Chapter 20
Aidan
Istudy her for a second longer and believe her only because she says it like a threat.
Not healed. Not fine. Functional.
That will have to do.
“You want me to get the others?” I ask.
She lets out a breath through her nose. “Yeah. Before I change my mind and start shooting relatives.”
“That can still be arranged later.”
That gets a short, unwilling sound out of her. Not a laugh. Close enough.
I step back to the door and open it. The corridor outside is tense with the sort of silence that means everybody is waiting for the same explosion.
Cormac is halfway down the hall. Declan is by the stairwell.
Gallagher is coming the other direction like he already knows exactly what’s happened.
Of course he does. Roisin is coming up the stairs.
“Office,” I say. “Shit has officially hit the fan.”
“She knows,” Gallagher states. “Cillian went to her.”
“Yes. He’s gone now. She threw him out.”
“Wait?” Roisin says, her eyes on Gallagher. “What?”
“Later,” I state. “All you need to know for now is Cillian is alive, and Dervla is holding it together.”
I step aside and let them file in ahead of me.
Dervla is back behind the desk when we enter, one hand flat on the wood, the other resting too close to the gun at her back.
She looks composed if you don’t know what you’re seeing.
I know what I’m seeing. Her thumb moves in a slow circle against the desk. Once. Twice. Then stops.
Roisin is the first to speak. “Tell me this is some kind of sick joke.”
Dervla looks at her. “You’d think.”
The silence after that is dense enough to choke on.
Declan moves first, coming in two steps before stopping himself. “Dervla—”
“I know you knew for a few minutes. I’m not accusing you or blaming you. Or you,” she turns to Cormac, then Gallagher, “Or you. We have bigger shit to deal with than petty crap.”
I don’t say anything. I just give Declan and Cormac a stare that would strip paint.
“Lord Brendan Murphy is the head of the Romans,” she says. “And he wants his campus back.”
“Tough shit,” I say.
“Exactly. He isn’t getting it. We are here for the long haul. Get comfy.”
I move to the window and scan the quad below.
Empty. The rain has thinned to a mist that sits low over the grass and turns the tree line at the far edge of the grounds into a smear of grey-green.
Nothing moves. That is not reassuring. Nothing moving means nobody has arrived yet, and nobody arriving yet means they are still coming.
“What do we know about Murphy?” I ask.
“His son is dead,” Declan says from the doorway. “The son who was supposedly going against him.”
“Yeah, the son Troy Kavanagh said was going against him,” Dervla says, looking at me. “He killed Whitmore. His dad told him to do it because Whitmore was closing in on them. They are working separately to Murphy.”
“Who? Troy?” I ask.
She nods. “According to my dad. Oh, Siobhán is a good guy. She is with my dad.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, rubbing my hand over my face. “Are we a hundred per cent sure about this now? I’m getting whiplash.”
“You and me both,” she grunts. “But yeah. I believe my dad.”
“Wait here,” I say, and leave the room, heading back to the seminar room we were in earlier, with all the weapons. I stride over to the portable whiteboard and roll it out and back into Dervla’s office.
“Here,” I say, handing her a whiteboard marker. “Murder board. Or rather bad vs worse board.”
“Which are we?” she asks with a smirk.
I snort. “Bad.”
“Right.” She writes BAD and WORSE in two columns.
Under the bad heading, she writes: Us. Dad. Siobhán. Séamus. Alanna.
Under the worse heading she writes: Troy + Dad. Brendan + Romans.
Then, in between the two, she writes: Maeve.
“Good call,” I say with a nod.
“Anyone else?” she asks.
“Not that we can think of, right now. This is pretty much it. Assuming ‘us’ encompasses everyone in this room?”
“It does.”
“Okay, this keeps things in check. And we can also erase and move if the players do.”
“So the first thing we need to do is find out more about Brendan Murphy,” Dervla says, then she looks at me. “You hurt Troy before. He will be reeling.”
“What did you do?” Cormac asks. “And why wasn’t I there?”
“I shot him in the hand for hurting Dervla,” I say.
“Nice,” he grunts. “Next time, make it between the eyes.”
“Now that we know he killed Whitmore, he is going to end up buried under the bluebells in the woods,” I mutter.
“Troy Kavanagh is not our priority right now,” Dervla says, but there’s a flatness to it that tells me she’s already filed him under later rather than never. “Brendan is.”
“Agreed,” Roisin says. She has her arms at her sides, which for Roisin is the equivalent of someone else pacing the room. “What do we know about him beyond the title and the dead son?”
“Old money,” Gallagher says. “Old connections. He has been Chancellor here for eleven years. Before that, he sat on the boards of three other institutions. Trinity, UCD, and one in Galway that closed under circumstances nobody ever fully explained.”
“But you know?” Dervla asks.
“Financially. Quickly. With a lot of staff who suddenly couldn’t find work anywhere else.”
“So he’s been doing this for years,” Declan says.
“Decades, by the looks of it,” Gallagher replies. “St. Augustine’s is the crown. The others were practice.”
I look at the board. “He is going to bring an army. But armies take time to co-ordinate, so we have a few hours yet, I would say. We are locked up in here, literally, so we need to find food, get comfortable because who knows how long we are going to have to defend it.”
“Luckily, the staff canteen is well stocked,” Gallagher says. “Comfortable might be stretching it.”
“Go and see what’s around,” I say, eyes on Dervla. “Take Roisin and find Cillian while you’re at it. He’s lurking somewhere.”
“Who put you in charge?” Roisin grumbles.
“Me. Go. And sort out your issues while you’re at it. We need everyone on the same page by the time the Romans try to kick the door in.”
Roisin gives me a look that could strip varnish, then turns on her heel and walks out. Gallagher follows without a word, which is somehow more irritating than if he’d argued.
I move to the door and lock it, turning back to Dervla with a wicked smile. “We have minutes, but then who knows how long. I want to fuck you on this desk with your knickers around your ankles before everyone comes back.”
“We’re in the middle of a siege,” she says.
“Not yet, we aren’t.”
She holds my stare for one beat, two.
I cross the room in three steps, and she meets me halfway. It’s perfectly her. My hands go to her hips, and I walk her back until her thighs hit the desk edge. Papers scatter. The grenade rolls two inches and stops. Neither of us cares.
I kiss her hard, one hand sliding up under her shirt, palm flat against her spine, pulling her into me. She kisses back like she wants to burn the whole building down and has decided this is a reasonable starting point. Her fingers find my collar, and she drags me closer.
I flick the button on her jeans and lower the zip. She pushes them down her legs as Cormac and Declan move closer.
I pull back just enough to look at her, my hands on her hips. She’s breathing hard, her eyes dark with lust and a hint of desperation. It’s a look that makes me want to consume her, to take everything she’s feeling and turn it into something raw and real.
Turning her, I bend her over the desk and push her knickers down her thighs. Her legs are close together, restricted by denim, but it just makes it even hotter. I spank her hard, relishing her gasp of surprise.
I slide my palm over the curve of her arse and spank her again. Everything in me is hard and wanting, pushing against boundaries and liking that edge.
“I said I wanted you on this desk.” I push her down, flat against the wood, pinning her there with one hand across her back. My hand on her back slides up to her neck, fingers wrapping around her nape. “Is that what you want? Do you want me to take you this way?”
That defiance edges again under a shiver.
“Say it, Dervla.” She shifts under me as if trying to escape because she doesn’t want to admit what she wants.
“Yes,” she hisses, and I can feel the tremble that runs through her. “I want you to take me like this.”
I lean over her, pressing my lips to her ear. “Good girl,” I murmur.
Her breath hitches. I straighten up, keeping one hand on her back to hold her down. With the other, I undo my pants, freeing my cock with a grunt of relief. I kick her legs apart as much as the jeans around her ankles allow, and she gasps as I thrust into her, hard and deep, without any foreplay.
Her cunt is soaking wet.
She moans, a sound of pleasure and surrender that goes straight to my dick. Each thrust pushes her against the desk, which moves slightly under the force. I keep my hand on her back, holding her down, feeling her body tense and release with each thrust.
Cormac moves to the other side of the desk, his eyes on Dervla, lust and admiration warring in his gaze. Declan is next to me, his hand reaching out to caress Dervla’s cheek, his touch gentle compared to the brutal pace I’m fucking her with.
“You feel so good,” I grunt, slamming into her.
Cormac holds the desk at the other side to stop it from being shoved across the room.
Dervla cries out, her back arching, her hands flat on the desk next to her head. “Aidan,” she pants. “Harder.”
“Fuck,” I groan and give it to her.
I slam into Dervla again, deeper this time, her body jolting against the desk with every thrust. She takes it, pushes back, demands more without words.
Cormac watches from the other side, his eyes fixed on her face, on the way she gasps and twists under me.
Declan stands close, his fingers trailing lightly over her arm, down to her wrist, pinning it gently to the wood as if to remind her we all claim her now.
Her breath comes in sharp bursts, and she clenches around me, tight and hot, pulling a growl from my throat.
I keep the rhythm brutal, unrelenting, driving into her until sweat slicks my skin and hers.
She moans louder, the sound raw and unfiltered, and I feel her shatter first, her whole body seizing, trembling.
Cormac stays at the head of the desk, one hand gripping the edge to hold it steady, the other reaching down to tilt her chin up. “Look at me,” he commands.
She does, and he bends to kiss her, swallowing her cries as I fuck her harder.
The power of it surges through me, this claim we’re staking together, right here on the throne she’s just seized. I feel her cunt tightening around my cock. She’s close.
“Come all over my cock, pixie,” I growl, my fingers digging into her hips hard enough to bruise.
She shatters with a sharp cry, her body convulsing under me, dragging me right to the edge.
I thrust once, twice more, then unload into her pussy with a guttural groan that echoes around the room.
The orgasm is like a storm breaking, leaving me breathless, but I don’t let go yet.
My cock is still jerking inside her, pumping out enough cum to fill her pussy.
Whoever goes next will have to slide into the mess I made, and it makes me groan as my cock twitches again.
I thrust, wanting to chase the last of it before I pull out with a delicious wet noise and run my fingers over her pussy.
“Beautiful mess,” I murmur, moving aside and stashing my wet cock in case we need to move fast.
“Cormac,” Dervla gasps. “Fuck me. Fuck me hard.”