16. Liath
LIATH
Fuck. Alistair was returning and I was practically naked in his bedroom playing knifey games with his son.
Lorcan’s eyes snapped to mine.
He swept the cut clothes off the floor and shoved them at me.
I clutched them against my chest as he hauled me to the far corner toward floor-to-ceiling drapes.
He pushed me behind them and followed. My bare back hit the wall and his chest hit my front, crushing me against it, every inch of my bare skin against the solid heat of him.
The thick drapes settled around us. Neither of us spoke. Neither moved.
For one fractured second, relief flashed hot and stupid through me. He was protecting me. Saving me from his father.
Then reality crashed in. If Alistair walked in here and found me half-naked with Lorcan, the damage would hit him too. He wasn’t saving me. He was covering his own ass.
His heartbeat came through my sternum, faster than it should have been. His body heat soaked through my skin. His scent was everywhere, woodsmoke and whiskey, and the violins in my head had stopped playing a warning and were now playing a low and aching melody.
I was brutally aware of every line of him, every place where his body met mine, the shift of his chest with every breath.
Through the thin fabric of my underwear, his thigh pressed against my pussy.
The ache that was like an irritating buzz before flared into a full-body roar.
It took everything in me not to grind against his thigh.
Shit. I could not stay here pressed up against him like this. I would go crazy.
But I could not move. If I moved, the drapes would move.
Alistair would see.
I peered out past Lorcan’s arm through the narrow gap between the drapes.
Shit. On the bedroom floor was a scrap of black cardigan fabric Lorcan had missed. Too late to fetch it.
The handle turned and the door creaked open.
I went dead still behind the drapes.
Heavy footsteps sounded first, slow and measured on the floor, each one closer than the last, the sound crawling over my skin. I held my breath until my lungs burned, waiting for the drapes to shift, for Alistair’s hand to pull them back, for the whole room to split open around me.
Alistair crossed the bedroom, passing in and out of my narrow sightline. I prayed he wouldn’t stay for long. Prayed he wouldn’t notice the drape around us was protruding out too far. Prayed he wouldn’t notice that strip of fabric on the floor.
He moved to the far bookcase, pressed something at the right-hand edge, and a section of the wall swung inward.
A secret room!
My eyes widened and I repressed a gasp. I could sense Lorcan staring at me, noting the change in my expression, and I schooled my features as much as I could.
Alistair stepped through the door. Light came on inside. Through the gap I could see what looked like a lamp-lit second study with a large desk, papers, files spread flat and stacked. His coat moved in and out of view as he worked, unhurried.
It felt like forever before he reappeared, stepping back into the bedroom and closing the panel shut behind him, flush with the bookcase.
He crossed toward the door. His feet passed within half a foot of the fabric on the floor.
Thank God he didn’t pause. He didn’t look down.
Moments later, the door clicked shut. His footsteps faded down the corridor.
Lorcan stayed pressed against me and I stayed where I was because my legs would have folded if he’d stepped away too soon.
In my mind, I fixed every detail in place: the bookcase, some sort of mechanism at the right-hand edge, the hidden room, the desk, the files.
I had to get back in there alone.
But first I had to survive Lorcan.
Lorcan stepped back as if I burned him. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me out from behind the drapes, me still clutching the bundle of ruined fabric to my chest. He crossed the bedroom, cracked the door, checked the corridor, and pulled me through. The door clicked shut behind us.
Only when we were out of the forbidden ward did he turn to face me.
For a moment he said nothing, his shoulders heaving as he took in large heavy breaths.
But I understood. We were bonded in some fucked-up way now. A terse truce not to speak of this to Alistair or to anyone. Or it’d be both our heads.
Before he walked away, he thrust a finger into my face, and the promise he made would haunt me for days.
“I’m watching you. Everything you think you’re hiding. I will expose it.”
The Ravenwood girl’s bathroom was a labyrinth of stone walls, with separate sections for showers, toilets, and a changing area with lockers complete with a wall of mirrors.
I walked past the shower stalls toward the toilets. The tang of body spray clung to the air like a curse, thick and cheap, mingled with acetone and that sharp, bitter sting of disinfectant.
I halted as a too-familiar voice cut through the tiled corridor from the changing area.
“I have the greatest goss on that gothic freak.”
Aoife’s voice rang out, syrupy with self-satisfaction, her voice curling like a noose around my neck.
Shit. She was talking about me.
I peered around the corner, heart beating faster.
Aoife stood flanked by her two lapdogs, Ciara and Emer, huddled close to the mirror, blotting their cheeks, swiping gloss over lips that were already slick and pouty.
“Get this…” Aoife’s eyes flashed in the mirror, and the girls around her leaned in before she had even spoken, hungry for blood dressed up as gossip. “Rua wasn’t in Romania on exchange.”
Emer screwed up her face. “Why would they say she was, then?”
Aoife’s eyes sparkled with satisfaction. “Because she was hiding a shameful secret.”
Mascara wands froze midair. “What?”
“Why?”
“What is she hiding?”
My lungs seized painfully and a cold sweat slid down my spine beneath my blouse.
Somehow, Aoife had found out everything. And she was about to drag out all my lies by the throat for all of Ravenwood to see.
Nuala.
She was the only one who knew. The realization slid like a blade between my ribs. She’d betrayed me. The confession I had pressed into her hands yesterday still felt warm, and already she had turned it into a weapon. Fuck, it had barely been two days.
I gripped the doorframe until my nails bit into the wood and tried to remind myself to calm down. Panic was as good as confession if anyone saw it on my face.
I could still spin this. Deny it. Paint this as mere retaliation for destroying Aoife’s bag.
Aoife’s eyes gleamed in the mirror, every word dripping like honey-laced venom. “Rua was up the duff. They sent her away to ‘take care’ of the baby without anyone knowing, the little slut.”
“Whaaaaat?”
“Get the fuck out!”
The air cracked with gasps, high-pitched and scandalized, as mascara clattered back into makeup bags. Ciara slapped a hand over her mouth, her overlined eyes wide with wicked delight, while Emer wheezed through her lip gloss.
I had barely felt the weak wash of relief that Nuala had not been the culprit before rage crashed through me hard enough to make my hands shake.
I wanted to punch Aoife right in her perfectly painted mouth. God. That was all I needed. Rumors.
Emer choked on her laugh. “Is that why Daddy Lorcan’s gone full psycho?”
Aoife shrieked. “Ew, as if Lorcan is the father.”
Ciara wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t that incest?”
Emer shrugged. “They’re not blood related though.”
Ciara fanned herself with a compact. “Stepsiblings… that’s kinda hot.”
Aoife rolled her eyes and stole the mascara wand from Emer’s hand. “Puhlease. She might be obsessed with Lorcan, but there’s no way he’d touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
That one stung more than the pregnancy rumor ever could. It didn’t matter what was true in a place like this. What mattered was what people believed.
Rua wanted Lorcan. Lorcan would never want her back.
Rua… I… was a punchline.
“I don’t know, Aoife,” Emer said as she pulled out a brush for her pin-straight dark hair. “Something’s definitely changed between them since she got back.”
Aoife fluttered her lashes, smirking at herself in the mirror. “Trust me. I have it on good authority Lorcan’s riding someone, but it’s not her.”
The words sliced through me with humiliating precision. Riding someone. My mind betrayed me at once, furnishing images I did not want, Lorcan’s hand wrapped around another girl’s throat, his mouth against hers, his body pinning hers down while she took whatever he gave her and thanked him for it.
Jealousy hit so fast and so hard it felt like a blow, and I hated myself for it.
Emer squealed, clutching Ciara’s arm like they’d just been handed front-row tickets to a scandal. “Oh my God, is it Sara?”
Ciara gasped, her voice breathless with thrill. “No, wait, what about Double-Dee? Tell me it’s not her. I’d die!”
“Gross.” Emer shuddered. “No way. He’s not that desperate.”
They fell into giggles again, eyes wide and lips twitching with barely contained glee.
Aoife cut them off with a sharp slap to the backs of their heads and lifted her chin at her own reflection like she was admiring a crown. “Me, you eejits. Lorcan is mine.”
Something hot and vicious reared up inside me before I could crush it.
Emer let out a dreamy sigh and clutched her chest. “God, you lucky bitch,” she breathed.
Ciara leaned closer, eyes wide with envy. “Wait, wait, wait— How big is it, though? Like, are the rumors true? Does he have that ‘big boy’ energy downstairs too?”
Aoife preened, lips parting in a smug little smile. “Let’s just say, I walk funny on Mondays for a reason.”
Emer shrieked and fanned herself with her hand. “Oh my God, I hate you. You’re such a bitch for living my dreams.”
Ciara sighed, clutching a locker door like it might steady her. “Ugh, I’d kill to know what he’s like in bed. Bet he’s got that dark, twisted dom thing going on. The kind that ruins you for anyone else.”
Aoife laughed as she fluffed up her hair. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Jealousy twisted low in my belly, festering inside me like something rotting. I wanted to tear it out.