18. Liath
LIATH
Ishut my bedroom door, turned the lock, and sagged against it. Relief poured through me like warm water, loosening the knot between my shoulders.
Rua’s bedroom was my only sanctuary. In here, the music from the party was muted to a faint throb. Finally, I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I was safe.
I slipped off my jacket and dress, tossing them onto the bed, bare skin prickling from the cool air. A low, dark, and far too familiar voice cut through the stillness.
“Looks like I arrived at the perfect moment to ruin you.”
The air rushed out of my lungs as I spun toward the sound.
Lorcan was standing there in my fucking room, dressed head to toe in black, his sleeves pushed up to reveal ink: roses, curling ivy, ravens flying free from broken cages. The air seemed to thin, my lungs straining.
He hadn’t entered through the door. And yet there he was.
“How the fuck did you get in?” I demanded, trying to cover up my body with my hands and failing.
He smirked, his gaze burning over me, making me feel like I was naked even though I still had a bra and underwear on. “Oh, mo chlunaireín, I would tear down doors, burn down walls just to get to you.”
I hadn’t reached safety; he’d fucking herded me here like sheep. And I’d fallen straight into his trap.
I lunged for my door, fingers fumbling to turn the lock. The door barely opened before he slammed it shut, his chest hitting my back, the wood rattling under the force.
The impact jolted through me, scared me, thrilled me. Heat radiated from him, sinking into me until I could feel it in my bones, his violins booming in my skull.
His breath brushed my ear. “I’m going to enjoy ripping the truth from your lying mouth.”
Fuck.
While pinning my body against him, he caught my wrists, one at a time, and pushed them into sleeves of something made of rough cotton, like a jacket on backward. What the hell? I had not expected him to dress me.
But when he crossed my arms behind me and clipped my wrists to my lower back, I realized what this was.
He’d put me in a fucking straitjacket.
A pale vintage straitjacket marked with the Magdalene crest on the left breast.
I thrashed against him, twisting, kicking, a ragged scream tearing from my throat, but my arms were bound fast. Desperation clawed up my spine.
I lunged, the only weapon left to me my own mouth, and sank my teeth into the hard muscle of his shoulder.
Hot, metallic blood spilled over my tongue, sharp as sin.
He let out a grunt and his fist twisted cruelly in my hair, yanking until pain spiked down my spine. The shock tore a scream from me, my teeth tearing free of him.
The psychopath only grinned, like I’d just proven him right. “I knew you couldn’t wait to taste me.”
He pulled something from his back pocket and slid it over my head.
A muzzle.
A fucking muzzle, the kind they used at the Institute.
“You bastard,” I hissed as he tightened the strap behind my head.
He laughed. “Now you look perfect, mo chlunaireín.”
He unlocked my door and dragged me out onto the mezzanine where music and laughter floated up from the party below. My stomach clenched as the thick material of the jacket settled against my skin, short enough to leave my ass almost bare.
He shoved me against the balustrade and hissed in my ear. “They won’t see you if you behave. But one scream, one word, I’ll make sure they do.”
I looked down over all the heads of the partying students, praying that none of them looked up.
He bent me over the railing, the cool air licking across the tops of my thighs. Buckles from the jacket clicked against the railing as he tethered me in place.
I was tied down. Exposed. Vulnerable.
I wanted to scream. To rage. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t and he knew it. I’d attract too much attention, and I didn’t need an audience for whatever he had planned for me.
I repressed a shiver.
His hands skimmed up my thighs, teasing just under the hem, close enough to make my chest tighten with anticipation. The image flashed unbidden, him shoving my panties aside, filling me, stretching me open, taking what he wanted.
Shameful wetness leaked out of me, soaking my G-string. I was terrified he would violate me. But even more terrified that I secretly wanted it.
His fingers slid through the slickness coating my upper thighs, teasing along the edge of my panties. “Oh, you are soaked, mo chlunaireín…”
“Y-you wouldn’t,” I said, my voice shaking with fear, yet thick with lust. “You’re not a rapist, Lorcan.”
He leaned in, his voice soft, venomous, even as his lips brushed my ear. “You think I want your body? I could’ve had that anytime. I want your secrets. Your lies exposed.”
His palms slid over my ass, my thighs, never touching where I ached most.
“If you want me to stop, then admit it,” he murmured. “You’re not here by accident. Someone placed you. In my house. In my sister’s room, with my sister’s face.”
His fingers slid over the edge of my panties, sliding along the slickness of my upper thighs, proving how shamefully wet I was.
“That takes planning,” he murmured, the words thick with dark amusement. “That takes someone with a reason.”
Shit. He was getting too close to the truth.
I bit my lip to stop from speaking. Or moaning. Or screaming.
God, this was torture. Shameful torture.
“Confess,” he whispered. “Who sent you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, just to steel myself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, you’re good.” His breath was hot on my ear, his voice almost tender, his words almost a compliment. “You held up under the knife. You held up in my father’s house. Most people break faster than that.”
I looked down at the crowd. There were no friendly faces among them. Only his allies. His fucking minions. There was no one down there who would help me. Not even if I screamed.
At that moment, Aoife, currently standing against a pillar, looking bored as hell, happened to glance up. Her perfect mouth twisted into a scowl when she saw us. God, from her angle, we probably looked like we were fucking.
Feel free to trade places, bitch.
He grabbed the front of my muzzle and turned my head, forcing me to look at him over my shoulder, his gaze burning into mine. “Which tells me whoever put you here trained you. Or threatened you. Or both.”
Eyes locked, something passed between us. My chest tightened.
He pushed my panties aside and thrust two fingers into me, spreading me, forcing me to bite down on my cry.
“Give me a name. And I give you what you want.”
His fingers worked my G-spot mercilessly.
God, how I hated myself as my body tightened, my orgasm rushing up toward me embarrassingly fast.
“The name is Rua.”
“The truth,” he growled as he finger fucked me like he hated me.
“That,” I gasped, as my body careened recklessly out of control, rocking back on his fingers, “that is the truth.”
“Wrong answer.”
He pulled his fingers out of me, my climax cutting off, a whimper leaving my lips, my legs shuddering as my pussy clamped around air.
“Okay,” I blurted out. “Wait. I’ll tell you the truth.”
He stilled, then tilted his head, waiting.
My heart slammed in my chest, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “I hate what you make me feel.”
His eyes darkened. “Better,” he said after a moment. “Real.” His jaw shifted. “But not what I asked.”
He studied me for a long moment with those cold, unreadable eyes.
I bit my lip to stop myself from begging.
“Someone sent you,” he said almost to himself.
He leaned in, whispered something in my ear, then pushed back, leaving me there, aching, unsatisfied, dripping, in front of the party I couldn’t cry out to.
It was hours before he returned to release me. Hours that I had to stand there, glaring at him as he enjoyed his fucking party, as he lifted his glass to me in a toast and drank with a smirk on his face, my legs trembling, pussy aching, breath jagged as I prayed not to be noticed.
And his final words to me echoed in my ear.
Both a threat… And a promise.
“Next time… you’ll beg to tell me.”
For the next few days, the whispers followed me through Ravenwood like smoke.
Courtesy of Aoife’s little gift to me. Her pregnancy rumor was the latest poisonous gossip, and everyone here had drunk deep.
Lorcan stepping in between me and Elias hadn’t helped. Whatever private war burned between them, they’d let it spill out where everyone could see, and because my name had already been dragged through one story, the college was busy writing me into this one as well.
The logical conclusion drawing itself in the air, ugly and inevitable: Lorcan, Elias, and me supposedly having been pregnant.
I could feel their whispers before I heard them, that particular crawl of too many eyes pretending not to look, the hush that rolled ahead of us down the corridor like a wave pulling back before it broke.
Half the college was staring. The other half was pretending not to, all those carefully angled shoulders and studiedly casual glances still managing to drag across my skin like filth.
“Christ, it’s worse today,” Nuala said as she glared at yet another passing group of whispering students. “They’re practically vibrating.”
“Let them.” My eyes stayed fixed on the path ahead. If I didn’t look, I could almost pretend the weight of their attention wasn’t pressing down on my shoulders like something physical.
“Guess it didn’t help with whatever happened between Lorcan and Elias,” she said, a weight to her words.
I said nothing.
Nuala’s attention settled on me, precise and patient as a scalpel. “So. Lorcan, huh?”
“There’s nothing to say about Lorcan.”
“Right.”
“There isn’t.”
“You said that very quickly.”
“Nuala.”
“I’m just saying.” She tilted her head. “Good girls. Bad boys. It’s practically a law of nature.”
I turned to look at her then, because something in her voice had shifted, a brightness pulled too tight over something softer underneath.
The pink rushing into her cheeks gave her away before her eyes did.
“Is this about me,” I asked softly, “or you?”