33. Ava
AVA
T y arranged me like always on the couch. If my chest rose and fell more dramatically than it should have, he didn’t seem to notice as he untied my robe strings and pushed it off my body.
My heavy breath through my loosely parted lips sounded so loud to me that I was sure Ty would find me out.
My whole body tensed in anticipation of Ty’s tongue as he leaned over my naked body. It was only with the greatest exertion that I did not flinch when he flicked it over my nipple, then sucked, hard.
I held back a deep groan.
God. It was going to only get harder not to move, not to groan or rock my hips, begging for more.
Ty always made me come, even if it took hours.
Ty licked my skin with a savageness that had me dripping between my legs.
I wanted to tremble for him, shudder onto his tongue, beg him with my hips grinding into his face for more, but it would all be over if I even flinched.
He’d know I’d swapped out the drug.
Ty was so attuned with my body that he’d notice anything other than perfect stillness.
“I’m going to cleanse you of him until there’s only me.”
I’d always assumed that he’d been talking about the professor when he said those things, but now that I had all my senses, a thought entered my head.
Maybe he was talking about Ciaran.
He lowered his face between my legs and sweat broke out all up and down my naked flesh from the strain of holding back as he lapped at my pussy, his fingers burying deep into the meat of my hips.
Inside my head I was screaming.
It was unbearable pain and it was unimaginable pleasure, the two clashing in my body like opposing waves.
I was sure I couldn’t survive to the end. I was sure my body would betray me.
Ty was normally so quiet, diligent and focused. Always in control. But the noises that filled the soaring heights of the professor’s bedroom were primal, vicious, blood hungry.
If he’d been silent, my traitorous gasps as he sucked frantically at my clit surely would have been heard.
“Mine. Mine. Mine ,” he chanted, his voice oscillating from hungry to painfully desperate.
So much so that my heart tugged in my chest and I had to force down the bitter guilt.
No. He betrayed me by forcing me to stay here. I wasn’t doing anything wrong .
I was merely doing what I had to do to get back to Ciaran, to Dublin, and to uncover the bastards who were hurting Darkmoor girls.
My mind was thick with a hot haze as the wave inside of me rose higher and higher from Ty’s ceaseless tongue.
My self-control was slipping. I felt fucking high. Fucking drunk.
I wanted nothing more than to give in, to claw at Ty’s back, to wrap my thighs around his ears, to damn the consequences.
But I had to stay still. I had to keep it all inside.
No, I couldn’t hold it back. I would scream his name when I went crashing over the edge and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
But my gaze landed on the secret panel on the opposite side of the library.
I thought I saw the secret panel shift, the memory of Ciaran’s burning eyes flashing in the dark and the sharp line of his jaw just visible enough for me to see it tighten.
I held on to his furious gaze even as Ty slid two of his fingers into my pussy and curled them around. Pleasure slammed through me so hard that I thought I might pass out.
I came, with Ty’s fingers inside me and his tongue on my clit, and my gaze locked on the phantom of Ciaran.
It was the ghost of his memory that kept me from screaming and revealing my treachery to Ty. His strength was mine.
My promise to return to him steeled inside me.
The full vial of paralytic burned in my mind like a forbidden promise, a tangible glimmer of freedom tucked discreetly under my pillow.
Escape.
All I had to do was find the right moment, slip it into Ty’s drink, and watch as the same paralysis that had bound me countless times finally took him down.
The very idea sparked a thrill of hope—of returning to Darkmoor, to Ciaran. Of freeing myself from this twisted cycle of “therapy” that was as torturous as it was healing.
But even as I held on to this plan, the thrill dulled with a creeping guilt.
If I used it, if I left Ty behind, I’d be leaving more than him behind. I’d be severing myself from everything he’d tried to unearth in me, every piece of my fractured past he had forced me to confront.
Wasn’t that the whole purpose of therapy? Had I gone down this long dark road, suffered every raw and painful step, just to quit now?
And somehow, hadn’t he—Ty, with all his dark, complicated intensity—started to mean something more to me?
Not in the way that Ciaran did, but in a way I couldn’t easily dismiss, no matter how hard I tried.
Ciaran.
I could almost see his face staring out at me through the secret panel, the flash of his smirk, could almost feel the brush of his protective arms around me.
My heart tugged in his direction, as if it belonged with him, waiting for me to come back.
But had he felt this pull—this ache—when I was gone? Or had he managed to let me go, to start over without me? It had been almost three months, the whole summer, of me “missing.”
The thought struck hard, as if my escape might mean stepping back into a world where he’d moved on, where he’d left Ireland without me as we’d planned, leaving me with only the haunting memory of what we’d once shared.
And then there was Ty.
How many times had I pleaded with him to stop, to let me go, only to find him holding me through every memory, coaxing the truth from me like it was our shared burden?
He’d suffered, too, in ways I couldn’t begin to understand, yet I’d seen his control crack, his humanity bleed through the armor he wore.
If I drugged him, if I escaped, would I be betraying that side of him—the one who’d stayed by my side, even as I fought and screamed and clawed against the memories? I’d be betraying my best friend who suffered through prison and fought his way out so he could come back to me.
And yet… every time Ty touched me, I felt Ciaran’s ghost between us, a wall of loyalty and guilt that I couldn’t seem to break down.
Could I keep enduring Ty’s version of “therapy,” knowing it chipped away at that bond, knowing that with every session I was betraying the man I loved?
Or would breaking free of Ty be my only way to hold on to Ciaran, to make sure that when I returned, I could look him in the eyes without shame?
As usual, Ty pulled me into his arms. I laid my head on his shoulder as I “recovered” from the paralytic, keeping my movements slow and heavy as if the drug was only just wearing off .
Ciaran’s shadow watched me from the secret panel, his tortured eyes pleading with me to choose him .
As Ty pressed tender kisses along my spent, limp body, every argument clashed, pulling me in opposite directions.
The vial could mean escape or betrayal, a step toward freedom or a descent back into the dark memories that haunted me.
It was my decision, my responsibility, and the weight of it pressed down on me until I felt like I might break under it.
What would I lose if I left? And what would be left of me if I stayed?