Chapter 27 Seamus #2
“No, I need to shoot you. That’s what I need to do. What I should’ve done the other times I had a chance.”
The pulse in her wrist races beneath my fingers and I peel her fingers from the gun handle, letting it clatter on the ground. “Tell me how much you hate me. How you blame me for your cousin, for Paddy, for everything.”
Her breath is uneven now, and even though timing sucks, I’m getting aroused from the way she moves, the way she pushes back into me.
“I never blamed you for Paddy,” she hisses. “And I stopped blaming you for Stan ages ago.”
I cup her chin in my hand and force her to look at me.
“Then what is it you blame me for?”
I know the answer. She blames me for what happened inside. My destruction of her dreams. It doesn’t matter that I did it to protect her, to draw Hanlon out.
“For almost, almost getting me to care, Seamus. For making me want to trust you. I’m a fool.”
“And so the fuck am I. Look at you, playing the victim, hiding things from me.”
She launches herself at me, kissing me hard, her nails digging into my flesh beneath my shirt, on my neck, and I rip her skirt up, shredding the lace of her panties with my fingers.
Fuck, fuck, she’s so goddamned wet, I need her on her knees. I need to worship at her altar.
She pulls her mouth free and shoves me across the cobblestones and into the other wall. I haul her up into my arms, kissing her, biting her lip, and sucking the blood. Her moan is every fucking fantasy brought to life.
Ava kisses me back, biting, licking, a gorgeous, vicious monster of lust. And I can’t get enough. I manage to unzip my pants and turn, slamming us both in the wall as I lift her and impale her cunt with my cock, the tight flesh stretching, hot and slick around me.
I want to ruin her dress. Ruin her. Make it so no man would ever dare touch her. They’d know with one look she’s mine and mine alone.
I plant my hand on the wall and keep one under her ass as I make her ride my cock. She locks her ankles and pulls at my hair, jerking my head back so she can spit fire at me with those mesmerizing eyes.
“You are a cunt,” she says.
And my cock twitches.
“I want to spend my days torturing you,” I say back.
She moans and bites my throat.
“Keep you on the edge of exquisite pleasure and never letting you have it.”
“I’ll make you bleed and take it anyway.”
We’re combusting. I force her down harder on my cock, my entire body a symphony of need and desire, a vicious beat of violent want.
I want her begging. I want her as destroyed as I am. I want it all.
“You’re a fucking liar, Seamus.”
“So are you.” I grip her hair the way she has mine, and she snarls. “I think you want me more than you can admit.”
“The way you want me?”
The way, I suddenly realize, I feel.
She cries out as her pussy spasms around me. The orgasm rips into me, tearing up my insides, including my heart. My body shudders against her as I come hard, filling her with everything I have.
When we’re finished, limp against each other, I kiss her. I can’t help it. I explore her soft mouth, drinking that sweet essence from her as I start to lose myself in her all over again.
But she breaks the kiss and makes a small, broken sound, one that’ll haunt me forever.
I always thought Ava was unbreakable. But that sound, it was like hearing the blood rush from a crushed heart, a soul crying out from the depths of its destruction.
“Ava,” I whisper. I can’t do this. I can’t lie. “Listen, listen, please, you need to trust me. I’ll send you home and—”
She slaps me. Hard.
“Get out of me. Now.”
I do. I pull out and put her down. I zip myself back up as her pained voice slices through my heart.
“You took everything from me.”
“No—”
“Yes.” She glares at me. “Almost everything. Between you and Romanov… You know, at least with the man who killed my mom, I had the satisfaction of taking control, of hunting him and seducing him so I could kill him.”
“You slept—”
“Don’t make me hit you again,” she pushes out. “Not all seduction is about sex.”
It is, but I get what she’s saying. She won him over but didn’t sleep with him. It’s not even that much of a comfort.
“Jesus, Ava. You were… what?”
“Sixteen.”
And something fucking odd happens. Pride swells inside. “Your first kill?”
“It’s not a joke. He took, I took back, but now, even if I kill you, there’s your stupid family, and I actually like them.
But even if I didn’t, how do I, alone, kill the Murphy family?
You’ll have everything. Romanov used Tatiana for years and lied about me having to come of age to take over.
He didn’t want me to have the bratva at all. ”
I go completely still. “Who’s Tatiana?”
“You might know her as Eleanor, my sister. Tatiana’s her middle name.”
Fury swirls. “She’s alive?
“And Romanov has her.”
I ball my hands tight. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
“Because… I am a selfish, cold monster. I talked myself into thinking she’s safe there.”
“Or he wouldn’t give her back. And then he used her to manipulate you.” Fuck. Could he be in with Hanlon? He gave her the key… for… what? “What did he give you when you came out of the bathroom?”
She suddenly lunges and snatches up the gun.
Ava points it at me, and we’re close. There’s no way she’d miss should she choose to pull that trigger.
“I don’t know what he gave me. I haven’t looked.
I don’t think it was from him. It’s not his style.
” Her eyes narrow. “Are you happy? Sad? Gloating? I can’t tell with you, Seamus, because you’re nothing but a liar.
That’s why I didn’t tell you about her. You’re nothing but a means to an end.
I know you didn’t kill Stan because it’s really not your way, is it?
You like to stab people in the back. Or rip their beating hearts out, don’t you? I hate you.”
I hold my hands up slowly, trying to work out if I can grab the gun before she shoots. But we’re too close. And maybe I do deserve her pointing a gun at my face.
“But, Ava, I don’t hate you.”
“What?” she asks with a roll of her eyes. “Are you going to tell me you love me?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not that stupid and na?ve, Seamus,” she says, voice thick. “I began to trust you, even like you, and you… did this. You completely betrayed me.”
“Listen to me.”
Her gaze shifts for a nanosecond.
“I’m done listening to you, Seamus.”
Her hand twitches and moves the slightest bit.
Then she pulls the trigger.