Tieran smiles, his dimple pops, and all I want to do is kiss it. “Don’t get soft on me now, Hellfire.” He steps over to where I’m frozen and grabs my hands, thumbs rubbing back and forth against my skin.
“Why?” My head drops against his chest, eyes casting down to where his strong, tattooed hands hold me so gently.
Tieran’s voice reverberates through my whole body. “You’ve had a long day. A long few months, I'd imagine, carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and never asking for a damn thing in return. Let me help you relax. Let me give you even a fraction of what you give me.”
“What’s that?”
“Peace.”
I scoff. “I’m no man’s peace.”
“You’re mine,” he rumbles in my ear, his voice soft yet unyielding.
Tears threaten to spill for what feels like the thousandth time today. Does he know that his words are disassembling every brick I’ve built around myself like a fortress?
Tieran tugs on my hands, and I finally look up at him.
Adoration, pure and unfiltered adoration, shines in his eyes, and I don’t know how to handle it. No one has ever looked at me that way. It is disarming and exhilarating in equal parts.
“Let's get you in the bath.” He turns me, spanking my butt lightly to get me to move.
“Is this just your plan to get me naked?” I throw him a smile over my shoulder, stopping before the clawfoot tub.
“We both know I don’t need a bath to accomplish that.”I whip around, smacking him on his chest, but he grabs my hand, brings it to his mouth, and places a kiss on my palm.
I can’t deny the truth to his words, so instead, I glare, causing a laugh to rumble from his chest.
His fingers skim the hem of my shirt, pulling upward. “Lift.”
I obey, raising my arms in the air as he pulls my blouse up over my head, dropping it to the tile. I’m about to complain about him dropping one hundred percent mulberry silk on the floor, but the look on his face stops me dead.
Unadulterated appreciation.
“Magnificent.” He takes a step toward me until we’re toe to toe, close enough that I can smell the scent of his bodywash. My heartbeat kicks up its pace at his proximity, never being able to anticipate his next move. Outside the bedroom, Tieran is easygoing, fun, and steady, but inside, he is unpredictable—rough. He is tailor-made to blindside me around every turn.
His hand strokes up my side, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake, and I shiver under the force of his unflinching stare. He runs the tip of his finger under the band, back and forth, before deftly unfastening the hooks. Slowly, the garment falls off my shoulders and drops to the floor, joining my blouse.
Tieran looks hypnotized, borderline catatonic, as he takes my peaked nipples in, reaching out and pinching a rosy bud between his thumb and forefinger as if it’s compulsory. Like he can’t help himself.
Suddenly, he’s spinning me around, pulling me against his chest with his arm banded around my waist, placing a soft kiss to the space that connects my neck and shoulder, sneakily moving his hands until they’re hooking into the band of my skirt, pulling it and my panties down together until I’m able to shuck them off the rest of the way.
His grip on my hips tightens, and I groan at the pressure, wanting his touch everywhere, all at once. Isquirm in place, trying to relieve some of the tension collecting in my core.
Then, he’s stepping away from me, his warmth gone. “Get in the bath before the water goes cold. I’ll be right back.”
Disappointment courses through my body that this isn’t going where I hoped it was, but that dissolves the second my body hits the hot water and my muscles instantly start to loosen.
Within two minutes, Tieran is back, handing me a glass of wine before settling behind the tub. He pulls my hair to the side, accessing my shoulders and starting to knead until I’m groaning in pain and pleasure.
“You’re really good at that.” His hands move down my arms, squeezing and bracing me with his own in an almost hug. “I like these tattoos.” I kiss the celestial pattern sitting atop a ridge of mountainous terrain that runs around his forearm. “Do they mean anything?”
He stops his movements but starts peppering my shoulder with small little pecks. “My mum used to make us go on camping trips to the Highlands when we were younger, something her parents did with her. I think it was her way of distracting us when Dad was gone on a longer drive for work, so we wouldn’t feel his absence so much. We hated it at the time, especially Lottie, but every night, she would make us lay down and look up at the sky, count the constellations, and she would tell us fables until we fell asleep. I always felt so…small looking up at the stars.” I tilt my head up, Tieran’s voice soothing me as he lays his heart bare. “As I got older, the feeling of wonder remained, but the implications changed. Life was getting harder, things were changing, masking his absence was getting more and more difficult, until we eventually stopped going on those trips altogether. Things shifted and nothing felt permanent anymore. One day, Dad was home but not really there, and the next, he was gone again. One second, the press loved me, the next second, I was a pariah. At any moment, everything I’ve worked for could be taken away. Everything in life felt fleeting, here one second, gone the next. It started to shape the way I saw everything. But one day I looked up at the stars and realised they were the same ones in the sky on all of those trips, and it brought me comfort, because they were always there, even when they were hidden by the clouds. That at least would never change.” He places another kiss on my shoulder. “The tattoo is the spot we used to go to as kids, so that when it’s too hard to see the stars in the sky, I can still see them here.”
My throat chokes with emotion. “That’s really beautiful, actually.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he chuckles in my ear, breath coasting over my skin.
“I’m not. I just never thought about it like that.” He straightens a little in his position behind the tub.
