Chapter 34
SIOBHAN
Emotionally wrung out doesn’t even cover how I feel as Liam removes his gun and places it on the nightstand.
He turns to me and undresses me. I close my eyes as his fingers work the buttons of my dress, each one a calculated move.
The fabric falls away, leaving me in black lace that feels invisible to his gaze.
“Eyes on me,” Liam demands.
My eyes flutter open. His gaze rakes over me, possessive and hungry, like I’m territory he’s claimed and will kill to defend.
“You terrified them today,” he says, hands gripping my sides hard enough to bruise. “Every person in that cathedral realized what a mistake they’d made, underestimating you.”
“And what mistake was that?” My voice comes out like gravel.
“Thinking they could control you.” His teeth graze my collarbone, not gentle. “Thinking you weren’t mine.”
The words flood my veins like a drug, making me feel invincible when everything around us is war.
I yank his tie loose, my movements sharp and certain. “You’re mine too.”
“No.” He captures my wrists in a grip that reminds me how easily he could snap them. “I’m your weapon. Your killer. The blood on your hands when you don’t want to get them dirty. You don’t share power, Siobhan. You take it.”
This dangerous, violent man who sees exactly what I am and wants me anyway.
I wrench my hands free and shove him backward onto the bed. His eyes widen for a fraction of a second in approval before I climb onto him, straddling his hips.
“Then let me take,” I say, working his belt free with hands that don’t shake anymore.
I’ve fake-buried my father today. Declared war on the O’Sullivans. Stood in a cathedral and lied to three hundred people without flinching. I’m done being afraid of what I want.
I want him. All of him. The violence and the devotion and the darkness that matches mine.
His fingers dig into my hips as I free his cock. He’s already hard, straining against my palm as I stroke him once, twice, watching his jaw clench with the effort of not taking control back.
“Siobhan.” My name is a warning and a plea.
I don’t answer. I just position myself over him, and shoving my panties to the side, I sink down, taking him in one brutal thrust that makes us both gasp. The stretch burns, perfect and overwhelming, filling the hollowness that’s been eating at me all day.
“Fuck,” he grits out, his grip on my hips tightening to the point of pain. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Good.” I roll my hips in a rhythm that’s more punishment than pleasure. “Then we’ll be even.”
I ride him hard, chasing the edge of release but refusing to fall over it. Not yet. Not until I’ve wrung every ounce of control from both of us.
Liam’s hands slide up my body, cupping my breasts through the lace, his thumbs roughly pinch my nipples until they’re hard points of sensation.
“Don’t stop,” he commands, his voice rough. “Take what you need from me.”
What I need. The words unlock something feral in my soul. I need to forget the performance. I need to feel powerful instead of terrified. I need to know that in this moment, I control something—him, us, this.
I lean forward and rip his shirt open before bracing my hands on his inked chest, feeling his muscles ripple under my palm. The new angle sends sparks of pleasure racing up my spine, and I can’t hold back the moan that tears from my throat.
“That’s it,” Liam growls, his hips bucking up to meet my movements. “Soak my cock, sweetheart.”
I ride him harder, faster, my nails digging into his chest.
His name tears from my throat as my vision blurs. I’m drowning, burning alive from the inside out.
“Don’t you fucking dare hold back,” he snarls, his thumb circling my clit with vicious intent. “Let me feel that cunt claim me.”
The orgasm detonates like a bomb planted deep in my marrow. My body convulses, every muscle seizing as I clench around him so hard it hurts. I taste blood where I’ve bitten my lip, the metallic tang mixing with his name on my tongue.
Liam’s eyes never leave mine, his cock twitches inside me as he sits up and wraps his arm around my waist. He flips us over and buries his cock balls deep.
“Fucking take it,” he growls, his hand going around my throat and squeezing until I gag.
“Every. Last. Drop. No other fucker will ever have you like this, Siobhan. Mine.” He punctuates the sentence with a brutal thrust. “Mine.” He pounds into me again.
“Say it.”
“Yours,” rips from my throat like a confession under torture. His grip tightens until darkness edges my vision, then he releases just before I black out.
I gasp in air that burns my lungs while he jackhammers into me, each thrust splitting me open. My body’s still vibrating from before, raw and oversensitive, but he doesn’t care. He wants to break me apart and rebuild me as something that belongs to him alone.
“Again,” he commands. “Let me feel you shatter for me, Siobhan. Only me.”
My body rebels against the demand. I’m empty, spent, hollowed out. But Liam excavates pleasure from places I didn’t know existed. He doesn’t seduce; he conquers.
The second orgasm ambushes me. My consciousness fragments like shattered glass. I rake trenches down his back, marking my territory. Blood wells beneath my nails, and the copper scent mingles with our sweat. This is how we negotiate: with violence, with ownership.
Liam’s movements turn feral, unhinged. He drives into me one final time and freezes, muscles locked as he unloads. The sound he makes is the raw declaration of a predator claiming what it’s hunted.
We collapse, a battlefield after the massacre.
He rolls off me, sweat-slick skin peeling from mine, then drags me against him with a possessive growl.
His cum leaks hot between my thighs as I press my lips to the inked skin over his heart, tasting salt and violence.
“I love you,” I whisper, the words ripped from somewhere primal as I bite down on his nipple hard enough to make him hiss.
His body goes rigid against mine. In one savage heartbeat, Liam seizes the gun and clamps me against his chest, my ribs creaking under his iron grip.
The bedroom door explodes inward, raining splinters across our tangled sheets.
Liam fires—the gun’s report shatters the air, drilling into my eardrums until they throb.
The intruder’s bullet slices past my face, its heat scorching my cheek as it tears into the mahogany headboard.
Fragments of wood spray across my naked shoulders, each splinter embedding like a tiny dagger into my sweat-dampened skin.
“Get down,” Liam growls and shoves me toward the edge of the bed.
I move; Mom’s drills hammering in my head. I reach under the bed, feeling for the gun I know my dad kept taped to the underside, as another shot rings out, followed by a loud grunt.
“Liam,” I whimper and find the gun, gripping it tightly as I yank it free.
I scramble up, gun raised, my heart hammering against my ribs hard enough to crack bone.
The intruder is down, sprawled across the expensive rug, blood pooling beneath his shoulder where Liam’s bullet found home. But he’s not alone.
Two more crash through the doorway, weapons drawn, and I don’t hesitate. I fire twice, the recoil jolting up my arms. One drops immediately, his face a mask of shock as red blooms across his chest, but it wasn’t me. It was Liam. His face is grim as the other one aims straight for me.
“Are you fucking stupid?” Liam asks before he pulls the trigger.
The bullet slams into the man’s forehead, and he crumples like a marionette with severed strings.
The silence that follows is deafening, broken only by my ragged breathing and the groan of the first intruder that Liam hit in the shoulder.
He marches over, zipping up his pants as he goes and stands over the man, planting his feet on either side of his body as he leans down and presses the barrel of the gun to the intruder’s forehead.
“You are going to end up like your two pals here unless you start talking,” he says with icy calm.
It makes my blood run cold. This is Liam the O’Neill executioner. This has gone beyond what happened with Chris. This has moved into territory where I daren’t breathe.
“Who sent you?” Liam asks.
The man grips his shoulder as he glares up at Liam with eyes full of hate and something like resignation.
I clutch the gun tighter, my skin prickling with goosebumps from the sudden chill in the room, the acrid scent of gunpowder stinging my nostrils.
My heart thunders in my ears, but I force myself to breathe, to focus, because this isn’t over, and I won’t be the weak link here.
“Fuck you,” the intruder spits, his voice wet and ragged. “You think this changes anything? You’re both dead already.”
Liam presses the barrel harder against his forehead, the metal digging in until the skin turns white around it. “Wrong answer. Who. Sent. You?”
I edge closer, careful not to step in the spreading pools of blood that soak into the carpet like accusations.
“Declan,” the man finally chokes out, a sneer twisting his bloodied mouth. “Your precious right-hand man. Thinks you’re weak. Thinks he can do better.”
The words hit like a slap, but I don’t flinch. Liar. Declan stood by me at the funeral, his loyalty a wall I’d leaned on. But doubt creeps in anyway, cold and insidious, because in this world, betrayal’s just another currency, and everyone’s buying.
Liam doesn’t buy it, though. He laughs, low and dangerous, twisting the gun like he’s screwing in a lightbulb. “Try again. Declan doesn’t send amateurs like you. He would’ve done it himself, clean and quiet.”
“Five seconds,” Liam says flatly, no mercy in his tone. He glances at me over his shoulder, his winter-sea eyes locking onto mine. “Your call, Siobhan. We end him quick or make him scream it out?”