8. Keira #2
His hands flatten me across the surface, fingers splayed over the small of my back, pressing me down until my breasts meet the polished wood and my cheek rests on a stack of notes that scatter beneath my breath.
Then, and only then, does he press himself against me.
The hard line of him nestles between my thighs.
I grind back against him, aching, needy, and he responds with a dark laugh that curls through me like smoke.
"You think you know what this is," he says, voice low, lips brushing the shell of my ear.
"But you haven't even begun to beg."
His hand slides between my legs, and I open for him without thought, without hesitation, every inch of me humming, raw and exposed, strung tight with the need to be ruined.
I want him to break me open.
I want to feel the echo of this night tomorrow, in every step, in every breath, in the way I touch my own throat and remember how his hand fit there.
He drags his fingers along the seam of me, slow and maddening, and I press back, shameless, desperate, already so close to shattering I can barely stay quiet.
He leans over me, his chest flush to my spine, his breath thick against the back of my neck as his hand cups the curve of my ass and squeezes, not to soothe but to warn, and when I whimper, when my hips rock back in wordless appeal, he exhales a sound that is almost amused.
His hand leaves me for a breathless second, only to return with a sharp, measured slap, the sting immediate and radiant, a bloom of pain edged with something far more dangerous.
"Again," he murmurs, and it is not a question.
The second strike lands harder, his palm flat and punishing, and I gasp, not because I want it to stop but because I want it to go on, because there is something deeply, devastatingly beautiful in the way he holds me down and makes me feel everything.
He doesn't rush.
Each spank lands with precision, with intention, alternating sides so I cannot brace, cannot guess, only receive, the sound of flesh on flesh ringing out in the stillness of the library until my thighs are slick with need and my throat aches from holding in the sounds he drags out of me.
I grip the table's edge, my knuckles white, my body alive with sensation.
Heat radiates through me, deep and carnal, the sharp bite of pain braided into the low, molten ache of arousal that coils in my belly and blooms through my limbs.
His fingers trace the line of my spine as if taking inventory of what belongs to him now, then dip lower, teasing me again, but never quite enough.
"You like this," he says, his voice rasped and near, the words dragging over the raw skin of my shoulder like velvet over bruises.
"The pain. The waiting. You like knowing I could do anything I want with you."
I nod, breath shallow, throat dry, and he rewards me by slipping his fingers between my thighs and dragging them through the mess I've made, groaning low in his chest as he feels how wet I am for him.
"Say it," he growls.
"Say you want me to take you like this."
My voice cracks on the way out, but I give him what he wants.
"I want you to ruin me. "
His control shatters at that.
I feel it in the way his body shifts behind me, in the clatter of his belt as he undoes it with one hand and drags his jeans down with the other.
He does not whisper anymore.
He groans, long and unguarded, as the head of his cock nudges against me, slick and hard and unrelenting.
He slides it along my folds, slow and torturous, coating himself in the heat of me but still holding back, still denying, even as I push back against him like a woman starved.
When he finally sinks in, it is not careful.
The stretch is hot, the pressure immense, and I cry out, fingers slipping on the polished wood, thighs trembling from the effort of staying upright. He gives me no time to adjust.
He thrusts again, and again, finding a rhythm that is brutal and perfect and entirely without mercy.
He holds me down with one hand fisted in my hair, the other curved around my hip as he drives into me, the slap of his body against mine loud in the dim quiet of the room, joined only by the sounds he pulls from my throat and the wrecked gasps that fall from his.
"Look at you," he pants, leaning over to bite the back of my shoulder, the scrape of his teeth a raw brand I feel deep in my belly.
"Bent over like you were made for this. Taking me like you fucking need it."
I do.
Every thrust drives it deeper—this need, this ache, this utter submission that feels less like defeat and more like revelation.
My body coils tight around him, my nerves alight with every graze of his fingers, every breathless curse he snarls into my skin, and I am so close I could break.
He knows it.
He pulls out suddenly, leaving me empty and shaking, and flips me over onto my back, dragging me to the very edge of the table so my thighs fall open to him, obscenely wet and pulsing and desperate.
I reach for him, nails catching on his shoulder, trying to pull him back in, but he pauses, looming over me, eyes dark with heat and something sharper.
"You come when I say," he tells me, and the warning is edged with promise.
"Not before."
His words settle somewhere low in my stomach, molten and irrevocable, but I nod anyway, throat too tight for sound, chest heaving with the effort of restraint.
My pulse pounds in my ears, my whole body trembling with the strain of holding back.
I am wrecked already, ruined in a dozen silent ways, but still I lie there, wide open and waiting, the muscles of my inner thighs shaking with every second he keeps me suspended in this exquisite purgatory.
He watches me for a long moment, the corners of his mouth curling in satisfaction, and then he steps back just far enough to grip my hips and yank me closer, the table groaning beneath me as I slide across its polished surface.
He sheathes himself in one slow, punishing thrust that buries him to the hilt, and I choke on a moan that sounds more like surrender than I'd care to admit.
His cock is thick, impossibly hard, dragging across every sensitive place inside me, and the stretch is sharp enough to feel like tearing, though I do not want him to stop.
I want him deeper.
I want him rougher.
I lift my legs around his waist, bracing one foot against the table's edge, and he fucks into me like he's trying to rewrite something—history, punishment, ownership, all carved into the rhythm of his hips, the drive of his body against mine.
His eyes stay locked on my face, watching every flicker of pleasure, every gasp, every desperate twitch of my mouth as I struggle to keep from begging .
But it's no use.
"Please," I whisper, nails clawing at the edge of the table, hips grinding up into his with a need so intense it borders on agony.
"Please, Ruairí, let me?—"
"Not yet," he growls, and then he pulls out again, wet and flushed and glistening, and flips me like a doll, like he owns the weight of me, like this body is his to position and command.
My chest hits the table first, the angle forcing my back into a deep curve, my arms spread out wide as he yanks my hair into a fist and wrenches my head back, not cruelly, but firmly, his lips ghosting over my ear as he says, "You'll come when I say you can, and not a second before."
I nod again, my breath catching, tears prickling the corners of my eyes not from pain but from how good it feels to be undone by him, to be held this tightly, known this deeply, ruined so completely that nothing else matters.
I would fall for him like this every time, broken across this table, my spine bowed and my voice frayed from wanting.
He pushes back into me with a sound that is almost a growl, the hand in my hair anchoring me, the other gripping my waist so hard I'll wear the imprint of his fingers for days.
The rhythm is merciless, cock plunging deep and steady, the wet, filthy sound of each thrust echoing off the bookshelves, every angle calibrated to drive me toward the edge and hold me there.
"Do you feel that?" he hisses, biting along the back of my neck as he fucks into me harder, rougher, deeper.
"That's what it means to be mine."
I whimper, trying to hold back the pleasure clawing at my spine, trying to obey, but the pressure is unbearable now, the tension drawn so tight it feels like I might snap from the sheer intensity of it .
"Please," I manage, barely more than a whisper, shaking beneath him, my voice hoarse with need.
"Please, Ruairí, I can't?—"
He releases my hair, slides his hand down to grip my throat, just enough to hold me still as he bends over my back and says, "Now."
The orgasm rips through me like fire through dry grass, sudden and consuming, a full-body convulsion that tears the breath from my lungs and leaves me sobbing into the table.
My muscles clench around him, again and again, and he fucks me through every wave, relentless, his cock pounding deep until he grunts, low and guttural, and slams into me one final time.
He spills into me with a raw cry, the sound dragged from the deepest part of his chest, and I feel him pulse inside me, the heat of him claiming me, sealing everything he said with a release that leaves us both ruined.
He stays like that for a long moment, body pressed tight to mine, his hand smoothing over my back as our breathing slows, as the heat begins to cool between us and the silence settles like a blanket.
When he finally pulls back, I feel empty in a way that's almost tender, and when he reaches to lift me into his arms, I don't resist.
He carries me to the couch like something precious, and we curl into the cushions, still naked, still trembling, our bodies tangled and marked, the scent of sex clinging to the leather and the woodsmoke.
"I'm not sorry," he says at last, his mouth against my hair.
"Neither am I," I answer, although I am moments away from bursting into tears.
I move before that comes to pass, pulling my dress on quickly and somewhat clumsily.
"Keira," he begins, but I raise a hand and silence the rest of what he means to say before walking out as quickly as I can.
On the way out, a loose page on the desk catches my eye—just a corner, a heading, something oddly familiar in its font and phrasing—but I do not stop.
Later, I eat alone.
The cook has left a plate covered in linen—roasted root vegetables, a thick slice of salted pork, and a square of something dark and soft and mercifully rich.
The quiet is almost kind.
That night, when the house has gone still and the shadows deepen, I return to the office.
I find the same page tucked half beneath a ledger.
A shipping invoice with the name Deegan Exports at the top.
I know the name well because it is a Donnelly shell company that is now likely being used to move illicit goods, and without direct trace.
If it is still in operation, either Ruairí is running it or someone else is, in the name of a dead empire.
It would not have startled me if I had found the name Deegan on an old invoice, a relic of the years when my father's empire was still whole.
Nor would it have shaken me if Ruairí had brought it up himself, explaining that he had revived one of the Donnelly shells to streamline land transfers or launder something minor.
But he hadn't.
He said nothing.
And this invoice is not from the past.
It is fresh, postdated three weeks ago.
And worse, there is a reference number beside the transfer that links back to a logistics chain I remember all too well.
Red moss.
That was the internal name for it.
Not a plant, not anything medicinal, but a designer compound distributed in capsule form and moved under false classifications—volatile, profitable, and quietly buried by my father in the final months of his life.
He said it brought too much heat, said it would outlive us all if we let it.
And yet here it is.
So either Ruairí restarted it without telling me or someone else is using the name.