Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Red-Laced Whiskey
Siobhán
Idon’t sit. I collapse. The bed gives beneath me, silk slipping across my thighs like a lover’s touch I didn’t ask for.
One bare foot hits the floor—cold wood, colder than his voice when he called me Dove like it still meant something.
My boot is somewhere behind the door. Probably dented the damn thing. Should’ve aimed higher.
The closet doors gape open across from me, hinges still rattling from the way I yanked them wide.
It’s obscene how much is in there. Lace and silk, velvet and leather.
Emeralds, sapphires, blood red rubies. Gowns hung like museum pieces.
Lingerie folded like secrets. And all of it my size. He didn’t just plan this. He built it.
A wardrobe for a woman he hasn’t seen in five years. A shrine dressed in fabric and fantasy. I should be horrified. I am horrified. But I’m not horrified. Not really.
I’m dripping in silk and memory, and every inch of this room sings of him. Every thread, every hidden clasp, every fucking hanger lined in velvet. It’s sick. It’s twisted. It’s him. That maddening devotion disguised as cruelty. He never forgets. He never lets go.
And that’s what ruins me. That’s what slicks heat down the inside of my thighs while my pride screams for distance. While my heart claws at its own damn cage. Because even now—after everything—I still ache for the way he ruins me best: slowly, with intention. Like a composer designing a dirge.
There’s a knock at the bedroom door. Gentle. Hesitant. Then another—just loud enough to say he’s still there. I don’t answer. I sit on the edge of the bed, ankle crossed over knee, swirling a glass of amber whiskey in my hand like it’s a storm I summoned.
“Siobhán,” he calls softly, muffled through the thick wood. “Dove, come out. I made you something warm.”
I smile, but there’s no kindness in it. Just teeth and heat.
“Darling, please.”
There it is.
I lean back, letting the silk of my robe part slightly at the thigh. I know he can’t see me. But the moment I picture his mouth forming that word—darling—my grip tightens on the glass. He knocks again. Waits.
Then, voice lower. “You’ve got to eat. Don’t punish your stomach on my behalf.”
I let the silence stretch. Let it become something tight between us. Then I say, smooth as a knife in the dark, “Beg for it, Cillian.”
A pause. Then…“I’ll do worse for you, if that’s what you need,” he says. “I’ll get on my knees right now.”
My heart skips. Still, I wait.
His voice softens again. “I’ll say it in Irish. If that’s the language you like your sins in.”
That does it. He knows what that does for me, the bastard. I rise, barefoot, slow. I open the door just enough to see him standing there in the hallway, hair rumpled, shirt undone at the throat like he’s been pacing.
I tilt my head. “Say it, then.”
His throat works around the words, and when they come, they land like a confession. “Géillim. Is mise do sheirbhíseach, a ghrá geal.1”
I let it hang in the air, the Irish still clinging to the corners of my mind like smoke.
Then I tut. Soft. But enough to slice through the moment like a pretty little blade wrapped in silk.
I step into the hallway, one bare foot in front of the other, chin lifted like I’ve got a crown balanced on top of my damn head.
He watches me like a starving man watches a feast he knows he doesn’t deserve.
I lean in, lips ghosting the shell of his ear. “I thought you said on your knees, Cill.”
His breath catches. Just a flicker. Then he drops.
Hard. One knee hits the floor with a thud that echoes down the stone corridor like a fucking prayer.
He doesn’t look away—not once. Those melted chocolate eyes stay locked on mine, dark and unblinking and full of something that makes my stomach somersault into hell.
His voice is a rasp now, deep and low and wicked with worship. “Géillim. Is mise do sheirbhíseach, a ghrá geal.”
I feel it in every inch of me. The heat. The power. The goddamn madness. Because there he is—Cillian O’Dwyer, my enemy, my ghost, my devil—kneeling like a sinner at the altar, and I’m the only salvation he wants.
I smirk. Slow. Lethal. Like a blade unsheathed.
He stays kneeling, watching me like I’m carved from stardust and sin, like he’d burn down the world just to keep me looking at him like this.
I reach for the glass of whiskey I abandoned on the windowsill earlier.
It’s still warm from the room, but I sip it like it’s sacrament.
“Thank you,” I murmur, voice light, teasing. “For the apology. It was almost as pretty as you.”
Then I step around him, like he’s nothing more than a shadow on the floor.
And he lets me. Doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t breathe too loud.
I feel him track me with those eyes of his—eyes that have seen blood and power and ruin—but they look at me like I’m the most dangerous thing he’s ever known.
I disappear into the kitchen without another word. But I know the tremor I leave in my wake. And God help me, I hope it wrecks him. The chair creaks softly as I sit, legs crossed, chin lifted. I don’t speak. I don’t have to.
He follows a moment later, slow like he’s walking into a storm he wants to drown in. No weapons this time—just a bottle of wine in one hand, two glasses in the other. He pours for me first. Gentle. Intentional. Like I’m something sacred he’s trying not to shatter.
The wine pools dark in the glass, a deep garnet swirl that catches the light like blood and velvet. He sets it in front of me without a word, then fills his own and sits down across from me. No distance could feel farther. And yet his eyes burn like we’re nose to nose.
I take a slow sip. Let the silence stretch long enough to make him shift in his seat. Let him feel the weight of every second I keep him waiting. Because he may have knelt for me… But he hasn’t bled yet. And I like my men in penance.
He lifts his glass, gaze fixed on mine like I’m the only thing left on Earth worth burning for. “To the games we play,” he says, voice low and velvet-dark. “And the fools who think they’re winning.”
I raise my glass, my smirk slow and sharp. “To the devils we dance with,” I murmur. “And the saints we leave bleeding.”
We clink. The sound is delicate. Final. We drink, never looking away. Not once. Not even to breathe. Because this isn’t wine. It’s a war offering. And we’re both starving. He sets the bottle down with care, as if even the wine might shatter under the weight of what we are tonight.
"Sláinte," he says softly, lifting his glass. "To the ones who always come back. Even when they shouldn’t."
I raise mine to meet his, the crystal chiming like the memory of a song I used to know. "To bad ideas," I murmur, watching him over the rim as I sip. "The best ones are always dressed in suits and regret."
He huffs a laugh, but doesn’t look away. Neither do I. We eat slowly. Carefully. The way one plays an unfamiliar composition—testing each note, waiting for something to break.
He clears his throat. “You still play?”
His question is casual, but I feel the weight behind it. Not if I play, but for whom behind closed doors, not on the world stage.
I nod, swirling the wine in my glass. “Every night. Even when my fingers shake. Especially then.”
He tilts his head, studying me. “Still favor the nocturnes?”
I smirk. “Still favor chaos. Chopin when I’m sad. Rachmaninoff when I’m dangerous.”
Cillian chuckles under his breath. “Danger suits you, dove.”
I let that one hang between us like a high note held just a second too long.
“And you?” I ask. “Still pretending you don’t miss the cello?”
His jaw flexes. A half-smile ghosts across his lips. “Touché.”
We fall into something like peace. Bites of roast chicken and rosemary potatoes. A bottle of red dwindling. The edge dulling, but never gone.
He taps his glass to mine again. “To the wicked notes we don’t regret.”
“To the unfinished compositions,” I reply. “And the fools who keep playing them.”
Our smiles match now—wry and worn.
“Remember Venice?” he asks suddenly. “That rooftop bar with the pianist who only knew three songs?”
I laugh. “And you bribed him to stop playing Für Elise?”
“I saved a city, Siobhán. Single-handedly. You’re welcome.”
I arch a brow. “You were drunk and charming and tried to dance with me on a tile roof. We nearly fell off.”
He leans forward, voice lowering like velvet across a grand piano. “You kissed me first.”
“I was trying to shut you up.”
“Didn’t work.”
“No,” I murmur, eyes flicking to his mouth. “You’re still far too loud.”
“And you’re still the only thing that ever quieted me,” he says, soft and raw and real.
Silence settles again, but this one is warm—lush and inviting, like the hush before a crescendo. He reaches for his glass. I reach for mine. Fingers brush. The air crackles.
I lift my chin. “You planning to behave tonight?”
He grins, slow and sinful. “That depends entirely on the encore, love.”
We move like muscle memory. Plates scraped. Glasses stacked. Wine poured again. He rinses, I dry. The dance of once-were-lovers and maybe-again-strangers.
“Didn’t poison us, so I’d call that a success,” he says, elbow brushing mine at the sink.
I hum, amused. “There’s still dessert.”
He tilts his head. “A threat or a promise?”
“Depends how much of an arse you plan to be for the rest of the night.”
“Too late. I was born this way.”
I shake my head and smile despite myself.
Cillian O’Dwyer is a man who could turn confession into foreplay and murder into metaphor.
But right now, he’s just a man with rolled-up sleeves and suds on his fingers, looking at me like I’m the only symphony he remembers how to play.
God, I hate how soft I feel around him. The wine warms my throat.
His scent—woodsmoke and salt—pulls at something low in my stomach.
Every laugh between us is a thread pulling tighter.