The smile I gave him this time was real and brimming over with satisfaction. A day where I’d aggravated Cillian was always a good one.
Chapter Three
Alarm bells rang as soon as I unlocked the door to Finn and Cillian’s flat, several oddities hitting me all at once. A towel draped over the sofa that hadn’t been there yesterday when I’d left after spending a couple of hours with Quasimodo. An unwashed plate on the coffee table, crumbs still decorating its surface. Cushions in disarray. The alarm not set. And above all else, the thing that really got my heart racing and told me I wasn’t alone: the faint sound of the shower running.
“Finn? Cillian?” No response. They were supposed to be in Dubai for another week and a half. Had something made them come home early? If so, I would have expected one of them to let me know I no longer needed to take care of Quasimodo.
I dropped my bag next to the sofa, the plan having been to spend the night here. Quasimodo and I had scheduled a jam-packed night of movies, good food, and conversation. Granted, most of those, particularly the conversation, were more my department. But Quasimodo would sit on my lap and providethe purring, which was good enough. Better than most of the dates they’d sent me on over the last couple of months.
I moved toward the sound of the running shower, the bathroom door slightly ajar. I paused outside it. “Finn?” Nothing. “Cillian?” Still nothing. Were they both in there? My lip curled at the idea of them being so busy getting it on that they were oblivious to anything else. If that was the case, they deserved to get a shock. Besides, it’d provide me with some useful ammunition to use against both of them.
With that in mind, I crept inside the bathroom, the shower hot enough to leave the room mired in mist. Their shower had a glass door, the steam obscuring anything but a faint outline through it. Had I not been so intent on catching them in a compromising position, I might have registered there only being one outline.
Alas, I didn’t, yanking the door open before engaging my brain and staring at the peachy arse on display, the rivulets of water running over it turning it into an even nicer sight. Paler than the skin that surrounded it, a definite underwear tan line. No hair. Not that I minded a bit of hair, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating its lack. Taut. Muscular. Squeezable.
The man turned to leave me staring at his cock rather than his arse. That was nice too. Generously sized, even though it was soft. A slight curve to the left. Attractive as not all cocks are. Realizing my gaze had lingered there a while, I jerked it to his face.
For one horrifying moment, I thought it was Cillian. Same dark hair. Same blue eyes. Same lips. Despair at being caught ogling his cock had me wanting to disappear through the floor. Either that or move somewhere uninhabited by humans. Pluto, or the Arctic. I’d take either.
Then my brain caught up, and I catalogued all the differences. Younger. Longer hair. Leaner face and body. No stubble.The man continued to shampoo his hair, soapy suds creating interesting trails over his torso. I followed the path of one over a peaked pink nipple. “Qui es-tu?” I demanded.
His brow furrowed for a moment before realization dawned. “That’s French for who are you, right?” He seemed proud of his translation skills as he tipped his head back under the torrent of water to wash the shampoo out of his hair.
Irish accent. Because, of course, he was Irish. This had to be Cillian’s younger brother. The one I hadn’t even known existed until a couple of weeks ago. “Oui.”
“Cormac King.” He shook his head to shake his fringe out of his eyes and offered me a smile. Nice lips. Nice teeth. I had seen nothing yet that didn’t pass muster, which was a disturbing thought to have about Cillian’s brother. “My friends call me Mac.”
“Can they not manage two syllables?”
“Ah, you do speak English. Good. Because my French is crap.” His Irish accent was less pronounced than his brother’s. Presumably because of the age gap between the two siblings. Cormac would have been younger when the family moved from Ireland to England, Finn once providing me with a King family history lesson I’d neither asked for nor required. “At the risk of not being individualistic enough to come up with a question of my own. Who are you?”
“Laurent Dupont.”
Cormac nodded thoughtfully. “Right! Nice to meet you, Laurent. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you going to watch my entire shower?”
Yeah, that was what I was doing, wasn’t it? Like some sort of perverted voyeur. And it didn’t matter that Cormac didn’t seem anywhere near as bothered as he should have to encounter a stranger while showering.
Cormac made a gesture with his hand that translated as “close the door.”
I did, stepping back as he continued his shower. After a couple of seconds of indecision, I turned on my heel and headed back into the living room. Quasimodo had appeared from somewhere—presumably the bedroom—to perch on the back of the sofa. “You could have warned me,” I chided him as I stroked his head, a rumbling purr starting up.
Now what?I could leave, but that didn’t feel right. Not when I didn’t know how long he’d be here for and what that meant for looking after Quasimodo. I, at least, needed to get some information out of him first. There was more than one source for that information, though. Continuing to stroke Quasimodo with one hand, I pulled my phone out of my pocket with the other.
“If you’re messaging my brother, please don’t.”
I lifted my head to find Cormac in the doorway. I’d been too deep in thought to register the sound of the shower stopping. He’d wrapped a towel around his waist, but hadn’t bothered to dry himself. I narrowed my eyes at him, Cormac’s request and the hint of urgency in his voice bringing clarity to at least one thing. “Cillian doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
Cormac pulled a face. He retrieved the towel from the back of the sofa and began to dry his hair roughly with it. “If you tell him, he’s likely to do something stupid like cancel his holiday and rush back here.”
“How did you get in?”
“He left my parents a key.”
“Your parents,” I pointed out. “Not you.”
A reluctant grin graced his features when he lowered his towel. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
‘Why didn’t you just ask your brother if you could stay here?”
