10. Tiernan
TIERNAN
Staring at Lorcan across my desk, I blink because I have no other response.
“You can stop staring at me as if I killed her,” he clips out.
“No, just took her, imprisoned her, undressed her, and fucked her.”
“And? Which part is the problem?”
“All of it. None of it. You fucked her?”
He is smug. “I did. It was unexpected.”
“She let you?”
“Let is relative. She didn’t resist.”
“I’m not sure I like reading between the lines on that one.”
He shrugs. “She is in the penthouse in Mayfair, where she can’t speak to anyone about what she saw. No phone. No contact to the outside world.”
“Where Snowden can’t lay eyes on her again.”
“A pleasant side-effect. Update?”
I take the change in topic because what else is there to do when Lorcan gets like this. He is obsessed with her already. “Jacob is monitoring him. Nothing to report yet.”
“Acceptable.” He stands up. “I’m going to the club tonight. I want you to go to the penthouse, get Elle, make sure she is dressed appropriately and bring her through the back entrance. I want her to really see what she walked into last night.”
I stare at him for a second longer. “Why?”
Lorcan pauses at the door. “Because she needs to understand the rules.”
“She understands fear well enough.”
His eyes sharpen. “That sounds like concern.”
“It is concern. For the business. For your sanity. For the mess you’re making because a blonde stripper got under your skin.”
He turns fully, one hand on the door handle, calm in that way that makes men confess before he asks the question. “Cuff her to you and bring her.”
That hits me right where he needs it to. Fucker. He knows me too well. “That’s a dangerous game,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“This isn’t a game, T. This is about claiming what’s ours. She is complying for now because she can’t fight. She is weak, tired and overwhelmed. She will get to the point where breaking her will be much more fun.”
“I want to see her break,” I growl softly.
He has brought the beast to the surface, and he knows it.
My logic is fleeing, and my instinct to chain this woman to me so she can’t escape is now all I can think about.
He found the one order that would crawl under my skin and settle there.
Lorcan doesn’t throw commands around without knowing exactly where they’ll land.
He wants Elle frightened, contained, dependent.
He wants her to see the club again and understand that last night wasn’t a one-off horror she can file away and survive.
He wants her to see our world and know there’s no exit.
I stare at the closed door for a few seconds, then grab my jacket from the back of the chair. If she is holed up in the Mayfair penthouse, I can go to her now, feed her, make her rest before I show her that she made the biggest mistake of her life waltzing into Lorcan’s fight without an invitation.
I grab my keys and head for the door before I can think too hard about any of it.
The drive to Mayfair takes twenty minutes. I spend most of it thinking about her face in the ring last night. How she held herself together through sheer will and not much else, and how she looked at Lorcan like she wanted to spit in his face and cry at the same time.
I don’t like what he did to her.
I don’t like that I want to do worse.
The building is one of ours. Clean, secure, staffed by people who know better than to ask questions or remember faces. I nod at the concierge and cross to the private lift for the penthouse floor. The security panel blinks green when I press my card to it.
The doors open, and I step in, pressing the button for the 4th floor. The lift rises without a sound.
I stare at the panel and think about what I’m walking into after Lorcan’s bomb drop. Did he force her and is covering it up, or did she really accept it as the only option available to her at the time?
The doors open directly into the penthouse. I step out and stand still for a moment, listening.
Nothing.
I move through the main living space. The city sits behind the floor-to-ceiling glass, wet, grey, and indifferent.
I don’t call out or announce myself. I take the stairs two at a time and stride down the hallway to the double doors of the main bedroom. I shove them open, and she jumps a fucking mile over by the windows.
“Fuck,” she breathes. “Don’t you knock?” She turns around, and her face goes from a grimace to downright fear.
It pleases me.
“No,” I say, quietly. “This is my property.”
“You should still knock.”
“Why? In case you were naked and masturbating? Seen it all already.”
Her eyes flash. “Not the point.”
“The point is whatever I decide it is.” I step further into the room and take her in. “Have you eaten?”
She frowns, surprised by the question. “Not since earlier.”
“Are you hungry?”
Her eyes dart to the open doors behind me, and then she blinks. “Are you offering to cook, or are you going to scoop some food into a bowl and make me eat it from a bowl on the floor like a pet?”
The image that presents to me kicks my cock into gear. “Don’t fucking tempt me, girlie. Seeing you on your knees is something that appeals to me.”
Her face pales, and she goes quiet. Whatever comeback was on her lips dies quickly.
I move forward slowly so I don’t startle her a second time. It’s not a concession I give to anyone. She looks up at me as I stop close enough to make her nervous. “Eat and then rest. You are going out later.”
Her gaze sharpens immediately, just as I knew it would.
“Lorcan wants you at the club.”
She licks her lips. “The one from last night.”
“The very same.” I cup her face roughly, and she gasps. “If you try to run, I will gut you so fast you won’t even notice the pain before you bleed out.”
For one second, she doesn’t even blink. Then she drags air into her lungs with a shaky inhale and pulls her face out of my hand.
“You’re all the same,” she whispers.
“No,” I say. “We’re worse in different ways.”
“Why? Why do I have to go back? I already told you I won’t say anything.”
“Lorcan wants you to understand what silence buys you.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you saw one corner of it. Tonight, you see a bit more.”
“A bit more of what?”
“Our world.”
“What makes you think I won’t run?”
“You won’t,” I say and turn my back to her.
I’m not informing her that she will be shackled to me like the prisoner she is.
Not yet anyway. “Food and then rest. Don’t fight it, Elle.
It will be easier that way.” I leave the room, closing the door behind me.
I stand in the hallway for a second, listening for movement on the other side.
Nothing.
I head downstairs to the kitchen and open the fridge. It is stocked with food because Lorcan doesn’t do anything halfway. Fresh produce, cooked meats, prepared meals with labels, expensive bottled water. More food than Elle has probably had in her place for months.
I pull out a covered dish of pasta, shove it in the oven, then find knives and forks to set the small corner table. Domestic work sits wrong on my hands, but I do it anyway.
My phone buzzes.
Lorcan.
I ignore it.
If he wants updates, he can wait. He wanted me here. He knew what mood I’d be in when I arrived. Now he can deal with the silence.
After checking on the pasta, I close the oven, deciding it needs five more minutes and hear Elle step into the kitchen. I smile to myself. She couldn’t resist. That tells me more about how much she’s been starving herself than anything else.
I turn to her. She is still in the black dress Lorcan put her in, the diamonds at her throat catching the light. Her blonde hair falls loose around her face. She looks expensive now, but not in a way that belongs to her. She looks dressed by someone else’s obsession.
It makes me want to drag her closer and fasten my hand around her throat until she understands she’s not escaping any of us.
Her gaze darts to the table and relief washes over her features. She moves quickly and sits before I can force her to her knees to eat like a dog. I’m not sure if those thoughts in her head please me or piss me off.
“Lorcan told me what happened here earlier,” I say conversationally as I take the pasta out of the oven.
She doesn’t move or speak.
“The fact that you are still here means you pleased him.”
“I’ll remember to be less pleasing next time,” she mutters.
“You misunderstand. That gets you dead.” She needs to understand Lorcan isn’t a man she can bait without consequence. None of us are.
I set the dish on the table and put a serving spoon beside it. “Eat.”
She stares at the pasta like it might be poisoned. “You first.”
I give her a look. “You think I came here to poison you after Lorcan dragged you across London, fucked you into the mattress, and put a million-pound necklace around your throat?”
“I think you’re all capable of anything.”
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said.”
Her lips part, anger sparking again, but hunger wins. She serves herself a cautious amount, then picks up her fork. She eats one bite. Then another. The third comes faster. She tries to slow herself down when she catches me watching.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?”
“Pretend you aren’t starving.”
Her cheeks flush. “I’m not starving.”
“You look like a stiff breeze would take you out.”
“Rude.”
I sit across from her. “You’re underfed.”
She lowers her fork. “Do you three have some kind of rota? Fintan breaks into my flat, Lorcan kidnaps me, now you’re here criticising my BMI?”
I snort at her fire. “I love a smart mouth on a woman. It makes it sweeter when it’s wrapped around my cock.”
“No,” she says, standing up quickly. “I’ve already been violated once today. I can’t…” She chokes on her words and looks around frantically.
“Calm yourself. Sit back down. I don’t do sloppy seconds, Elle. When I take you, and I will, you won’t be full of my brother’s cum.”
Her cheeks heat up, but she doesn’t sit.
“At least the first time,” I add with a dark smile. “You will be required to service all of us together.”
“Service?” she croaks.
“Service, fuck, whatever you want to call it to help you sleep.”
“Why?” she sobs suddenly, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Why are you doing this to me? I didn’t do anything.”
The question hangs in the air like a toxic gas.
I stare at her, at the tears tracking down her face and her hands shaking. She isn’t performing. She isn’t trying to manipulate me. She genuinely doesn’t understand why this is happening to her, and that honesty hits harder than it should.
I let the silence sit for a moment.
“You didn’t do anything,” I agree. “Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong fucking door.”
She wipes her face with the back of her hand and stares at me like that answer makes it worse, not better.
It does. I know it does.
“That’s not fair,” she says.
“No,” I say. “It isn’t. Blame the arsehole who left the door open.”
Elle blinks, clearly expecting something crueller. I watch her recalibrate, trying to work out what version of dangerous I am. “Eat, then rest,” I say again. “It will be a late night.”
She looks at the pasta and then back at me. The fight in her is still there, but exhaustion is winning.