Covet (Sinful Secrets 3)

My throat twists. All the air in my lungs dissipates.

“Don’t say it back,” she murmurs. “Not right now. This is my moment to tell you.” Her hand comes to my face. “I love you, Declan Carnegie. No strings attached, as they say.”

But she’s wrong. Every string I have is tied up in her. I don’t know how I’ll ever untie them. I blink. My eyes sting so fucking bad.

I want to say I love you, too. I love you.

I can’t breathe because the words are stuck in my throat.

She reaches for my dick again. I put a hand over hers. Better if I do that tonight. Better when I feel her long, soft hair against my chest and throat.

“I want to say I love you with my sex.” She grins as she murmurs the word. I give her the best smile I can manage.

Then I guide her onto her back. I love to whisper to her while I fuck her. I love to touch her face and kiss her lips.

I love you.

I grab her by the hips. She squeals as I turn her over onto her front.

“Ohhhh, it’s this again…the deep dive.” She giggles.

Cold sweat blooms on my skin. “Stick your ass up in the air for me, Siren. And put your fingers in your pussy.”

* * *

Finley

I ponder it at the mid-June Monthly Market as I wait in line for all the usuals: enough eggs, meat, chicken, and grains to last, oddly, not four weeks, as the name might suggest, but six. Our customs need not make sense.

“For one or two?” I ask Maura, who oversees the market with her mother and two sisters.

“When will Doctor be back?”

“I believe the ship’s arriving ’round about the first of August.”

Maura scratches her freckled face with a pencil. “Well…the beef keeps. And chicken. Go on. Get a bit for the household.”

I’ll share a bit with Declan as well. My thoughts return to him as I move through the homegoods market. Would he need some shaving cream? New razors? I fill my basket for us both and grin behind my hand at how lovely it feels.

I return to the clinic residence, unload a bit of stuff, and get a hat I knitted for Kayti so I can drop by Anna’s. If I don’t go by often enough, she’ll know—and that won’t do. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

When I arrive, Anna grins and tells me Freddy took Kayti to market. “I’m alone! Can you imagine?” She laughs, a bit mad with the freedom. “Do come in, my dear!”

To my surprise, she opens the bottle of wine the oldest Mrs. Glass gave her just after Kayti’s birth.

“Shall we have a bit?”

“And what of your udders?”

“Oh, I’ll have only a swallow.”

“And I’ll get sloshed?”

I laugh at that, but it’s near what happens. By the time I leave a few hours later, I can scarcely walk straight. I remember there was something—something I should do or think of?—but it’s quite a ways past midday now; I left before sunup, and now I need to see my darling.

I love him. I grin at that. Then I frown…because he didn’t say he loved me, did he? I did ask him not to, though. And besides, I can feel he does.

But what of the odd intercourse? That’s what was nagging at me. I was going to ponder why he’s switched his preference. Every night and day this week when we’ve made love, it’s been that way, where I can’t see him. Is it odd? Does it perhaps signify he’s putting distance between us? Or does he rightly think that I enjoy the angle?