CHAPTER NINETEEN
William
MY PHONE BUZZES again from the sitting room.
Neither of us moves.
The lamplight from the hall catches the line of her throat, the slight part of her lips. Her fingers are still light against my jaw from when she turned toward me, and I haven't pulled back. Don't want to. The buzzing stops. Starts again. Stops.
Then silence.
The silence is louder.
"It could be important," she says. But she doesn't move.
Aidan is the only one with this number. Which means it is important. It's always important. But for the first time in longer than I can remember, something else is more important.
"He can wait," I say.
She's watching me with something careful in her expression, something measured. Deciding. Then her hand slides from my jaw to my chest, not pushing me away, just resting there, and I feel it through the fabric like a brand.
I cover her hand with mine. Press it flat against my chest where she can feel my heart going too fast, where she knows exactly what she's doing to me.
Her breath hitches.
I lean in and don't rush it. My mouth finds the corner of her jaw, just below her ear, and I feel her go still. Her fingers curl into my shirt.
"You're going to tell me to stop," I say against her skin.
Her head tilts. Giving me access. "I haven't yet."
I work down her throat, feel her pulse hammering under my lips. Her fingers tighten in my shirt like she needs something to hold onto. When I finally reach her mouth, she kisses me back hard, and that careful, measured look is gone completely.
Not like outside the burning house. Not fury and nowhere else to put it. This is different. She's choosing this. Choosing me.
That's worse. So much worse for me.
I pull her closer, and she shifts against me, pulls me down with her until we're lying facing each other in the near-dark. I pull back just enough to see her face.
"Say it," I tell her. "If you want me to stop."
"I don't want you to stop." Direct. No hesitation. That composure she wears like armour stripped right back.
Something loosens in my chest and tightens everywhere else.
I kiss her again, and this time I don't hold back. My hand moves into her hair, gripping at the base of her neck, pulling her closer.
She pulls my shirt over my head.
Her palms press flat against my chest, my stomach, tracing down. I watch her face while she does it. The way her lips part. She's not performing. Just here, just present, just looking at me like I'm something worth having.
I push her onto her back.
She looks up at me, and I take one second I probably shouldn't, memorizing her in this moment. Because this is the woman who flushed two thousand euros of cocaine without flinching. Who held a bucket under my chin for three days. Who read my journals and said nothing that wasn't worth saying.
My hand slides under the t-shirt, finds the warm skin of her waist. She shivers.
"You're thinking again," she says.
"Occupational hazard."
I pull the t-shirt over her head, and the almost-smile disappears.
She's perfect. I've had more women than I can count, and none of them looked like this, like they were actually here, like it actually mattered. She's lying in the strip of light from the hall, and I want to put my mouth on every part of her.
So I do.
I work down her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. I take her nipple into my mouth, and she arches off the bed, her fingers raking into my hair, gripping hard.
I bite down lightly, and she makes a sound I feel in my cock.
I do it again. Her hips roll up against me, and I press down, give her something to grind against, feel how much she wants this.
Good.
I want her desperate before I'm done.
My hand slides down her stomach. Her breath catches. I find the waistband of the underwear and pull it down slowly, watching her face the whole time. Her teeth catch her lip. Her chest rises and falls too fast.
I push her thighs apart and put my mouth on her.
She gasps, and her hips jerk up, but I press them down, hold her still.
I run my tongue along her slowly, feel her shudder, feel how wet she already is.
I find her clit and circle it, slow and deliberate, and her thighs clamp against my head.
I keep the pressure steady, working her in long strokes until her hips are fighting against my grip, until she's rocking up toward my mouth, chasing more.
I push two fingers inside her.
She clenches around them immediately, tight and hot, and I groan against her.
I curl them forward, and she arches clean off the mattress, a sharp cry tearing out of her.
I do it again, slower this time, watching her fall apart while I work her clit with my tongue and my fingers fuck her in a rhythm that has her thighs shaking, her fingers knotting in my hair, her whole body pulling taut.
She tastes so fucking good, I don't want to stop.
She's tightening around my fingers now, clenching in waves, and the sounds she's making are nothing like the careful, composed woman I met a week ago.
"Please." The word comes out ragged. "William, please."
I keep going, mouth and fingers, until she comes apart completely, shuddering, gasping my name, her nails drawing blood from my scalp.
I lift my head and look at her. Wrecked. Eyes dark, chest heaving, hair spread across the pillow. Still trembling.
Mine. The thought is immediate and wrong, and I don't fucking care.
I move back up her body, my cock so hard it's painful, and she reaches for me before I've even settled between her thighs.
Her hand wraps around me, and I grit my teeth against the pressure of it, the slow stroke she pulls from base to tip.
I'm already leaking. Already so close to the edge from just the sounds she made that I have to press my forehead to hers and breathe.
"Aoife." A warning.
She guides me to her, and I push in slowly, and fuck.
She's so tight and wet and hot around me that my vision goes white at the edges.
I feel every inch of her taking me, feel her stretching around my cock, and she makes this low, broken sound into my neck that nearly finishes me before I've started.
I go still. Lock every muscle. Let her feel the full weight of me.
"Okay?" I manage.
"Don't stop." She wraps her legs around me and pulls me deeper, and I sink the last inch into her, and we both go rigid for a second, just breathing, just feeling it.
Then I move.
Slow at first, long strokes that drag against her walls, that have her nails digging into my back with every pull.
She's so wet I can hear it, that slick sound that strips the last of my control.
Her hips roll up to meet mine, and I feel her clenching around me already, still sensitive from before, her body greedy for it.
Her nails rake down my spine.
My grip on her hip tightens, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and I drive into her deeper. She gasps against my neck, pulls me closer, urges me on, and that's it. I stop being careful. I fuck her the way I've wanted to since she looked at me across that drawing room and told me I was late.
Hard. Deep. The headboard cracks against the wall with every thrust, and she takes it all, her body rising to meet mine, her voice breaking apart on sounds that wipe everything else from my head.
No war. No Frank. No mole. No ghosts. Just the slick, tight heat of her clenching around my cock and the way she keeps saying my name like it means something.
I feel her tightening again, her walls gripping me in pulses, and I reach between us and press my thumb to her clit. She cries out, her whole body going rigid beneath me.
"Come for me," I say against her throat. "Now."
She shatters. Clenches around me so hard my hips stutter.
Her nails break skin at my shoulders, her back arches off the mattress, her throat bares completely, and I bite down on it, mark her, feel her milking my cock through every wave of it.
I drive in once more, deep as I can go, and come hard, buried inside her, her name the only word left in my head.
I don't move. Can't. My whole body is heavy, wrung out, every muscle spent. Her legs are still wrapped around me. I can feel her heartbeat where my mouth is pressed against her throat, frantic and fast, slowly finding its way back.
I stay inside her longer than I should.
Afterwards, neither of us moves. Her fingers trace slow patterns on my shoulder blade. My face is still at her throat. I can feel her pulse coming down, steady now, almost calm.
I should say something. Don't know what.
"That was different," she says eventually.
"From what?"
"From what I expected from you." A beat. "From what I expected from any of this."
I lift my head and look at her. "What did you expect?"
"Someone who didn't care whether I was with him or not." She holds my gaze.
She's quiet for a moment. Then: "What are you thinking?"
Honest answer. "That I need to deal with something tonight and I'd rather not."
Her expression shifts. Waiting.
"There's something you need to know," I say. "About why we're here. About what's been happening."
She sits up slowly, draws the sheet around herself, and looks at me with the kind of clear-eyed practicality that would have irritated me two weeks ago and now just settles something.
"Tell me."
So I tell her about Frank.
Not the way I'd rehearsed it in my head. Just the truth, the way it comes out when you're lying in the dark next to someone who's already seen you at your worst.
"My uncle," I say. "Frank Murphy. My father's brother."
She waits.
"My family thinks he's dead."
I feel her go still beside me.
"He's the one who warned me. About the attack on the house. That's how I knew to get us out." I look at the ceiling. "He came to me. Said he'd been watching, that he knew what was coming. In exchange, he wanted back in. Back into the family. I gave him shares. An advisory position."
"And that's a bad thing?" she asks.
I almost laugh. "My brothers are the ones who killed him. Well." I pause. "They thought they did. It's a long story. But trust me when I say they won't be happy."
"Does your brother know?"
"Not yet."
"He's going to want to kill me."
She holds my gaze. "Then you need to tell him tonight. Not in the morning. Tonight."
She's right. I've known she's right from the moment I woke up clear-headed.
I look at her in the half dark. Hair loose, sheet pulled around her, watching me with those steady blue eyes like she already knows what I'm about to do and isn't going to stop me.
This is what I agreed to marry. Not an ornament. Not a political solution.
This.
I get up and walk into the sitting room. The phone is face down on the couch where I left it. I pick it up.
Three missed calls from Aidan. A message sent twenty minutes ago.
I open it.
"Fuck."