering it, his full lips that had driven me wild last night, and his necklace glinting in the morning light.

“Who’s that on your necklace?” I asked.

Daire didn’t open his eyes as he reached up and touched the silver oval resting against his skin. “St. Jude.”

“A saint?” That was surprising. There were many things I’d associate Daire with, but a saint wasn’t one of them.

“Yeah. The saint of lost and hopeless causes.”

My heart broke a little at the idea that Daire saw himself in such a way. “Do you really think you’re a hopeless case?”

Daire opened his eyes, and this close I could see all the self-doubt and loathing he usually hid so well swirling there.

“Bit hard not to when the two people in the world who were meant to love you don’t.”

“Daire—”

“It’s okay—they wanted to travel. A baby kind of fucks that up. But if they didn’t want me, not sure why anyone else would.” He shrugged, trying to brush the comment off, but it was no use. That kind of damage, the kind that came from being abandoned by your parents, would leave indelible scars.

Scars it was clear he didn’t want to talk about, at least not now.

“You’re not a hopeless cause, Daire. You’re one of the most loyal and protective people I know.”

He didn’t say anything to that, so I slipped down the bed and snuggled in under his arm, laying my hand over the top of St. Jude.

“I want you,” I whispered.

“I don’t know why.” He let out a sigh and shook his head. “What are you doin’ here with me?”

Understanding him a little better now, I reached up and cradled his cheek. “I live here.”

Daire’s lips curved, that rare, rare smile coming out just for me. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. But you don’t need to ask. You already know.” He frowned, and I leaned up to brush a kiss over his lips. “I’m here because I want to be here. And D?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”