Declan had me pinned down on the bed with his rock-hard body, and wooow, was I turned on by it. This was beyond sexy. My body was in a state of arousal I didn’t even think was possible. I had been so close to blowing my load down Declan’s mouth moments ago, but he was able to read me like a freakin’ Kama Sutra manual and managed to pull off right before I blew. And now, the feeling of his body weight on mine, his heat covering me, his thick length pressing against mine, it was pushing me right back to that edge.

“Deecck, you’re going to make me come,” I warned. He stopped rubbing himself against me and picked himself up. He was grinning devilishly down at me. “You’re bad,” I said, knowing he was edging the shit out of me.

“And you like it,” he said, biting his lower lip, his ass pressing down on my cock now.

“I love it,” I said honestly, the fires of lust burning through any logical thoughts left.

“You’ll love this, too,” he said, getting off me. He flipped and swung a leg over my chest and backed up, his tight balls coming up to my mouth while his lips closed around my cock.

“Ohhhh, fuck,” I said, moaning into Declan’s nuts. I groaned and opened my mouth, sucking him in, licking at his sac and pushing my hips up so he could swallow more of me. It was fucking heavenly. I grabbed Declan’s hard dick and aimed it down so I could suck on him, instantly overcome by the salty-sweet taste of his precome, which was leaking out of him like a river. I had never sixty-nined before, so I never knew just how much pleasure I was actually missing out on. There was something about the two of us, sucking each other off, totally wrapped up in the other, that was taking me to an entirely new level.

“Yeah, keep sucking my dick like that, baby,” Declan growled against my cock as he licked up and down. My mouth was stuffed with his dick, and his balls were getting tighter and tighter against him. I tried taking all of him in my mouth, up until my nose went right up against his sac, filling my senses with his intoxicating scent.

Declan, still sucking on my dick, moved his arms so that they went under my legs and then pushed up, lifting my legs while his arms supported me, my calves hooked on his powerful biceps. I was surprised by the move but didn’t resist, letting him adjust me however he wanted. This had the effect of spreading my ass, exposing me, the slightly cold air surprising against my hole. Declan stopped sucking on my dick for a moment. “Mmmh, baby, you’re so fucking sexy.” He got back to sucking my cock, but now there was another ingredient added to this cosmically orgasmic pie we were baking. Declan must have sucked on his fingers, gotten them soaking wet, and was now rubbing them against my hole, sending pure waves of pleasure crashing through me. I had to stop sucking on Declan so I could drop my head back, close my eyes, and moan wildly as Declan pushed his fingers in, past my tight ring of muscle and into my quivering hole. I took a deep breath as he pushed deeper, his tongue still working overtime on my cock while I was working overtime on making sure I didn’t come.

My core was winding up tight as Declan probed deeper. I went back to sucking Declan off, unable to keep his dick out of my mouth for much longer.

Both of us were grunting and moaning with the rhythms of our movements. I thought I couldn’t get any more turned on, and then Declan started to rub over my prostate with his fingers and I lost it, my brain going haywire, my mouth continuing to work on Declan but my head up in the cloud.

“Oh, ohhh, o—” I started, a mouth full of Declan’s cock.

“Give it to me, baby,” Declan urged, sinking his fingers past what felt like his second knuckle. I cried out as the orgasm crashed over me. “Fuuuck, you’re gonna make me come, too,” Declan warned.

And then both our bodies were convulsing, both of our cocks exploding down the other’s throat, my hole twitching around Declan’s fingers, trying to pull him in deeper with every wave.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of pure pleasure, the both of us had finished. Declan’s come had filled my mouth, and I’d swallowed it all, relishing the taste. Declan had done the same, wiping his mouth as he sat up off of me.

“That… wow… I mean, that… I don’t even.” I was speechless. I looked to Declan, who came to lie next to me on the bed, an arm under his head and a goofy grin on his face, his lips wet.

“That was incredible,” Declan said, his voice dripping with the passion that had filled the room to the brim moments before. “Boyfriend.”

My smile involuntarily grew wider at that word. “Boyfriend,” I said, repeating it, liking how it felt on my tongue almost as much as I liked how my actual boyfriend felt on my tongue.

“This is going to be reaaaal fun, isn’t it?” Declan asked, coming in to kiss me.

“Very fun,” I said, kissing him. “The funnest.”

And we devolved back into a kissing puddle of limbs and grinding bodies, and soon after that we jumped back into the ring for round two.

Later that evening, my body was still feeling like Jell-O from our romp in the tree house earlier in the day. We were sitting (thankfully, because my legs were still shaky) at the dining room table inside the main mansion. The dining room was decked out in Christmas decorations, with big red ribbons, snow-dusted pine cones, and sparkling silver garland all around us. It was a big room with a light fixture made of shined brass hanging above the long table. Grandma Lucy had cooked us a five-star meal consisting of a holiday beef brisket that was to die for and dessert consisting of a fresh sorbet of cherry, lime, and lemon. The three big balls of sherbet were red, green, and white, and I was digging into them as Grandma Lucy continued telling the story about the time she and Declan had got lost in a sketchy area of London.

“So there I was, in a foreign country with my wide-eyed grandson at my side, both of us looking around at the graffiti and clusters of men standing on corners, and that’s when Declan turned to me and said, ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let you hold the map.’ And I look down and say, ‘This? This isn’t a map, you dumb-dumb. It’s a takeout menu I had kept with me after getting off our train.’”

I cracked up at that, imagining the two of them walking around London without a clue of where they were. Declan was sitting next to me, his cheeks getting a little pink. He wasn’t one to normally blush, so this was actually kind of cute. “I was shocked. I thought she knew where we were going. She was walking with such confidence.”

“Nope,” she said, “I just saw a sexy bloke and thought we would follow him down to his local pub.” She said that in a butchered English accent, which only made it funnier. “I didn’t realize we were following Pablo Escobar.”

“So you’re chasing after Londoners, eh?” Pop said, crossing his arms over his big belly. His big white bushy eyebrow curved upward.

“Oh please, I saw you gawking at the women across the pond, too. There’s something in the accent.”

Pop deflated, smiling. He was caught and didn’t put up a fight about it, instead going back to his almost empty bowl of sorbet.

“Mhmm,” Grandma Lucy said, smiling herself. Robin was sitting across from us, Kieran showing her something on his phone. His mom and dad listened intently to Grandma Lucy’s story while his sister furiously texted away. Today’s dinner had been much less eventful than our first night’s dinner, mainly due to the fact that Tyler and Brooke both went out to eat and they’d taken their respective others with them. Bill had sat at the table but was silent for most of the dinner, excusing himself before the desserts had been served. I could still sense tension between him and Declan, and I knew it wouldn’t get resolved until Declan confronted him with the photo.

Although…

I had been pondering what would happen if I confronted Bill by myself, and at first, the idea made me nervous. I didn’t think it was my place to get involved, but that was before this had become a real relationship. Now, the idea didn’t seem terrible. Maybe I could talk to him and get to the bottom of things as a neutral party, avoiding any potential blowups from an encounter between Deck and his stepdad. I already saw how tempers could flare at the drop of a hat. It helped that we had talked about the possibility of me confronting Bill after our romp up in the tree house. After that had finished and we were working on the amazing meal Robin had prepared and left there for us, I brought up the topic and he’s seemed okay about it. His biggest concern was me looking bad somehow, and he didn’t want that to happen. We had left the tree house without any real plan set into motion, except for an agreement that Declan wouldn’t talk to Bill himself until after the holidays.

“You okay?” Declan asked, his voice low enough so only I could hear him while Grandma Lucy jumped into another story about a trip to Tokyo. “You look distracted.”

“Just thinking,” I said, realizing how vague that sounded. “About how good this sorbet tastes.”

“Mhmm,” Declan replied, not satisfied. He was softly rubbing my thigh under the table, a touch that was quickly reminding me of our date this morning. “You sure?” he asked again.

“Positive,” I said, smiling. He was such an intuitive man, and it was something I was going to have to get used to. I had been so accustomed to no one picking up on my emotions, I forgot how it felt when someone did actually care.

It was heartwarming; that was how it felt. The entire day had me feeling as if I was walking on a cloud. I smiled and leaned in for a quick kiss, our lips meeting and his leaving the taste of the coffee he had been drinking.

“And so Declan, this genius over here, thinks he can suddenly speak Japanese because he learned three words on the plane over. He goes to ask a local for directions to a famous restaurant, but instead of us getting pointed in the direction of our dinner, he gets a shocked face and the woman gasps, covers her mouth, and turns to leave without another word.”

I was hooked on the story now. “What did he say?”

“We still, to this day, have no idea,” Grandma Lucy said. “The girl was almost in tears!” I turned to Declan, whose face was even redder than before.

“I stuck to using a translator app on my phone after that one.”

I started cracking up, a hundred different possibilities of what Declan could have accidentally said running through my head. “You guys need a travel show together,” I said when I stopped laughing.

“I’d definitely DVR that hot mess,” Judy said, proving she was listening intently to the conversation while her fingers danced across her phone.

“Oh, I’d love it,” Grandma Lucy said, holding two small fragile hands up to her chest, a dozen gold bracelets on each wrist. “Declan’s my favorite travel partner. I usually leave this grouch in the hotel or at the spa and roam around with Declan until the sun falls.”

“We’ve had some adventures, haven’t we, Grandma?”

“Sure have,” she said, her face beaming with love.

“Wait until we go to Sydney next month,” Robin said, jumping into the conversation. “We’re opening up a brand-new hotel right in the heart of the city. Mom and Declan already have a snorkeling trip scheduled together for the Great Barrier Reef.”

“No way,” I said, impressed by both of them. “That sounds equal parts relaxing and terrifying.”

We continued to talk and laugh for a little while longer. It was around nine when I excused myself from the table, saying I wanted to shower and get ready for the night. And although I was technically going to shower and get ready for bed, I wasn’t exactly doing that right after leaving the table. Instead, I found myself getting “lost” in the mansion, keeping my eyes peeled for any signs of Bill. Robin had mentioned he liked to spend evenings in the study, and so I headed toward where I thought that was first. Declan had given me a tour of the entire place, but that was days ago and my memory wasn’t the sharpest. Pair that with the fact that this place was somehow even bigger on the inside, and I was bound to actually get myself lost.

The entire mansion was decorated for the holidays, and that made getting lost very pleasant. I was actually enjoying my little snooping adventure, looking at all the crazy detail Robin put into making this place a winter wonderland for her family. There were intricate and beautiful nativity scenes, and the portraits that hung on the walls had appeared to be swapped out with holiday scenes: a snowy villa with kids throwing snowballs painted in watercolor, a stunning set of black-and-white shots of a Christmas tree, a stylized cartoon drawing of Santa and his elves hanging out on the snow as if they were sunning at the beach.

There was something to see everywhere you looked. It was so distracting, my eyes almost glazed right over a peculiar sighting outside as I was walking past a window. By my guess, I was somewhere toward the back of the mansion, where the window looked out over a massive garage and the road down toward the guesthouse. And outside, parked oddly in the middle of the road leading up to the garage, was the same car we had driven over from the city in. It was the same van with the blacked-out windows and New York plates, but no one was in the driver’s seat.

It struck me as odd because I didn’t remember seeing the driver around after he had dropped us off. He certainly wasn’t at any of the dinners, and I hadn’t spotted him anywhere else, so why was his car here?

I couldn’t think much more of it because the sound of someone clearing their throat interrupted the silence.

“Oh,” I said, surprised. Bill was standing behind me, a steaming mug of hot chocolate in his hands, judging from the sweet scent drifting out of it.

“Lost?” he asked. I could feel the suspicion dripping off his question.

“Umm…” Did I lie to him, or should I just be upfront about it? I tried to think of what Zane would do. “Actually, no,” I said, straightening my back and making sure I seemed as confident as possible, even though there was a slight tremble in my hands. Bill was an entire foot taller than I was and much wider, giving him an intimidating frame compared to mine. “I was actually looking for you.”

“Me? Why?”

I looked around us, down the hall. “Can we go somewhere in private to chat?”

His big brows creased in the center. He took a sip of his hot chocolate and looked out the window I had been looking out of when he snuck up on me. I followed his gaze, noticing the car I spotted moments before was gone now.

“Let’s go to the study,” he said after another few seconds of silence. I followed him down the hall toward an open door. He turned and led me inside, into a study that would have given the local library a bad case of book envy. The walls were all shelves, holding hundreds of different books, from floor to ceiling. There were a few comfortable-looking green chairs by a window, which was where Bill walked toward. The floor was a polished wood, and there was a big, fluffy white rug set in the center.

I took my seat across from Bill, the green cushion sinking as I sat. “Are you a big reader?” I asked, wanting to break some of the ice.

“I hate reading,” he said, surprising me. “I just like how peaceful this room is.”

I pursed my lips and nodded, looking around. “It is really peaceful in here. I’m a huge reader, so this is pretty much like heaven for me.”

Bill didn’t respond, just nodded his head. He sipped some more from his mug before setting it down on a small table. “What do you want?” he asked. A man who got straight to the point, okay.

“Right, well,” I started, not really knowing where to go next. I was beginning to doubt myself. This may have been a huge mistake. I wasn’t a trained detective, and I had no real plan on how to tackle this. “Umm.”

“I’m sorry, by the way.”

I had to work to keep my expression under control. “Huh?” I asked, not even sure if I heard him right even though he was loud and clear.

“I said I’m sorry.” He was looking out the window, out toward the dark woods, the ground covered in a thin layer of snow. “I shouldn’t have accused you of anything without even knowing you first.”

Huh… about that.

“It’s okay,” I said, “but thank you for apologizing. I get it, some people don’t always have good intentions in their hearts, and this family could potentially be a target for some of those malicious assholes. I see that.” I took a breath, pulling Bill’s eyes from outside to me. “But I can assure you, Bill, I’m not one of those people. I really care about Declan, and that means I also really care about this family.”

He stared at me, his dark eyes looking like two orbs holding a storm inside each of them. “I care about this family, too. That’s why I was shocked when Declan could even suggest me stealing from Robin.” He looked back out the window, freeing me. “I love that woman. She gave me a second chance at life, and I’d never do anything to hurt her. Ever.”

I believed it. Maybe it was the naivety in me, but I believed every word Bill was telling me. So how the hell was I going to figure out what the deal with that photo was?

“My first wife passed,” he continued, and then I remembered something Zane told me: Suspects tend to talk their way right into the police station. Just let someone talk and chances were high they’d say something that answered whatever question you were after.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Fifteen years ago, now. She was the light of my life. When she died, I thought that was it. I was clocking out, too.” He shook his head; eyes still looked out at something in the distance. “I was so close. I just wanted to be with her again. And then I thought of my kids, right when I was about to do it, and the world just came to a screeching fucking halt. So I stopped. Kept going with my life, but I was still empty inside. Going through the motions.” He stopped looking outside, his eyes finding mine again; there was a shine to them. “Then I met Robin, and everything changed again. I was laughing, actually laughing again. I wasn’t sleeping as much, I got my diet under control… although I do enjoy some Wendy’s every now and then—don’t tell her.”

“Who doesn’t like a little baked potato smothered in sour cream and bacon bits?” I said, trying to keep my composure but feeling myself waver. I was never expecting this story to come from Bill’s mouth. I wasn’t even sure if Declan knew this about his stepdad.

“So when Declan accused me, I just… I felt myself falling back into that person I used to be. The bitter husk of a man. I had to leave the table.”

I swallowed back some nerves. I had to steer this toward the photo, somehow. I was believing him more and more, but there was still questionable proof that Bill was somehow involved. “Do you have any thoughts on who could be stealing from Robin? She says that she’s misplacing things, but Declan obviously doesn’t believe that, and I don’t think you do, either.”

“No, she wouldn’t be losing these things. Some of the stolen items are worth as much as cars. There’s no way she’d lose track of something like that.” He nodded and went for a drink from his hot chocolate before continuing. “But I really don’t have any idea who could be doing it. We’ve changed out the entire house staff, and we’ve installed cameras; we’ve even hired private security for when we’re not home. Even with all those precautions, things still end up missing.”

That was all news to me. I didn’t know they had gone that far to stop the thefts. It made Bill’s story more believable, but also… he was involved in all those plans. He would know how to get around the security and the cameras. My suspicion spiked. “Are the cameras on twenty-four seven?”

“Yes, and the footage is held for a month. Whenever we’ve found something missing, we always go back and check the cameras.” He shook his head, frustration in the air. “Hell, I even tried sneaking some of her really expensive stuff out of the house. I wore a ski mask and snuck out at night since we thought we might be getting staked out. Looked like a fuckin’ looter. It was a shitty plan, but no one’s stolen anything from our second location, so we think it may have worked.”

Ding ding ding.

That explained the photo Declan had, and it was a totally plausible explanation at that. He didn’t even know the photo was in our possession, and he’d still described what was happening in it. It was great news overall, but it also blew up the only lead we had in figuring this mess out.

Still, there were a couple of red flags that popped up. “The cameras,” I asked, “do they have any blind spots? Or is there any way someone could alter the footage somehow?”

Bill thought on it for a moment before shaking his head. “Nope. The footage is stored on some secured server; I doubt anyone can alter it. As for blind spots… yeah, there are a couple.”

Interesting. “Are the cameras obvious, or are they hidden?”

“Hidden,” he answered.

“Did anyone help with installing them?”

“I tried doing it myself at first, but there was no way. So yeah, I got some help. I was actually heading out of the house when Arturo was driving up to the house, Tyler in the back seat. I told them both what was happening, and the two of them, both techy guys, figured it all out for me.”

“Arturo…” I said, speculating out loud.

“No, no way,” Bill jumped in, shutting that down. “He’s been working with Robin for something like ten years. This stealing saga started about five years ago. I’ve already brought up the chance that he could be responsible, but Robin wouldn’t have it. She trusts that guy. She’s the godmother to his two daughters. I don’t think he’d ever do that to her, either.”

The timeline was helping Arturo, but still, I was getting wary. “He wasn’t invited to the Christmas retreat?” I asked.

“He was, but he said he was spending the holidays with his family. They normally come every year, his entire family, but this year I guess they decided to spend it at their house.”

“Does he still work during this time of year?”

“Only if it’s something really urgent… why?”

“No reason. I just thought I saw his car outside earlier.”

Bill rolled his neck, the bones in his spine popping. “Hmm, yeah I do remember Tyler might have said something about calling him.”

Tyler…

That was another avenue of questions I wanted to go down, but I had a feeling Bill wasn’t going to be happy with me suspecting his son was the thief. Except… that was pretty much exactly what I was beginning to think. He didn’t seem to have a sense of loyalty to Declan’s side of the family, and his moral compass was definitely skewed. Plus, he knew where the cameras were, and if he was such a “techy” guy, then maybe he would know how to mess with the footage, maybe put a section on loop while he made off with the jewels. He’d also know when the private security was scheduled, and he wouldn’t draw any eyes if he went over for dinner one day and disappeared to the bathroom for half an hour or so.

I looked down at my watch, pretending as if I cared about how late it was getting. “Bill, thank you for talking to me and thank you for opening up to me. I’m not going to keep bothering you, though. It’s already getting pretty late.” I started to get up, smiling, my head swirling.

“All right,” Bill said, staying seated. I was surprised to see he was smiling, too. “You’re a good kid, Andrew. You’re exactly what Declan needs.”

Hearing that was even more surprising than seeing Bill smile. It warmed me up. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” I said and left the study, questions breeding in my brain like Viagra-infused bunnies.

I had to get to Declan and talk to him about this.