There’s a flicker of something in his eyes that almost looks like pain. “I thought you would say that,” Niall murmurs softly.
“Then why did you come?” I whisper, feeling my knees starting to go weak with the way he’s looking at me. It’s like how Connor looks at me when his control slips—except Niall has nothing to gain and everything to lose from how he’s looking at me right now. And yet—
“Because,” he says, his voice rasping as his eyes rake over me once more. “I had to take the chance, so I could do this. Just once.”
And then, before I can so much as suck in a breath, his mouth is on mine.
His hands let go of my arms as he kisses me, a groan spilling from his lips the instant they touch mine, as if it’s a physical relief to finally kiss me. He cups my face in his hands as his lips tease mine apart, another moan vibrating against my mouth as his hand slides into my hair. He surges against me fiercely, the cedar and leather scent of him filling my senses as he kisses me like I’m his last breath, like I’m water and food and air and everything he needs to survive.
As if he’s been waiting all his life for this moment and knows it may never come again.
“I know I shouldn’t do this,” he breathes against my mouth, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone as he presses me back against the wall. I can feel how hard he is, but he doesn’t grind himself against me, his body simply brushing against mine as if it’s enough for him to be touching me. “But I had to, Saoirse. Just once—” He groans again, his forehead pressed to mine as he reaches down, his thumb brushing over my lower lip in the small space between our mouths. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long. I couldn’t go to my grave not knowing. And very soon—” he closes his eyes, breathing in, and for just a moment, the world narrows down to us. I forget who I am and where I am and why I’m here in the sheer pleasure of being wanted for myself and nothing else.
“If things go the way I fear, back in Boston—” Niall pulls back an inch. “Your fiancé might send me to that grave sooner rather than later.”
“Don’t say that!” I gasp. “Connor doesn’t want bloodshed. He told me so himself—”
“I know you’re not naïve, Saoirse, so don’t pretend to be.” Niall pulls back further, looking down at me with the hand that was in my hair planted on the wall now next to my head, his leanly muscled form looming over me. I can feel the pulse between my thighs, the growing ache, and I squeeze them together before I do something I might regret. The kiss was bad enough—if someone saw us—
But they didn’t. And I can’t bring myself to regret it. Connor has made me feel a dozen thrilling, delicious things and more—but in that instant, I knew what it felt to be wanted for myself and myself alone.
It’s something I don’t think I’ll quickly forget, and I can feel myself arching towards him, wanting more of it.
“Connor might not get a choice in the matter of bloodshed,” Niall says quietly. “And you know that as well as I do.” His hand comes up to brush my cheek again, and I see the ache in his eyes. “There’s so much more I’ve wanted with you, Saoirse, for longer than you could possibly know. But I’ve known you were never for me. I just needed the one kiss. Just one—before I lost you for good.” He pulls back then, turning as if to wrench himself away and go.
“Wait!” I gasp. The possibilities open up in front of my eyes, everything Connor promised me.Maybe he was right. Maybe itisbetter this way.“Niall, wait.”
He turns back to face me. “What is it, lass?”
“I can’t go back on tonight,” I say breathlessly. “I have to stay the course. I have to marry Connor and back up his claim to the Kings. But later—”
Niall frowns. “Speak plainly, lass. What are you talking about?”
I’m still holding his hand, and my fingers thread through his, pulling him closer as adrenaline starts to beat in my veins, the wild wickedness of this overcoming me, of me taking advantage of Connor’s promises, just as he plans to. Of taking my own destiny in my hands for once, my own sexuality, my own independence—and for the first fucking time in my life, I don’t even have to feel guilty about it.
“Connor and I have an arrangement between us,” I whisper, looking up at him. “He told me from the start he had no intention to be faithful to me—”
“Of course, he bloody doesn’t,” Niall swears in disgust, but I plunge forward.
“He doesn’t expectmeto be either,” I say in a rush. “He told me, flat out, that except when we’re trying to conceive, I can have whoever I wish as a lover, and he’ll do the same. After the wedding, it will be the two of us until I get pregnant, and then after that—” I bite my lip. “He says he’ll only want me when it’s time to have another baby. Other than that, he won’t…I can…”
Niall is looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “Lass—Saoirse—”
“Don’t you see?” I look up at him, still clinging to his hand. “Thereisanother path. Later—”
“So I should wait for the King’s leftovers?” The words spill harshly from Niall’s mouth, and he looks as if he regrets them the instant he says them, but they hurt just the same. I jerk my hand back, wishing I could move further backward than the wall allows.
“That’s not what I meant,” I whisper, but Niall is already reaching for me, cradling the side of my face in his palm.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice instantly chagrined. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. But Saoirse—it doesn’t have to be that way. A husband who doesn’t love you, who is unfaithful and doesn’t care who you fuck—” He clenches his jaw, shaking his head. “If you were mine, Saoirse, I’d kill any man who touched you. The fact that Connor doesn’t give a shit, as long as he’s the one to take your virginity—”
“Is that it?” I bite my lip. “You want to be the first? I can’t—”
“I don’t give a fuck whether you’re a virgin or been with a hundred men, so long as I could be the last,” Niall growls. “But it’s clear that can’t be the case. Just—you don’t have to act so rashly, Saoirse. There are other choices for you, and I don’t just mean me.” His eyes search mine almost wildly, and I feel my heart clench as I think of what it must have cost him to say all of this tonight to me. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him.
His jaw tightens again, and he shakes his head. “Bloody hell, Saoirse, I—”
Whatever he was going to say, he doesn’t finish it. His hands clutch my waist, his mouth crashing down on mine again, with the desperate, hungry need of a man who knows he may never touch the thing he wants most in the world again.