by Sara Forbes
He treads through the hens ignoring their pecking at his ankles. He stands in front of me, blocking my path. His hands land on my shoulders. “Talk to me. Why would you do that? Why would you stick up for me?”
I knock his hands off my shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I, Danny? Why should I let them talk bad of you when I know you’re a good person?”
I’m breathing hard.
He’s shaking his head.
“Which part don’t you agree with?” I ask.
He just stands there, looking at me, arms tightly crossed.
“You don’t know enough about me,” he continues, “to make that call.”
“And whose fault is that?” I’m so mad. With a flick of my wrist, I dump the contents of the food bin in a single pile right where I’m standing. Eggshells and orange-peel splatter onto his beautifully polished shoes.
Oops. Sorry-not-sorry.
He stares at the mess on his shoes in a kind of startled horror.
“You know nothing about me either!” I say, and turn away from him.
There’s a high-pitched cry of surprise from the kitchen doorway. Of course, Cliona would choose this particular moment to come out.
“My goodness, what’s going on here?” She steps out, staring at the mess. At least ten hens are squawking around Danny, pecking at his ankles, pulling slimy food off his shoes.
It should be funny, but no-one’s laughing.
“What a mess.” She turns accusingly to Danny. “What did you say to Shannon?”
I stomp into the kitchen. Let them talk it out. I’ve just created more gossip to keep them occupied.
I grab up my bag and wander down the hallway and choose the first door I come across. It’s the front-facing living room with the grand piano that Lady Ellen interviewed me in on the first day here. Another redundant room.
I throw myself on a sofa. What is wrong with these people? And what’s with all these stupid rules? Don’t stand up for Danny. Don’t talk to the Callaghans. It’s like every step I take, I’m breaking a whole new set of them, uncovering new secrets. And they’re invisible, wrapping themselves around me like briars, waiting to trip me up or rip me to shreds.
And as for Danny? Kissing me was an empty gesture because he clearly doesn’t trust me enough to tell me things everybody else seems to know.
I’m so fed up. I feel like I want to break something, smash one of those priceless vases whose sole function seems to be to gather dust and give Mrs. Muldoon a reason to exist.
It seems, just by coming here, I’ve broken some massive rule.
I groan and toss back my head.
Forget about them. Him. Why get involved?
About ten minutes later, there’s a rap on the door. I look up.
Danny comes into the room. He’s changed his clothes and shoes. He walks over to the Elton John piano and sits himself down on the piano stool. I feel the weight of his stare all the way over to my sofa.
“You going to play?” I ask.
“You don’t want to hear me play.”
“Let me decide that.”
He lets out a breath. “Before you go rushing to my defense, Shannon, there are things you need to know.”
“Is this about the pub?”
“It’s about everything,” he says.
“Yes.” I look at him but he’s not looking at me.
He rubs his face as he stares at the music score in front of him.
“It’s OK,” I say gently, sensing he needs encouragement.
“It’s not.” He twists his head and meets my gaze. His jaw is tense, his eyes racked with some misery. All his muscles seem taut, like a caged animal ready to pounce, shoulders and biceps straining against the shirt. His expression changes from deepest solemnity to something even darker—and more urgent.
And I can’t say I’m not aroused.
I rise from my sofa and walk over to him and stand in front of him, looking down at him.
“You wore this today to torment me, didn’t you?” he says, glancing down at my skirt.
I smile. I’d be lying if I denied it.
He reaches out and puts his hands on my hips. I can feel every finger through the thin cotton. I barely have time to enjoy his touch before he’s turning me around, hoisting me up, and placing me on the closed lid of the grand piano, as if I weighed nothing.
“Whoa, Danny, I’m going to break your piano,” I say giggling, as my legs dangle down. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”
“It’s strong enough,” he says.
As he slides me back further on the polished wood, my skirt rides up and I feel the cold, polished surface of the piano lid under my thighs. “A-are you sure?”
“Dead sure.”
“Why? Have you done it before?”
“No, but it’s two inches of finest oakwood. I could put a violin quartet up there and it’d hold.”
“Well, I guess I’m safe then...”
Danny is now positioned in front of my knees, looking up at me with a darkly sexy smile. I let out a small, terrified, excited gasp. I don’t know where this is going, but it’s definitely uncharted territory.
I tell myself to stay cool as Danny takes one of my ankles and settles it onto his shoulder. I feel the heat radiating off his neck. He turns his head and plants a damp kiss on the inside of my ankle, just above the sock line.
I gasp. “Danny, shouldn’t we…?”
I don’t finish the sentence because he keeps kissing my leg, inching his way over the round of my calf, over my knee and up, up, along my inner thigh.
With every kiss that inches closer to my core, my body tenses even more. A hollow ache begins low in my stomach and burrows to the depths of my pussy.
“Danny...” My voice is small, breathless.
“I’m bad.” His voice sounds deeper, gruffer. “Let me show you.”
My pussy clenches at these words. I feel my panties dampening even more. Once those kisses reach my pussy, he’s going to discover how wet I am for him. He’s going to know the depth of my lust that’s been building all day.
He makes his way higher up my thigh, his lips pressing into the inner part, bringing every nerve to life. As he gets ever closer, the distance seems longer. Then his tongue traces a damp trail toward the point where I need him most. Oh God.
I greedily wriggle my butt so I’m closer to the edge of the piano.
Danny catches my gaze and flashes me a cocky smile.
“You’re bad too,” he says.
“I am,” I croak.
With his smile still intact, he grabs my other leg and gives it the same treatment—kissing his way from my ankle to my knee to my thigh. I think he does it deliberately slower, making sure I’m a quivering wreck by the time he reaches the panty-line at the top of my thigh.
Now both of my legs are in a V, my feet dangling over his shoulders, my toes curled up tight. I lean back on my hands on the piano lid to keep my balance.
Danny edges closer and I feel his breath against my hot core.
“Now I’m going to play you with my tongue,” he says. “And you’re going to make music.”
I nod weakly. I don’t know what to expect.
He reaches up and grabs my panties and yanks them down and out from under my ass. He moves each leg in turn off his shoulder so he can whip off the garment off completely. Then he chucks the pink satin over his shoulder.
His face hovers mere inches from my pussy and I’m feeling so, so exposed before him. Part of me wants to pull my legs down and hide. But part of me is fascinated by his expression—he looks like he’s about to devour me, like he really is into this. That part of me clenches in anticipation.
My heart is racing as I watch his face come closer to my core. My abdomen squeezes tight.
He slides his arms under my thighs and eases them wider apart, gently but firmly. My clit is throbbing, my core clenching and aching. God, I need his touch. I need it now.
“Danny,” I whisper.
Then he
leans forward and takes his first taste of me.
At the feel of his tongue probing me—soft and wet, sliding along my slit—a pulse of electric joy shoots from my toes to the hairs on my head. So gentle. He flicks lightly, bringing acute awareness to my labia. Nerve endings come alive, sparking like fireworks. He reaches my clit and runs beautiful circles around the sensitive skin.
I loll my head back. I’m burning, throbbing, and gushing. I don’t know how long I can hold out. His tongue dances lightly across me. This man knows what he’s doing. He knows it all too well.
I’m vaguely aware that we’re in an unlocked room and that anyone could just walk in. Namely, his mother. At some deep level, this scares the bejaysus out of me. But the waves of lust keep on coming, greedily seeking what they seek—obliterating all common sense.
Danny caressing me with his tongue leaves no room for anything else in my head. I’m reduced to the animal level. This is the only thing that matters. Him. Us. Here.
Noises escape my throat as Danny works my pussy. Sob-like sounds that I’ve never heard myself make before. His hands keep a firm grip on my thighs, keeping them apart. My whole body starts to shake, and he adapts his speed, sucking my clit hard. I’m clenching with delirious pleasure. I imagine him inside me, pounding me, filling me.
Danny lets go of my clit and moves lower to encircle my opening. I buck my hips off the piano top—I no longer care about my weight on it. The priceless instrument can smash into a thousand splinters for all care. I need this or I’ll die.
His strong arms pin me back in place. He plunges inside me with his tongue, past my entrance. My pussy clenches around his darting tongue. My buttocks push hard against the surface of the piano, desperately seeking friction.
My voice has deepened to unearthly moans. God help me, but here’s no just way I can stop myself. If we were alone, I’d be moaning even louder—way louder. I’d probably be screaming. For now, I try to control my volume, taking in breaths in frantic hoarse sounds and letting it out in strangled squeals, almost as if I’m crying.
My orgasm builds and builds and then after a moment of desperate urgency, I squeeze up inside and I fall into the nothingness of pleasure. As I soar over the highest point and submerge into the bliss, Danny captures my pussy in his mouth pressing madly against my clit.
Danny keeps going, using his tongue to make my orgasm come back and deepen. As my head floats off again and hits paradise, I let out a high-pitched squeal. When I finally come back down again, my whole body is spent, my mind emptied of anything that was ever there.
I blink into the semi-darkness of the room, the heavy furniture, the drapes, the dust motes twinkling in the low sunlight coming back into gradual focus. One of my arms flops down and my fingertips brush against the piano keys, playing discordant notes, somewhere around middle C.
I’m lying on a freaking piano.
Danny gives me a kiss, his lips gentle against my clit. He rises and stands over me.
I grin up at him, dizzily. “That was…”
“Just the intro,” he finishes, gripping my hips and sliding me down off the piano lid. When my feet land on the carpet, he presses me up against the side of the piano in full body-to-body contact. My soaking pussy is pressing against his hard erection.
He grinds his hips against me and for some reason, I can’t help thinking he’ll need to dry-clean those lovely pants of his. Danny doesn’t seem to care as he slips his hand in between our bodies, finding my pussy again with his fingers. His hand is rougher, stronger, than his tongue. I shimmy into him.
He leans over me, with his arm resting either side of my arms on the piano lid. His blue eyes bore into me. “I won’t take you here, in this room, now. But here’s a preview for when I do.” He lifts one edge of my skirt hem again, where my naked, swollen pussy awaits him.
My mouth is open to say something, but I freeze when he finds my entrance and trusts two fingers inside of me. The shock makes me yelp and then arch my hips into him.
I get lost in his determined expression as he watches me being fucked by those two fingers. He leans forward to graze his lips against my forehead. I reach up and grab his neck, pulling him into me, kissing him hard, sucking his tongue with the same frantic speed as I want his fingers to fuck me.
Danny keeps thrusting his fingers into me while rubbing against my clit with his thumb. My body stiffens. He’s wrenching a different kind of orgasm out of me this time, igniting an ever deeper need to be filled by him. I dig my fingernails into the back of his neck and I think I’m saying his name, repeating it over and over. Not quietly.
“Oh my God, Danny,” I gasp. He keeps moving his fingers in and out, rubbing his thumb over my clit, working me towards oblivion, wringing every last drop out of me. The orgasm makes me tighten inside and then I enter another dimension of pleasure.
I go limp, sagging back on my elbows against the piano lid to support my quivering legs. All I can do is heave in rapid breaths and look up at him.
Danny smiles, leans in and nibbles at my bottom lip. “I knew you’d make beautiful music.”
A loud creak sounds from above our heads. Someone is walking down the corridor on the second floor.
He bends down and retrieves my panties from the floor. “Here. Mother’s on her way down.”
I grab the panties and practically dive onto the sofa, scrambling to pull the damp garment up my quivering legs. I slap the creases out of my skirt and finger-comb my hair back from my face.
Danny sits on the piano stool at the keyboard, fingering the music sheets, looking for all the world as though he’s simply trying to figure out a tune to play. Apart from looking a little flustered, you wouldn’t have a clue what he’s just done.
I pull my laptop to me and punch the wake-up button. My heart is still thumping wildly, my pussy still damp inside my clenched thighs. I’m sure my face belies all the wickedness we’ve reveled in.
Just as the laptop screen comes alive with my documents, the living-room door squeaks open. Both Danny and I look up with fake expressions of mild surprise. I look back down at my screen.
Lady Ellen walks in fully. How good is her sense of smell? Does she get the musky scent that surely gives our game away?
“Here you both are,” Lady Ellen says. She glides over the window and peers out. “I haven’t heard you play in years, Danny.”
“No.” He shuffles the pages of the music score some more.
“Not since—”
“I know,” he says roughly.
She glances at him, then at me. Then at him again. “It would be good to hear you play again.”
Then she goes out of the room as quickly as she entered.
A silence descends upon us. I can’t read his expression—stiff-jawed, eyes averted.
Finally, he meets my gaze. “That was close.”
“She knows,” I say.
He scratches his chin. “Do you mind?”
I laugh. “She’s not my mother.”
He rises, comes over to my sofa bends and takes my hands gently in his, looking at me with an earnest expression, “We take it easy—as it feels natural, of course.”
I smirk and bat my eyelids at him. “Well, that felt…pretty natural.”
He grins. “More than that. It felt necessary.”
His groin is at my face level. And he’s still hard, his cock straining against the fabric of his suit pants. It takes all my willpower not to whip my hands out of his grasp and give him what he needs. But I sense he’s also more than a little freaked at how close his mother was to walking in on us. I also notice he’s not releasing my hands.
“I have to go now,” I tell him. “We always have dinner at six, Nuala and I. But would you like to come over around seven?”
His grip on my hands tighten. “Are you sure Nuala wouldn’t mind?”
“I’ll broach the subject with her at dinner and text you with the verdict.”
“Then let me give you my private number.” He releases my h
ands and sits down beside me. We exchange phone numbers.
“Give that number to no-one,” he says as I finish typing in his number. “Not even within your family.”
“OK, sure.”
“I don’t want this to be just a one-night thing,” he says with utter earnest.
“Me neither,” I say, putting my hand on his forearm. I’m surprised at how easily I say it.
17
SHANNON
Nuala voiced no objections to Danny coming over after dinner, so he’s here now. He’s wearing a navy-blue button-down shirt for a change which does wondrous things to his eyes. It’s a fine evening and we’re sitting out in the back garden on two plastic chairsunder the huge beech tree. I want to take him up to the bedroom, but for Nuala’s sake, we’re doing the chaste date thing—for a while anyway.
“Danny, there’s so much I don’t know about your life,” I admit.
He’s quiet for a long moment just staring into my eyes. “I want to tell you.”
“Let’s start with Cliona. I mean, what’s going on there?”
He sinks back against the chair. “Nothing. She’s just a friend. A good friend.” His voice rings with the truth.
“And Lorcan? Why are you so attentive to him? I mean, I know he’s a lovey child and everything, but..”
“My participation in his life seems excessive to you?” he supplies.
I exhale, glad that he’s said it, not me, because it sounds so mean-spirited. “Yes.”
He scratches his jaw, a nervous tic. “It’s not excessive. It’s barely even adequate…after what I’ve done.” He bows his head. Then he lifts it up again. “This could change everything—it will change everything—but it must be said.”
Dread creeps into my heart.
“Lorcan is…Lorcan is the son of Owen Callaghan.”
“Lorcan’s a Callaghan?”
Even as I blurt it, Lorcan’s cheeky little face comes into my mind and apart from him being obviously Cliona’s offspring, he does look similar to Seamus and Niall.
“Well, that’s…not a bad thing, is it?”
Danny’s face, however, is clouded over.
“But wait, who’s Owen? I remember a Seamus, a Niall and an Enda. I don’t think Owen was in MacAuleys.”
