Fighter's Kiss: An enemies-to-lovers MMA romance (Irish Kiss Book 3), page 21
“How?” Seamus resumed his pacing, arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed.
“River will help,” Declan said between rapid uppercuts. “Won’t you, River?” He glanced over at me, hunger in his eyes.
My throat went dry as I imagined Declan pinning me to the wall of the cage, stripping me of my clothes. My nipples strained against my bra at the thought of his strong hands on my hips lifting me up and pulling me roughly back down onto him as I rode him right here in the centre of the cage. “Yeah,” I said, slowly, my voice low and rough. “I think I could help with that.”
Behind me, Seamus threw his hands up in frustration. “She’s got arms like twigs!” he bellowed. “How is she going to spot you when the weights are twice her size?”
His shouts echoed through the gym, but I barely heard him because I was too busy grinning at Declan, who was grinning at me.
“She’ll do just fine,” Declan spoke to Seamus, but his lust-filled gaze didn’t leave me. “She’ll do just fine.”
“Those weights will crush your chest if she’s the one spot—”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the moment realisation hit Seamus like a right hook as he glanced between Declan and me. “You nasty fuckers,” he grumbled.
I tried to stifle a giggle as Seamus grabbed his jacket, ready to march out in a fit.
“I hope you’re at least getting in some good cardio, Declan,” he called over his shoulder as he stormed across the gym toward the door. “Let me know when you’re ready to train for real.”
I winced at the resounding slam of the door.
Declan waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t give him any mind,” he said. “He’s always been a cranky fucker.”
I glanced nervously toward the door and bit my lip. “Declan, are you—”
Lips pressed against mine, interrupting me. I sighed happily, as I sagged against Declan’s chest.
He pulled away and lifted my chin, making sure I was focused on him and him alone. “I’m right where I should be,” he said, his blue eyes clear with honesty. “Doing exactly what I should be doing, with exactly who I should be doing it with.” He squeezed my chin gently and smiled. “Alright?” he asked, earnestly searching my eyes.
I nodded. “Alright.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s get back to it then.”
I picked up my camera and adjusted the settings as he got back into place opposite me in the cage. Lowering myself to one knee, I closed an eye and looked through the lens to again find Declan.
Ever since we made love days ago, I kept waiting for the bubble to burst. Every smile I expected to be the last. When he laughed, I held onto the sound, because I wanted to remember it for when cold, distant silence came flooding back in. My fingers lingered every time I traced his soft, full lips because I feared they wouldn’t be mine to touch for very long.
But each night as I fell asleep, he was there, breath gentle against the back of my neck. Each morning, I awoke and he was there, arms wrapped tightly around me. He skipped scheduled training to go on hikes with me. He stayed up late to talk to me, both of us cuddled under a blanket on the terrace under the stars. He woke up early to disappear beneath the sheets and wake me up with his hot tongue between my legs.
It was all so surprising, wonderful and surprising, delightful and did I mention surprising?
Then Declan really stunned me when one evening during dinner, he casually asked me to take photographs of him for his social media accounts.
“Are you sure?” I had asked, nearly choking on my green beans. I knew it meant vulnerability to him, and vulnerability wasn’t exactly something Declan was comfortable with.
He had reached over and squeezed my hand. “If you’re the one taking them, I am.”
His words still made my heart leap as I remembered them in the gym as I focused the camera, only to immediately lower it back down. “You’re still smiling,” I said. My attempts to remain professional were made difficult by the infectious, joy-filled grin across Declan’s face.
“I can’t stop.” He laughed. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t.”
I couldn’t keep myself from smiling at this. “What if you don’t look at me?” I tried.
Declan shook his head. “I see you everywhere I look.”
I drummed my fingers along the side of my camera. “What if I say no ‘strength training’ till we get the shot?” I asked with a wink.
Declan ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “You wouldn’t be able to stop me,” he said, his eyes darkening.
I raised an eyebrow. “No?”
Declan shook his head as he walked slowly, ever so slowly toward me. “Why don’t we take this camera to my bedroom and you can show me how to use it?”
I groaned as he pushed me against the wall of the cage and I felt his growing erection against my hip. “What exactly would you want to take pictures of in your bedroom?” I asked as my lips found his, hot and desperate.
“The closet, obviously,” Declan joked. “I want so badly,” he punctuated these words with a roll of his hips against me, “to take pictures of my closet.”
“We’re not going to get any work done, are we?” I whispered.
“Not a fecking chance.” Declan kissed down my neck to my chest, divesting me of my shirt and bra as he went.
I squealed and grabbed at my naked chest, a half-hearted attempt at modesty.
Even as he nuzzled at my breasts and peeled my fingers away, he chided, “Don’t hide them, baby.”
“What if Seamus comes back?”
“Fuck him.” Declan slid my skirt down to my ankles. My panties followed.
“I’d rather you fuck me,” I hissed as he slid his fingers along my soaking slit.
Declan grinned up at me from between my legs. “As you command, boss.” Before pushing his tongue into my aching pussy.
As Declan fucked me against the cage with his tongue, then his fingers, and finally his cock, I couldn’t seem to care that we wouldn’t be getting the shot that morning, yet again.
It didn’t even matter that this was, after all, not our first, but our second attempt at a photoshoot. Yesterday, I’d developed some samples from the first session, but as I laid them out across the kitchen island to study them with a glass of wine while Oisin cooked dinner, I’d realised not a single one of them would do. I’d been standing there, arms crossed and frowning, when Oisin, drying his hands on his apron, had come up behind me.
“I can’t figure it out,” he said.
I turned to look over my shoulder at him. “What?”
“This,” he said, circling a finger around my face. “All of this.”
I patted a hand on my cheeks as if there was leftover chocolate ice cream from lunch or something. “What?” I asked. “What about it?”
“Well, there’s this.” He pointed to my lips. “And then there’s this…” He tapped my eyebrows.
I shook my head and sighed in frustration. “Oisin, what in the world are you talking about?”
He nodded at the pictures on the counter behind me. “Let me put it this way, my little voodoo queen.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “If a man was smiling at me with that much love the way Declan is smiling at you there, I certainly wouldn’t be giving myself unnecessary wrinkles from frowning so hard.”
He returned to the stove and I glanced down at the pictures. “They’re for his social media,” I explained. “He can’t be smiling.”
Oisin gave me a look over his shoulder. “You’re avoiding the truth, girl.”
I crossed my arms. “I am not.”
“You’re afraid to accept it,” Oisin said as he tossed a pan of bright peppers, red, yellow, and orange. “I get it.”
“I am not,” I insisted. “I’m not afraid of…it.”
Oisin laughed.
“I am not,” I repeated defensively. “He hasn’t said anything.”
And it was true. As perfectly as the last few days with Declan had been, neither of us had said…that word.
“He doesn’t have to.” Oisin glanced toward the photos laid out on the island. “Those right there say everything.”
Whenever Declan kissed me and slid inside me, I dared not say it aloud, but I hoped against hope that Oisin was right.
River
Outside on the terrace under the first twinkle of stars, I stepped back from little table and tapped a finger against my lips as my eyes scanned over the white linen, the fine china, the candles, the wine glasses, and the furs resting on each chair.
It was missing something.
Frowning, my head tilted from side to side as I tried to figure out exactly what it was. I wanted tonight to be perfect. To thank Declan for everything he’d done for me, I’d insisted that I make dinner for us.
I’d finished up work early that afternoon to leave myself time to cook, shower, and get ready before he was ready after his physiotherapy session with Niall. Everything was done.
There was just some—
Snapping my fingers, I ran inside, grabbed a vase, and filled it not with flowers like usual, but instead snipped branches from the sweet cherry tree in the backyard. Frost coated them like raw sugar and tiny buds of bright red shone in the candlelight like rubies. I was smiling at the completed picture when I heard the French doors swing open.
I turned around, ready to rush forward into Declan’s arms, when I suddenly stopped mid-step. “Seamus.”
Stretching onto my tiptoes, I glanced over his shoulder to see if Declan was behind him. But the dark hallway of the manor was empty.
“I hate the cold,” Seamus grumbled, tugging the lapel of his jacket tighter around his neck as he shivered. “Everything’s ugly in the cold.”
I watched in confusion as he disapprovingly flicked a finger against the delicate cherry tree branches in the vase.
“Lots of things are beautiful in the cold,” I said slowly, again turning toward the motionless hallway before warily studying Seamus.
Something was wrong and it wasn’t something as simple as missing flowers.
“The snow is beautiful,” I argued as Seamus poured himself a glass of red wine intended for Declan and my dinner.
He took a swig before shrugging. “For a moment, maybe,” he said before turning his eyes to me. “But then it melts and mixes with dirt, turning to slush and slush just makes a mess of everything now, doesn’t it? Makes that unique little snowflake, so pretty and so delicate in the moment, not even really worth it after all, doesn’t it?” Seamus did not blink as he stared intently at me.
I swallowed, suddenly nervous. “Where is Declan?” I asked, my voice sounding small even to my own ears. My eyes darted to the hallway, hoping to see Declan there. He would swing open the doors with that smile I’d become so accustomed to seeing this last week and yell at Seamus to get lost.
“I’m going to make love to my woman under the stars,” he’d say. “Our asses might freeze, but we’ll freeze together,” he’d say with a wink.
“That wine’s not for you, Seamus,” he’d say. “It’s for her tongue and mine. So beat it.”
But no one burst through the doors. No one entered the hallway. There was no smile.
“He should be done with his session with Niall by now,” I said, returning my eyes to Seamus.
He lazily took another sip of wine and stared up at the stars. “I underestimated you, River,” he said. “I would have hired you for PR if I knew you were so good at it.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Seamus waved his hand in front of him.
“This whole relationship with Declan,” he said. “It was quite the brilliant move. He needed some humanizing.”
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as I watched Seamus stroke his fiery red beard. Moments ago, I hadn’t felt the cold, but now it seeped into my sneakers, bit at the tips of my fingers, clawed at my cheeks.
“Um...” I wondered if rabbits heard the same alarms in their head when they sensed a trap nearby. “Thanks, but—”
“Yes, yes.” Seamus nodded. “It was very calculated. Very impressive.”
I shook my head. “No, that wasn’t—”
“Planned out brilliantly,” Seamus interrupted, raising his glass of wine to me. “And wonderful acting, if I do say so myself.”
I took a step forward, cheeks turning red and fingers curling into tight fists. “It wasn’t planned and it wasn’t acting.”
He held up his hands as if to plead his innocence. “No, no, of course not,” he said.
I sighed and fell back on my heel.
But then he added a wink. “I’ll see about getting you a raise for your efforts. You certainly deserve it.”
Frustration flooded my chest as I marched over to the table. “You don’t understand, Declan and I—”
“Stop!” In the light of the candles, Seamus’s eyes flashed darkly. “Sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” I said. “I’m going to find Dec—”
“Sit down, girl.”
The look in Seamus’s eyes made me pause, and for reasons I couldn’t explain in the moment, I slowly sank into the chair across from him.
“Now, you listen to me,” he hissed. “If you know what’s good for ye, you’ll listen good.”
I studied Seamus’s face as he poured me a glass of wine. He sighed and rubbed at his temples before looking over at me. “I understand, okay?” he said, raising his eyebrows and leaning forward. “I get it. I know exactly what’s going on. I understand, I do.”
My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for him to go on.
“But I also understand Declan,” he continued. “More than anyone, maybe. Certainly more than you.”
I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t seem to make my lips move. Perhaps the cold had frozen them shut.
“I understand that he likes you,” Seamus said. “I’m not saying he doesn’t. Why wouldn’t he? You’re something new. Something different. Something pretty and colourful and sweet. Something unique. Something rare…”
The flames of the candles fluttered in the wind between the two of us.
Seamus seemed to be searching for what to say before snapping his fingers as if it just hit him. “Like a snowflake,” he said.
My eyes moved to the branches of the cherry tree, the frost already beginning to melt in the heat of the candles.
Seamus reached across the table and pushed my wine glass closer to my numb fingers. “Right now Declan is with Niall, who is explaining to him that since his last session he’s lost muscle mass, he’s lost flexibility, he’s lost strength and power and speed,” he informed me. “And Declan will understand that the reason for that is you.” His voice as he spoke was unemotional. He was simply stating facts. And that made it all the more terrible.
Seamus didn’t have to push the glass of wine any farther toward me; I reached forward and grabbed it myself. I needed the burn of the red down my throat before I froze entirely.
Seamus continued, “I also understand Giselle wasn’t like you. Declan’s connection to her wasn’t like his connection with you. But he married her, and I’ll add as well, is still married to her. I understand why that is. Do you want to understand why that is, River?”
I stared across the table at Seamus, unable to speak.
“Because Declan wants to win,” he said, leaning back in his chair and peaking his fingers over his chest. “It’s all he wants. Giselle did not interfere with his training. She brought the media attention, the fame, the tits and hips and legs for fucking days, but she did not get in the way of the one thing, the one fucking thing in all of existence, he needs to goddamn survive…winning.”
When he stopped speaking the wind from the distant hills felt a little colder, the moonlight through the branches a little weaker, the red of the cherry buds a little duller.
After several moments of silence, Seamus sighed. “I like you, River.” He reached across and patted my hand. “I do. But you’re going to get hurt if you don’t understand your place in all of this, right?”
I nodded numbly. I wasn’t even sure what the fuck I was nodding in regard to.
“Good,” Seamus said before tipping back his wine glass and emptying the rest of it. “Good, good.”
I winced at the sound of his chair screeching against the stones as he pushed it back. It was ten times worse than nails on a chalkboard.
“So we’re agreed?” he asked, standing over me. “You’re a brilliant personal assistant. A smart, hardworking, dedicated personal assistant. A clever personal assistant who pretended to fall for her boss for the cameras. Quite the clever personal assistant, wouldn’t you say?”
I again nodded, again with no idea why.
“Good.” Seamus smiled and turned to leave. “I’ll see about that raise then.”
I heard the doors open and then close and then I was alone on the terrace in the cold. The wind blew out the candles and then I was alone on the terrace in the cold, in the dark.
River
Despite how often I insisted otherwise, Declan knew something was wrong.
My lips didn’t move quite as passionately against his and my body didn’t respond quite as sensitively to his touch and my eyes didn’t seek his as we each neared our climaxes amongst steam-covered windows. As we lay together afterward, he would hold me close, stroking his hand up and down my arm sweetly before asking me if everything was alright.
I would say “yes”.
“Yes, of course.”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
But he knew. He knew something had changed.
Our journey together was surely ending, but it seemed that only one of us realised this. To Declan, the path we walked along side by side stretched far into a hazy, golden horizon. But I knew the fork in the road lay just around the next bend.
Still, I hadn’t thought it would be that night. I hadn’t thought it would be quite so soon.
It was just past midnight when my cell phone vibrated on the nightstand next to Declan’s bed. It didn’t wake me because I was still awake. For the last hour, I’d been fighting the sleep that weighed down my eyelids and clouded my mind because I couldn’t fall asleep. Not yet, at least.
