Chapter 10 Consecrated Ruin #3
"You want to fight?" I growl against her mouth. "Then fight. But know this—you'll lose. And you'll thank me for it."
I tear at what remains of the lace, exposing her completely. My hands are everywhere—rough, demanding, leaving marks that will bloom purple by morning. I want everyone to see them, want her to feel me with every movement tomorrow.
"I hate you," she gasps as I bite down on her shoulder, hard enough to break skin.
"No," I murmur against the wound, licking the copper taste from her flesh. "You hate that you love me. Different thing entirely."
I carry her to the nearest table, sweeping everything to the floor with one arm. Glass shatters. I don't care. I throw her down, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand while the other works my belt free.
"Look at me," I command, squeezing her throat until her eyes lock with mine. The pulse beneath my palm hammers wildly, a frantic bird trying to escape. "I want to see your face when you finally surrender."
I free myself, hard and aching, pressing against her entrance but not pushing in. Not yet… I want her desperate first. Begging. Broken.
"Is this what you wanted?" I growl, rubbing my length against her slick heat. "To be thrown down and taken like you belong to me?"
She tries to arch against me, seeking friction, but I hold her down with my weight. My grip on her throat tightens just enough to make her gasp, her pupils blown wide with arousal.
"Say it," I demand. "Say you're mine."
"I'm not saying shit," she spits, defiance blazing even as tears leak from the corners of her eyes. Beautiful, stubborn thing.
I laugh darkly, moving my hips just enough to tease her. "Then I won't give you what you need."
My free hand finds her breast, pinching her nipple hard enough to make her cry out.
I lower my mouth to the hollow of her throat, tasting salt and perfume as my teeth mark a vicious path down to her collarbone.
"You've always been stubborn," I breathe against her skin.
"Always fighting what we both know is true. "
I thrust into her without warning, burying myself to the hilt in one brutal stroke. She screams—not in pain but in savage relief—her body arching beneath mine, taking all of me like she was made for this. For me.
"Christ," I growl, my grip on her throat tightening instinctively. "So fucking perfect."
Her eyes roll back, lashes fluttering as I squeeze just enough to make her lightheaded. The sight of her—pinned beneath me, throat in my hand, body stretched around my cock—ignites something primal in my chest.
"Look at you," I rasp, beginning to move. "Taking me so well. Like your body remembers who it belongs to."
I don't start slow, don't build. I drive into her with everything I have, each thrust punctuated with the sound of skin against skin, the table creaking beneath us.
Her nails rake down my back, tearing through my shirt.
She wants to hurt me? Good. I want her to feel everything—the pain, the pleasure, the impossible truth that we've always belonged to each other.
"You're mine," I pant against her ear, my voice wrecked with need. "Say it."
She shakes her head, stubborn even as her body betrays her, clenching around me with each thrust.
"Say it," I demand again, grinding deeper, angling to hit that spot that makes her eyes roll back.
Her tears flow freely now, tracking mascara down her temples. She's beautiful like this—destroyed, desperate, fighting herself more than me. I slow my pace deliberately, making each thrust torturous and deep.
"Finn," she sobs, her voice breaking on my name.
Something inside me shatters at the sound. I release her throat, cupping her face instead, my thumb brushing away tears as I continue to move inside her. "I've got you," I murmur, the words tearing from somewhere raw and honest. "I've always had you."
Her eyes find mine, swimming with tears and something like surrender. Not defeat—never that—but recognition. Acceptance of what we are, what we've always been.
"Yours," she whispers, the word breaking between us like a sacred thing.
I crash my mouth to hers, swallowing the confession, sealing it between us. My rhythm changes—still punishing, still claiming, but with an edge of desperation that I can't hide anymore. I'm unraveling for her, coming apart at the seams.
"Again," I demand against her lips, needing to hear it like I need air.
Her hands slide into my hair, yanking hard enough to hurt. "I'm yours," she gasps, her body arching into mine. "I've always been yours."
The words unlock something primal in me. I gather her up, lifting her from the table without breaking our connection, her legs wrapped tight around my waist. I carry her like that—still joined, still moving—to the nearest wall, pinning her there with my weight.
"Look at me," I growl, gripping her jaw to force her gaze to mine. "I want to see your face when you come apart for me," I command.
Her eyes lock with mine, glazed with tears and need. I can see her fighting it—the pleasure, the surrender, the raw honesty of what we're doing. My hips drive into her relentlessly, pinning her to the wall with each thrust.
"You feel that?" I growl, pressing deeper. "That's what you've been running from."
She gasps, head falling back against the wall. I grab her chin, forcing her to look at me again.
"Don't you dare hide," I snarl. "Show me."
Her body tightens around me, trembling on the edge. I can feel her close—so fucking close—but still fighting it. Still trying to keep that last piece of herself from me.
"Let go," I order, voice breaking with my own need. "Give it to me, Róisín."
The sound of her name on my lips does it. Her eyes widen, pupils blown, and then she's shattering—coming apart in my arms with a cry that might be my name or a prayer or a curse. Her body clamps down on mine, pulsing, dragging me toward the edge.
I watch her shatter in my arms, and it's too much—her walls gripping me, her tears on my skin, the sound of her surrender in my ears.
I'm gone, utterly fucking gone. My release hits like violence, crashing through me in waves that tear sounds from my throat I didn't know I could make.
I bury myself deep, pinning her to the wall as I empty inside her.
"I'll kill for you," she sobs into my ear, voice broken and raw as her body milks every last drop from me. "Anyone who tries to take you. Anyone who hurts you. I'll cut them open and watch them bleed."
Christ. Her words push me over another edge I didn't know existed. I come again, harder, my entire body shuddering as she whispers dark promises against my skin.
"I'd burn this whole country down," she gasps, nails breaking skin as she clings to me. "I'd make them pay for what they did to us."
I grip her harder, crushing her against me as the aftershocks ripple through us both. Her vicious words are a balm, a confession, a vow more binding than anything we said in that church today.
We end up sliding down on the floor. Not gracefully, not ceremonially, just a tangle of limbs and heat and shattered restraint, the cold stone biting into my back as I pull her with me, refusing to let the distance return.
My chest heave, hers does too—ragged, uneven, like she’s still fighting the echo of everything she’s survived tonight.
She’s crying, quiet now, tears slipping sideways into my collarbone.
I cradle her head against my chest, one hand firm at her back, the other threaded through her hair like an anchor.
She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t joke. Doesn’t snarl.
She just breathes with me, each inhale syncing slowly, painfully, until the shaking eases.
“I didn’t mean to break,” she whispers, voice hoarse.
“Aye,” I murmur into her hair. “You were already broken. I just caught you.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt, tight. Possessive. Afraid. Alive. “I hate you,” she says, like a confession.
I close my eyes. Press my lips to her temple. “I know.”
Then, quieter—so quiet it almost disappears between heartbeats. “But I love you.”
The words punch the air from my lungs. I tilt her face up, thumb brushing the tear track on her cheek, forcing her to look at me. She’s wrecked. Mascara smudged. Eyes red. Still defiant. Still mine.
“I never stopped,” she adds. “I just didn’t know how to live with it.”
Something in my chest gives way—old grief, old guilt, old fury finally loosening its grip.
“Neither did I,” I admit. “And I never will.”
I pull her closer, wrapping us around each other on the cold floor like it’s the only solid thing left in the world. Outside, the night holds. Inside, my wife breathes against my heart. And for the first time in three years—I let myself believe we might survive this.