Chapter 28
Aidan
“Someone dying?” Cormac asks.
“Not yet,” Dervla says.
I take the notebook she threw at me and flip it open on her desk. “We’re hosting an event.”
Declan slides the knife away. “That’s the emergency?”
“Who said it was an emergency? You ran in here, blade drawn, like two lunatics.”
“Says the gun-wielding maniac,” Dervla remarks.
Cormac shuts the door behind him and looks at Dervla. “What is it?”
I tap the pen against the page once and start writing headings as I reply for her. “Apex housewarming. Casino night with some illegal activities underneath.”
Cormac grins. “Now I’m interested.”
Declan looks between Dervla and me. “Illegal activities,” he repeats. “That narrows it down nicely.”
“It’s a working title,” I say.
Dervla sits forward on the bed, eyes brighter than they’ve been since I met her. “We make it clean on top, filthy underneath. Cards, drinks, black tie, everyone on campus can come, or not. Then, below the stage, private fights and betting.”
Cormac’s grin gets wider. “Can I fight?”
“Naturally. The more hands-on we all are, the better it looks. Optics.”
“We need enough bodies to make noise. Enough control to stop it from becoming chaos.”
“Rumour spreads faster than paper,” Dervla says. “We leak it instead of announcing it properly. Heavier on the illegal betting. St. Aug’s is an institution that prides itself on secrecy and danger. Most of the students should lap this up.”
“Most, not all,” I point out.
She shrugs. “If someone rats us out, we change venue. Simple.”
Pride shoots through me.
“Assembly hall,” I say, writing it down. “The space under the stage for the fights. Open door, word of mouth only, no invitations, no lists. Free-for-all. We run a book on the fights, take a cut off the top.”
“When?” Declan asks.
“Wednesday,” I say. “Two days. Enough time to spread the word, not enough time for anyone to organise against it.”
Declan nods slowly, already running logistics in his head. “I’ll sort the tables. Cards, chips, the lot. I know someone who supplies pub quiz nights and corporate events. He won’t ask questions.”
“Cormac,” I say. “Fighters. You know who’s game on campus. Get a card together. We do this as an escalation. Out of the first two fighters, the winner progresses to round two, and so on.”
“Weapons or fists only.”
“Fists only. We want it bloody and brutal, not deadly.”
Cormac nods. “On it.”
Declan is already pulling out his phone.
They leave. The door clicks shut behind them, and the room changes the way it always does when it’s just the two of us.
The air gets thicker. The walls get closer.
The calculations I run constantly, the ones that keep me three moves ahead, start stuttering against something that doesn’t respond to strategy.
Dervla sits on the bed, legs crossed, her father’s letter next to her.
She’s got that look again—the one I’ve been trying to figure out since she first told me to fuck off in the quad.
Not pissed off. Not sad. It’s the face of someone who’s done being pushed around and is ready to start doing the pushing. It gets to me.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I’m aware.”
“It’s creepy.”
“It’s not.”
“It is when you do it with that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that’s calculating how to use whatever just happened to your advantage.”
She’s not wrong. But she’s not entirely right either, and the gap between those two things is the problem I’ve been failing to solve since the corridor, since her blade at my throat, since she squeezed my cock and nearly made me come in my pants.
“I’m not calculating,” I say.
“That would be a first.”
“It would.”
Her face changes. Not softer, just different. She’s scanning me like I’m a fucking balance sheet with numbers that don’t add up.
“What are you doing, Aidan?” she asks, voice low.
“Standing here while you give me the third degree.”
Fuck. She’s asking what’s been hanging between us since I slammed her against that wall, since she held steel to my throat and I didn’t back down, since I told my dad she wasn’t a complication.
What am I doing with a woman who should be an asset but feels like a liability?
A woman who makes me think with my dick instead of my head?
“I don’t know,” I say, and the honesty of it surprises me more than it surprises her.
She blinks. “You always know.”
“Not this time.”
“That’s either the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me or the most manipulative.”
“It’s the first one.”
“How would I know the difference?”
“You wouldn’t. That’s the problem.”
She stares at me. The silence feels like a fucking weight on my chest. I’ve sat across tables from men who’d sell their own mothers, but this woman just sitting there looking at me makes my skin itch.
She gets up.
Crosses the floor with the kind of confidence that makes the air feel like it belongs to her. She’s already decided what’s going to happen and doesn’t give a shit if I agree. She stops right in front of me. Close. Too close.
“I’m going to do something,” she says. “And you’re not going to think your way around it.”
“Depends what you’re planning.”
“No,” she says. “It fucking doesn’t.”
She puts her hand on my chest. Her palm burns through my shirt. Her fingers press into my chest, her mouth curves into something that reminds me of the look guys get before they pull a trigger.
She yanks me down to her level. The kiss hits like a bullet.
I catch her jaw and kiss her back hard enough to make her take a step into me.
There is nothing careful about it. No test. No room for doubt. She started this to take control, and I let her think she has it for exactly two seconds before I turn us and press her against the desk.
She makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
“Fuck,” I mutter, dragging the word over her lips as I kiss her again.
Her fingers fist in my shirt, hauling me closer. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
I laugh once, low and rough. “You think that’s the risk here?”
“I think you talk too much.” She bites my lower lip. Hard. Not enough to break skin, enough to make my grip tighten at her waist.
I slide one hand into her hair and tip her head back so I can take her mouth properly.
She gives it back viciously, every kiss a challenge, every breath hot and fast. My body reacts instantly.
My cock is hard and getting harder by the second, pressed against the line of her thigh where I’ve trapped her against the desk.
I pull back just enough to look at her. Her face is flushed. Her pupils are blown. Her hair is a mess from my hand. She looks dangerous and pleased with herself, and it does something filthy to me.
I want to wreck that look right off her face and keep it there for myself.
“Say it,” I tell her.
Her mouth curls. “Say what?”
“That this was your idea.”
“It was,” she says at once. “And don’t pretend you aren’t into being manhandled. It’s embarrassing for you.”
I smile despite myself. “You think this is manhandling?”
“I think you’re stalling.”
I slide my hand from her waist to the back of her thigh and hitch her up onto the desk in one movement. Papers shift under her.
She kisses me again before I can say anything else, and I let her have it for half a second before I take over. My hand stays in her hair. My other grips her hip. I pin her where I want her and kiss her until her breathing changes, until the confident little edge in her mouth turns unsteady.
That is what gets me.
Not obedience. Not surrender.
The moment she feels it too.
“No more talking,” I whisper against her lips and pick her up off the desk, carrying her to the bed as she wraps her legs around me.
I set her down on the mattress and crawl over her before she can make another smart remark.
She looks up at me with that same defiant heat, mouth swollen from kissing, hair spread over the duvet, and I have to fight the urge to pin her wrists and keep her there until she forgets every other name she’s carrying in her head tonight.
Instead, I brace one hand by her hip and drag the other down her throat, over her chest, over the line of her waist.
I kiss her again, hard enough to make her gasp. Her hands go to my shirt, impatient, shoving it up. I pull back long enough to strip it off and toss it somewhere behind me. Her eyes flick over my inked chest, then lower, and there’s something darkly satisfied in the look.
She hooks a finger into the waistband of my pants and tugs.
I catch her hand and pin it to the bed above her head. “You don’t give orders when you’re under me.”
Her mouth curves. “You keep saying things like that, and then I ignore you.”
“You’re about to find out how much that costs.”
She visibly likes that, which is dangerous information.
I ease up and undo her jeans, pulling them down and flinging them away.
She sits up and removes her tee, leaving her in a bra and knickers.
She is more gorgeous than I thought. I take a second to look at her properly.
Her hair is wild around her face, and her eyes are on mine with open challenge.
She knows exactly what she is doing to me. She enjoys it.
She reaches behind her back, unhooks her bra, and drops it on the floor at the side of the bed.
That nearly undoes me.
I put my hand around her throat, not squeezing, just holding, and push her back onto the duvet. “You’re beautiful, pixie.”
I lower my head and take one of her nipples into my mouth. She gasps, sharp and unguarded, and her fingers go straight into my hair. I suck hard enough to make her squirm, then drag my tongue across her skin and give the other nipple the same attention until her breathing turns ragged.
This is what I’ve been waiting for.
She arches under me, trying to act like she’s still got the upper hand while her body gives her away in every possible way.
I slide my hand down from her throat to her stomach, to the front of her knickers. She is already damp. I hook my fingers into the sides and drag them down her legs. She kicks them off impatiently. Good. I want her to be impatient. I want her to want.
My hand closes around her ankle, and I pull her down the bed toward me. She goes with it, eyes fixed on mine, chin tilted in that stubborn way that makes me want to ruin her and praise her at the same time.
I spread her thighs and drop my head. The first lick gets a hard inhale out of her. The second gets a twitch in her hips. By the third, she is trembling.
I keep my eyes on her while I lick up through her, slow at first, making her feel every pass of my tongue, every drag and pause and deliberate stroke. Her pussy clenches, already working herself up, already trying not to show me how badly she wants this.
I flatten my tongue and lick her again, harder this time.
Her hand tightens in my hair. Her whole body gives a sharp jolt, and the sound that leaves her mouth is enough to make my cock throb painfully.
I pull back and flick the button on my jeans and rip them off, letting her look at me and enjoying the heat in her eyes.
The truth. She wants this as much as I do.
Kneeling again, I hook my hands under her thighs and hold her open for me, taking my time with her because I know exactly what this does.
Every second she spends wound up and wet and frustrated pushes her closer to the edge, and every second she has to lie there and take it from me strips another layer off her control.
“Aidan,” she pants.
It comes out as a warning.
I suck her clit into my mouth and then bite down, just this side of roughly.
The warning breaks.
Her back arches off the bed. Her other hand fists in the duvet. I keep going, relentless now, until she stops pretending this is about power and starts chasing release.
“Fuck,” she gasps.
I slide two fingers into her.
She is hot, tight and drenched, and I nearly lose my rhythm from the way she clamps down around me.
Her thighs tense under my hands. Her hips try to lift off the bed.
I hold her exactly where I want her and work her harder, mouth on her clit, fingers driving into her in a pace that makes her breaths turn broken.
“That’s it,” I murmur against her. “Take it.”
Her fingers twist in my hair with zero restraint. Good. I want all of it. Every vicious little pull. Every bit of her temper turned into this.
I look up.
She comes apart. Her face is flushed, lips parted.
I curl my fingers and suck harder.
Her body jerks. Her mouth opens on a strangled sound. She tries to shut it down, tries to pull herself back together by force, and I take that personally.
“Scream, pixie,” I say, pulling back just enough to meet her eyes before I go straight back down on her before she can say another word.
This time I give her no space to recover. I lick, suck, and fuck her with my mouth and hand until she breaks with a violent shudder, and the sound she makes tears straight through me.
She tries to twist away from the intensity, but I keep her there, hold her open, take every second of it until she is shaking under my hands and breathing like she has forgotten how to do it properly.
Her thighs tense against me. Her fingers are still buried in my hair, no control left in them now, just instinct.
That does something ugly to my self-control.
I crawl up her and kiss her before she can speak, before she can turn this into another fight for dominance, she is in no state to win.
Her hands go to my face, then my neck, then down my chest. Fast. Greedy. Her nails drag over skin, and I hiss at the sting.
Her hand drops between us and closes around my cock.
I swear into her mouth as she gives me that vicious little need to answer everything with escalation. She strokes me until I want to beg her to stop so I can empty my balls in her cunt, but I say nothing and let her work me into a frenzy she will pay for the second she lets me go.