50. Liath
LIATH
Several months later…
I sat in the back of the car with my fingers knotted together in my lap while the countryside rolled past the window in shades of green and gray.
Lorcan sat beside me, one arm stretched along the back of the seat, looking healthier than he had any right to after everything his body had survived.
A summer at the recovery center had broadened his shoulders and left his skin lightly tanned.
A faint smirk tugged at his lips, almost a smile, and one I saw more often these days.
The tension that had once gripped his body had finally eased.
Although the scar beneath his shirt never truly left my thoughts.
While Lorcan healed at the recovery center, I’d lived with Dervla, throwing myself into work that left little room for grief.
I’d acted as his proxy, dismantling Magdalene piece by piece.
I signed release documents, sat through endless meetings about the rebrand, and fed everything Bas and the lawyers needed to build their case against the Sons.
Every day had arrived with another list to complete, another problem demanding my attention.
I’d barely had time to think about what happened after.
Now there was nothing left to hide behind.
I wanted to live with Lorcan. There had never been another choice. The problem wasn’t whether we lived together.
It was where.
Lasair Manor rose inside my mind before I could stop it. The iron gates. The winding driveway. The stone walls that had watched generations of Lasairs destroy the people around them. Every corridor carried ghosts. Every room held memories I didn’t want to unpack.
It had been his home.
It had never been mine.
I didn’t know how to tell him that I couldn’t build our future inside the place where so much of our past had bled.
As though he’d heard every thought without me speaking a word, his hand slid onto my knee.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he murmured as his thumb stroked absent circles over my inner thigh, causing heat to surge up my legs. “Maybe I should give you something to scream about.”
My breath hitched as his hand slid up my skirt, his fingers finding the front of my panties.
I glanced at the rearview mirror to make sure the driver hadn’t noticed, then I made one half-hearted attempt to push his hand away. “Lorcan,” I hissed.
“Can’t wait.” The corner of his mouth lifted into the smallest smile as he pushed my panties aside and slid his fingers along my wet folds.
He let out a low rumble and muttered, “Looks like you can’t either.”
I bit back a groan as he pushed two fingers into my wet pussy and began to thrust them in and out.
I pushed my face into his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent of woodsmoke and leather, the sound of his violins lifting in crescendo that drowned out my heavy breathing and my swallowed moans.
God, this was so dirty and wrong and felt oh too good.
I fought to keep silent as his skilled fingers curled to press against that delicious spot.
It was too much. The threat of being caught and the forced silence and having his strong body pressed against my side and his violins in my head.
I broke apart, biting down on my lip to stop from screaming as my thighs trembled around his hand.
The car slowed as I came back down to earth.
He pulled his hand from under my skirt and smirked at me before sucking my juices off his fingers.
“Mine,” he said under his breath.
My cheeks flared hot and I glanced again at the driver. Either he really didn’t know, or perhaps was very good at hiding it, but he didn’t glance my way.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires before we rolled to a gentle stop.
I frowned as I stared out the window.
This wasn’t Lasair Manor.
“Where are we?”
Lorcan leaned across my lap and opened my door for me.
“You’ll see,” he said, his mouth inches from mine. Then he smiled, a proper smile that crinkled the corners of his beautiful blue eyes, a sight still rare enough to stop my heart every time I saw it.
I stepped out onto soft grass.
A stone cottage stood before us, half covered in lush green ivy.
I’d never been here before. But I knew this place somehow.
Lorcan slipped an arm around my shoulders and began walking with me toward it.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“You don’t recognize it?”
I looked harder.
The proportions of the windows. The crooked chimney. The faded red shade of the front door. The afternoon light catching the old stone.
Exactly as it had… in the faded photograph I’d found in my mother’s dorm room.
“Oh…” Emotion caught in my throat.
Lorcan watched my face instead of the cottage. “I bought it. The cottage and all the land.”
His smile widened another fraction. “There’s also a rather large Gothic house that comes with the estate.” He shrugged lightly. “But I thought you’d probably prefer this one.”
All I could do was stare at him.
“It…” My voice came out cracked. “It was my mother’s.”
He reached into his pocket, then pressed something cold and small into my palm. “Now, it’s yours.”
I stared at the iron key in my palm, the weight settling there with quiet certainty.
The key to the house my mother had once called home.
Given to me by the man I loved.
Lorcan frowned. “You don’t like it? I mean, we can move into the big house if you’d—”
I kissed him before he could finish, my fingers curling around the key as I threw my arms around his neck.
His surprise lasted only a heartbeat before his arms wrapped around me.
“This is perfect,” I whispered against his lips.
He smiled into the kiss, his lips claiming mine with a sudden, consuming intensity that stole the breath from my lungs. The kiss deepened, slower at first, then urgent, his mouth moving against mine with a hunger that sent heat spiraling through my body.
Somehow, we managed to unlock the front door without completely separating, our mouths still fused together, breaths mingling, each kiss more desperate than the last.
His hand tightened at my waist as he lifted me against him, wrapping my legs around him as he walked us inside.
The cottage smelled of polished timber, old stone, and fresh flowers, a light tinkle like wind chimes triggering in my head. Sunlight spilled through lace curtains onto honey-colored floorboards.
I barely noticed any of it because Lorcan’s mouth kept finding mine, his kiss relentless, as though he couldn’t bear to let me go.
I kissed him back just as fiercely, lost in him completely now, my fingers tangling in his hair as he carried me deeper inside.
Until he walked through one final doorway.
I froze as I caught sight of purple walls.
“What the…?”
He lowered me carefully onto my feet before stepping back. “Go on.”
I turned slowly, taking in the bedroom.
Fairy lights looped around strings of Polaroid photographs against a purple wall. My vintage jackets hung neatly inside the wardrobe. My books. My records. My battered leather boots.
Every small, odd piece of me had found a place inside the room.
Inside our room.
A raw feeling struck somewhere behind my sternum before radiating through the rest of me. My entire life had been spent fitting myself into spaces that belonged to someone else. Nobody had ever looked at who I truly was and built a home around it.
But he did.
My knees threatened to give way. I stood in the middle of the room, suddenly unsure they remembered how to hold me upright.
But that wasn’t all. A row of Lorcan’s shirts hung beside my dresses. His coat rested beside mine. Two toothbrushes stood together in the holder in the en suite through the open door. His cologne sat beside my perfume on the dresser.
And my mother’s green rosary necklace was restored and hanging on a jewelry stand beside his watches.
I turned back to him. “You’re living here too?”
His hand settled around the back of my neck, warm and steady as he looked directly into my eyes. “You’re never sleeping apart from me again.”
The tears I’d been holding back finally escaped. I laughed through them. “You impossible man.”
“I know.”
He kissed me again.
This time neither of us hurried as we explored each other’s mouths, as our hands peeled off each other’s clothes, kissing and touching each inch of skin revealed. I unbuttoned his shirt to reveal his pink scar, sitting among the ravens and script.
Deep into that darkness peering.
We’d peered into the darkness and won.
I pressed kisses down the center of his firm chest, his breath hitching before he released a groan and pulled me up into another kiss.
The room around us faded until there was nothing except the warmth of his mouth, his hands, and his naked body against mine.
I straddled his hips, rocking up and down on his cock, reveling in the feel of him under me and inside me, of his violins all around me.
His hips began to speed up, and I rocked harder, matching his movements.
My climax surged up toward me, my pussy clenching around him.
He let out a curse and fucked me harder.
I slid my palm against the scar on his chest, the raised line pressing against my own scar, his heartbeat strong and fierce underneath it.
Lorcan’s hips slammed up to meet mine, his other hand lifting toward my throat, his fingers sliding around the front of my neck.
Then he flinched, as if realizing what he’d done.
My fingers folded over his before he could pull away, holding his palm against my throat.
The ghosts between us no longer owned this moment.
Only us.
I held his gaze and pressed his hand holding my throat, rocking my hips harder, begging him for more.
After a moment, he squeezed my throat, cutting off my air, as my nails dug into his chest.
It was too much.
I came hard, pleasure shuddering through my body as my pussy clenched around him.
He closed his eyes just as he came, exhaling a groan that sounded like something finally letting go inside him.
When he looked at me again, every wall I’d ever seen inside him had disappeared.