Chapter 26

"I feel like I'm a teenager about to get caught by a security guard for smoking on school grounds," I say contemplatively, leaning into Declan's chest. I might be addicted to his chest—it's so hard yet warm, so capable. I'd destroy all of his shirts if I could get away with it. He's in nothing but grey sweatpants right now, and I feel like I should write a letter to the female equivalent of Penthouse.

Four and a half days have passed since the greenhouse. At the time, that was easily the hottest experience of my life, but he's already co-opted the top five, then the top fifteen. We've driven the Jeep together. Planted bushes together. Made dinner and baked madeleines that would make an American weep and a French person shrug. Snuggled our way through stupid movies, talked until midnight. He even brought me on a hike with Rocket yesterday, on which I very notably did not kill myself.

He's let me into his house—his sanctuary, where he's invited no one else. I haven't spent the night there yet, but I've seen the photos of his brother and sister he has on display, laughing together. Of the greenhouse he had with his mother. And he hasn't tried to hide them or tuck them away. He's told me about them.

The one thing he hasn't told me is his secret, the one that's required all these smoke screens, but I haven't pushed because I know that it's already required so much trust on his part to give me what he has. To show me this side of him. Maybe, with more time, he'll finally be comfortable showing me the rest.

I hope so, because I have to admit that I'm falling for him. Falling hard and fast and deep for this beautiful, complicated man who both speaks in poetry and can be delightfully dirty.

It doesn't hurt that we've had lots and lots of sex.

I've become positively bohemian, because while he's rocking the only sweatpants look, I don't have on underwear or a bra on under my dress. In the past, I might have been scandalized by myself, but it feels right—it feels incredible.

We're out on his deck now, the one my biological father used to sneak women out to. Both of us are reclined in a single lounge chair, my back to Declan's front—a perfect position for me to feel that he's half hard.

I have to admit, Dick knew the right way to seduce a woman. It's a beautiful view, not interrupted by ugly, half-dead trees with gnarled trunks the way ours is.

"You were the good girl in school, weren't you?" Declan asks with amusement. "I'll bet you arranged all of the bake sales."

"I did," I admit. "And you were the bad boy, corrupting all the good girls behind the bleachers."

"Maybe, but I never wanted to corrupt anyone. I always thought it was bullshit in Grease when Sandy gave herself a makeover. She was fucking perfect the way she was. But if you want to smoke a joint, we smoke a joint. I'm not about to tell you what to do."

He hands me the joint we're smoking, and I take it, choking a little when I inhale. The joint was my idea. Because I was a good girl in school. And out of it. And every day of my life until I got fired for something that wasn't my fault. And being a good girl, a girl who listened and said sorry for things I didn't do …it never really did all that much for me.

Truthfully, the blunt's not doing much for me either. Or at least I don't feel like it is. I'm already riding the high of Declan. I've been riding it for days now, and it seems to just keep getting better.

He rubs my back, then takes the blunt, stubbing it out in an ashtray. "You know, I got something for you."

My eyes widen in disbelief. "You did?"

"It's not a big deal."

"Let me be the judge of that," I say, glancing over my shoulder at him.

He smirks at me. "You'll have to get up if you want me to get it."

"But I think I'd like to lay against your naked torso for the next month or two." Maybe forever. Sighing dramatically, I get up and watch him disappear into the house, his sweatpants riding low.

I melt back into the chair, my mind a pleasant fuzz, and he's back a couple of minutes later, holding something behind his back. He looks a little embarrassed, the way he does when he's alarmed by something and doesn't think he should be. Or when he does something sweet but doesn't want to be thanked for it.

Too bad.

"You're being ve-ry mysterious."

He smiles and hands me a small, hard case, longer than it is wide. I glance up at him in surprise, then snap it open and find a pair of reading glasses with tortoise-shell frames and a sticker saying they have a strength of plus one-point-five.

I gasp, then take them out. "You've given me the gift of sight!"

Actually, they're not going to help me much now—it's reading things close to my face that's the problem, but I can't think of the last time a man did something like this for me.

Because a man has never done something like this for me.

"Wait a second," I say, lifting a finger. "How'd you know my prescription?"

"You told us the other day when you were drunk," he said, his mouth an amused line.

"Oh. I kind of remember that."

He reaches out his hand for them, and I hand them over. Then he gently slides them onto my face, his fingers sending cascades of pleasure through me as they carefully brush my hair behind my ears.

"Do I look like a bug?"

"Not even a little." He sits back down and pats his lap. "Come here."

He doesn't need to tell me twice. I straddle his lap and am instantly distracted by his perfect tattooed chest, bracketed by two muscular arms. "God, you're pretty."

He laughs and shakes his head. "I think we know how pot affects you now. I don't dislike it."

"No," I say, giving his arm a shove and then keeping my hand wrapped around it. "It doesn't affect me at all."

"Of course not. Are you going to wear glasses when you have your bakery?"

"Let's be honest," I say, feeling deflated. "I'm probably never going to have one."

He angles his head, studying me, seeing more than I intended to show him. He has a habit of doing that, but it's balanced by the vulnerability he's shown me. "You're not just saying that because the place on Main Street was already rented, are you?"

"I know you have a different interpretation of things, but Agnes didn't believe I could pull it off," I say. "She'd be in a position to know, wouldn't she?" I instantly feel like a bit of a baby, talking about my old boss as if she's an adult and I'm a child. As if she can still tell me what to do. But there's no denying that part of me still feels that way. She's the Agnes Lewis, and I'm no one. A woman who won't even wear the reading glasses she needs unless she gets permission from her boss.

"Nope. I'm sticking to my interpretation. She didn't want to let you go. I don't know her, obviously, but she doesn't strike me as someone who likes being outshined."

I gape at him. "You think I could outshine Agnes Lewis? You're definitely high."

He gives a wry shake of his head. "Nah. Doesn't affect me like that. And I know you could. You don't see it, but everyone else does. There's something about you that draws people in. You even thawed Mrs. Rosings."

"I forgot to tell you what I found out about Mrs. Rosings the other day," I say, still holding his arm like it's a stress toy. Truthfully, for me, it is. "Do you know what they call her in town?"

"Nah, I don't pay attention to that stuff. Never have."

I tell him about her three husbands and the black widow claim, and he rolls his eyes when I say it was Rex who told me.

"Rex is a good guy, but he gossips like a twelve-year-old girl half the time."

"I think I should object to that, on behalf of twelve-year-old girls."

He lifts his eyebrows. "I have a little sister. You can't hide the truth from me. I know all about what Tracy said about Rob at the home game."

I snort. "Must have made an impression."

"Things that are repeated a thousand times typically do." He wraps a lock of my hair around his finger, and I feel the tingle at my scalp, and a warm, syrupy feeling inside of me, like I was transformed into a tall stack of pancakes.

I think of his sister. I've seen him shoot off several texts to her over the last few days, and I know he talked to her the other night. "You miss your brother and sister."

"Yeah." He runs a hand back through his hair. "Not just that, though. I miss being a part of something bigger."

I angle my head, studying him. "You could always join the Tribe of Light."

"No thanks." He puts his hands around my hips, and I barely stop myself from dry-humping him like a teenager. I'm infatuated with him, completely and utterly. "I'd rather stay here with you."

I lean in to kiss him, only realizing I still have the glasses on as I get close. I move to take them off, but he captures my hand. "I like them."

So I kiss him harder, the bridge of the glasses bumping against him. When I pull back, he says, "You know, I'm still not giving Mrs. Rosings my plants, but I've been thinking about it, and I can probably help you source flowers for the wedding. I've got a friend who has a pretty extensive greenhouse, and he owes me a favor."

"Do you have plant connections across the state?" I ask with a snort. "Like an organized crime ring for plants?"

Something passes over his face, but then he runs a hand over my hair, his fingers ghosting over my scalp. He keeps touching my hair and playing with it. Once upon a time, I used to hate having my hair touched. I'd worried it would make me look mussed or less put together, but when he does it, it feels like there's a hotline from my scalp to the vee between my legs. When he does it, I want to look mussed, used. His.

"Something like that," he murmurs.

"The thing is, she admitted the other day that she doesn't even want this wedding to happen. Like, she offered to help her son and his fiancée just so she can sabotage it." I frown. "Now that I think about it, it's kind of offensive that she hired me to help her. Anyway, unless they're really ugly or smelly flowers, like the ones she had me looking for, I'm guessing she's not interested."

"So what you need is a shitty flower hookup," he says with amusement. "I might be able to help you there too. Although one person's shitty flower is another person's dream, so she'll want to be careful. My sister loves lavender, and I think it smells like soap."

"Don't be unfair to lavender," I say. "It's the soap that's co-opted its smell, not the other way around." Because I can't help myself, I ask, "What's your sister like?"

I brace myself for him to shut down and turn away. To say I should go home.

He tucks my hair behind my ear and runs his thumb across my bottom lip. "Besides her perfect-texture, subpar-taste madeleines? She's funny. Smart. Not afraid of anything. You'd like each other. You could have boring hour-long conversations about pastries."

He watches me for a moment, his eyes warm, his hand finding my knee, and I think he's going to say something profound. Then he says, "Sun's going down."

"Really?" I ask in disbelief. We've been talking and fooling around all day, pausing only to make sandwiches in his kitchen and feed Rocket. It passed in a blink. This weekend has passed in a panting, life-changing blink.

"Come with me," he says.

"I'm sitting on you. You can't go anywhere unless I let you."

He smiles and slides a hand under my ass, standing and bringing me with him. "You were saying?"

"I'm not complaining."

He carries me to the edge of the deck before setting me down, and I gasp at the sight of the layered colors forming on the horizon, over the mountains. I'd been so focused on him that I'd barely noticed. I glance over my shoulder, feeling a glow inside that matches what's happening in the sky. This is another moment of doing instead of just existing. I feel so exquisitely alive. "It's beautiful, Declan."

"Turn around and hold on to the railing."

His voice is husky and full of promise, and I'm instantly wet as I turn to face the mountains and grip the rail. I feel his hand on my thigh, flipping up my skirt. I feel his breath at my neck as he leans in to kiss me, his teeth nipping me like I'm delicious.

"You're spoiling me, you know," I say, my pulse picking up as his hand finds my slickness. "No one's ever acted like I'm irresistible."

"I'm glad you've only come across stupid men before. But appreciating you isn't the same as spoiling you," he says against my neck, his lips pausing to kiss me again, his dick hard against my back. "You'll know when I'm spoiling you."

I'd thought it was impossible, but I get a little wetter, my whole body arcing back toward him.

"We can't do this out here, can we?" I ask. "What if someone—" I'm cut off by a guttural sound that escapes me as his fingers find a spot that make my joints feel liquid.

"Hang on to the railing. And we can do whatever we'd like. Even if Damien comes back, he won't be able to see us from the front of the house."

He could if he decides to go out on the deck, but I'm not about to say that, because I desperately, desperately don't want him to stop. I hear him pulling something out of his pocket, then there's a rustle. I want it to mean that he's pulled out a condom, but I don't look back, because there's something exciting about not knowing for sure. About not knowing when it's going to happen. He reaches under my shirt and cups my breast, his fingers finding the nipple as he continues to kiss my neck, his other hand finding its way under my skirt again.

I hold on to the railing for dear life, because I feel myself falling. "Lean forward and look at the sky, Claire," he breathes into my ear. "Watch the sun set over the mountains while I fuck you."

So I lean forward and push my butt out, my hands wrapped around the wood. My breath stutters in my chest as he withdraws his fingers—his clever, clever fingers—and then he lines himself up, his warm heat surrounding me. There's so much filthy promise hanging in the air like honey. Then he slowly eases in, stretching me deliciously.

He swears under his breath, then kisses my neck again as he starts moving inside of me. "You're such a goodgirl, Claire. So wet for me."

I think he's halfway teasing me with the good girl comment, and if anyone else had said it, I might have left. But I've never been so needy in my life, arching back to take him deeper, even as I keep my hands on the railing.

He has one callused hand palming my hip, using it as leverage for fucking me, and the other roams over my body, slipping under my clothes to do dirty, delightful things to me, while I hold on for dear life. He kisses my neck, my hair, my cheek, but when I look back at him, desperate for his mouth on mine, he smiles and shakes his head slightly. "I don't want you to miss the sunset. Face forward."

And for some reason that makes me even crazier. I've never been this wild, this undone. I already feel the first quakes of an orgasm pulling at me. "Declan," I say, desperate, although I don't even know for what, because I'm pretty sure I've forgotten every word I've ever learned. "Declan."

And he layers one of his hands on top of mine, the other finding my abdomen, as he thrusts in one final time, breathing hard in my ear, and that's all it takes for both of us. I know because my knees melt, and I'm only kept upright by the pressure of his hands on me. He leans into my neck again, his forehead sweaty, and kisses me. Then he's pulling out, which I'd like to object to, but before I can say anything, he turns me around and kisses me hard, his hand finding my hair again. And it hits me that right at this moment, for the first time in my life, I feel precious to a man. It's probably the power of the orgasm that does it, but the thought puts tears in my eyes.

He kisses me once more, softly, then pulls back slightly, his eyes widening when he notices. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes," I say, feeling stupid, and wipe at my face. "That was just really, really good."

"So good it made you cry?" he asks, lifting one eyebrow.

"Yes, actually. Don't brag to your friends. I'm told Rex gossips like a teenage girl."

"I would never," he says, his tone so adamant I know it's true. Not that I would have believed otherwise. He's a man who knows how to keep his own counsel—and how to keep quiet to protect the people he cares about. For now, anyway, I'd like to think I'm one of them.

I'd like to be one of them forever.

I lift my hand to his jaw and trace it. "I know."

"I need to go take care of the condom," he says. "I'll be right back."

So he could tell I needed a minute without making me ask for it. I watch his back as he goes, noticing the bunching and flexing of the muscles, and I feel the crush of misgiving. In the beginning, I was determined to be cautious with him, but that's gone by the wayside. I like him too much. If he pushes me away now, there's no way it'll be a clean break. As long as I live here, I'll have to see him. Walking his dog. Heading down the hill to the greenhouse. Maybe bringing women home. What'll that feel like?

The dull ache in my chest, like someone's been hacking at it with a butter knife, suggests it won't be good.

My phone rings from the small table beside the chair. It's next to the ashtray with the joint, and I get another burst of what the fuck am I doing? It's not like me, to let myself have the things I want without first worrying what they might cost.

I pick up the phone and see Lainey's name, then immediately answer. For all I know, she's drunk and on the verge of sending Todd a text that will embarrass her for the next five years. Best friend duties demand that I answer, regardless of what's going on with me.

"Hello," I say, my voice a croak.

"Claire," she says in a burst, "have you seen the news? I couldn't believe it. Agnes's burn book got released to the public, and Doug got fired."