Page 34 of Wicked Ruin

I slide one hand to the back of her neck, the other framing her face, tilting her chin up and holding her the way she lets me. Then I kiss her until the city outside the windows might as well not exist.

“I missed you,” I whisper against her ear. “I want you, Bridget.”

“Me too,” she whispers. Her voice is steady, but her hands aren't. “I want you. Not only did I never forget the club—I've never been back there. And I've never been with anyone else, Declan. Not properly. Not the way⁠—”

She stops herself. I feel the shape of the rest of it anyway, and it hits me somewhere I don't have a name for. All this time—she’s been keeping this for me without either of us admitting that's what she was doing.

“If you're going to marry somebody else,” she says, “and there can't be anything between us after that… we need tonight, Declan. Just tonight.”

I don't care if Cavin kills me for this, or Seamus. I'm not engaged yet. She's sober, she's willing, and she's mine, whatever I'm allowed to call that or not.

“Aye,” I murmur against her hair. “We can, can’t we?”

She's trembling slightly. I pull back to look at her.

“Are you scared?”

“Maybe a little,” she admits. Then, softer, “No.”

“Don't be. Come on—let's get some snacks first. You must be knackered.”

“Actually,” she says, brightening in that way she does, the way that makes the whole car feel warmer, “do you know they opened a little chipper right here in town?”

“Have they?”

“And there's a new place doing cookies—enormous ones, big as saucers, like the American-style ones.”

I groan. “Do they do chocolate chip?” I can hear the smile in my own voice. “I've gotten rather fond of a good chocolate chip cookie, living in America.”

“Well,” she says, “I suppose we'd better find out.”

She checks her phone quickly, then tucks it away. “Just making sure Erin’s not after me yet. I texted her that I needed a little time to myself. Now that Erin's pregnant, she's gone pure mammy on all of us, and Cavin's even worse.”

“Cavin loves you,” I say.

“If you mention that one more time, Declan McCarthy, I swear to Christ⁠—”

I catch her hair and tug, just like I did that first night in the club, the way that makes her cheeks flush and her breath catch. She goes mock-outraged, then laughs, and I pull her close and kiss her again and again until she's warm and loose against me. The world around us fades, and the only word I hear in my head is mine.

“Bridget.” I put a world of warning in my voice. She’s breathing heavily, damn near grinding against me.

She knows exactly what she's doing.

“Stop,” I tell her with a groan.

She shakes her head, slow and deliberate. “No. I really shouldn’t have read my horoscope today.”

“Why not?”

“It said I was going to have a chance to say yes and that yes would have a major positive impact on my life, but we both know that it… that it can’t.”

“Bridget—”

“I've watched everyone else build their lives around me, Declan.” Her voice is soft, but there's iron in it. “I’ll at least have this night with you.”

“Givin’ me sass again?” I murmur, because she loves when I get bossy, and I’d do anything to see her eyes go half lidded and her pupils blown wide.

She tilts her head. There's a smile playing at the corner of her mouth she's trying very hard to suppress.