Chapter 36
Ciara
My tears are hot and stupid, leaking into his shirt, but I can’t stop them. I’ve held that secret in the dark for half my life, letting it rot me from the inside out because I knew the cost of speaking it aloud. War. Ruin. Death.
But now it’s out, and I’m still standing. Still breathing. Still wrapped in arms that feel like safety.
Sean paid the price without blinking.
He killed his family… for me.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into my hair, his arms locking around me like bands of steel.
He’s solid. He isn’t shaking. There’s no tremor in the hand stroking my spine, no frantic, erratic rhythm to the heart beating against my ear. He is stone-cold sober and terrifyingly calm.
I pull back, just enough to look at him. His blue eyes are clear, the winter ice finally settled into a frozen lake that can hold its weight. There is no regret in his gaze. No panic. Just a hard, possessive glint that tells me he’d burn the rest of the world down if it looked at me wrong.
“Go,” Connor says, his voice like gravel. “Take your wife upstairs. I’ll handle the mess.”
Sean nods once, a sharp dip of his chin. But I need to say something. Anything.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out to Connor.
He freezes, half turned away. For a moment, no one breathes.
Then, he slowly turns, his face hard. “Shut the fuck up, girl. Never apologize for shit that isn’t your fault.”
And just like that, he leaves us at the bottom of the stairs to clean up the mess of his dead brother.
“I’m not sure whether to take that as good or bad,” I mutter.
“Good,” Sean says. “He only tells people he cares about to shut the fuck up. It’s about as affectionate as you’ll get from him.”
I snort, wiping tears from my eyes. I cup Sean’s face and rise up on my tiptoes to brush my lips against his. “Thank you. I know what that cost you.”
“It didn’t cost me anything.”
“But it could’ve.”
“I told you already, if Connor had tried to stop me, he would’ve ended up the same way. When I say no one hurts you, I mean it.”
The conviction in his voice sends a shiver skittering down my spine, but it isn’t fear. It’s a terrifying sort of awe. He just rewrote the laws of our world—family first, always—and replaced them with a single edict: me.
I squeeze his hand, my fingers lacing through his, grounding us both as we turn and ascend the stairs.
The silence in the house is heavy, thick with the knowledge of what lies bleeding out on the Persian rug in the study, but neither of us looks back.
We leave the clean-up to Connor, the patriarch who finally respects, but more importantly, trusts over his own brother, the wolf he raised.
Inside the bedroom, Sean closes the door. The sanctuary of the four walls wraps around us, but the air is still charged with violence. He turns to me, his gaze dropping to my shoulder where the bandage is hidden under the same gross tee I’ve been wearing all day.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice rough, stripped of the bravado he wears like armor.
“I am now,” I whisper. I mean it. The ghost that has haunted my nightmares for fourteen years is gone, exorcised by the man standing in front of me. I reach out, tracing the ink on his forearm, feeling the steady pulse beneath the skin. “But I need new clothes.”
He nods once and moves away from me to gather up what little belongings we have with us. “We’re going home,” he says.
“Are you sure?”
“More so than I’ve ever been.”
He grabs the keys to the rusted sedan from the dresser, but pauses, his lip curling in distaste. He tosses them back onto the polished wood with a clatter. “Screw that death trap,” he mutters. “We’re taking another of Connor’s fleet.”
I don’t argue. I don’t think I could argue with him right now if I tried. There is a new gravity to him, a magnetic pull that demands obedience not out of fear, but out of absolute trust. He helps me put on my shoes and guides me out of the room.
The hallway is a vacuum. The air feels thinner, sharper. We pass the closed study door on the ground floor. There is no sound from behind the heavy oak, no sign of the methodical cleanup I know Connor is orchestrating. It’s a tomb, and we are the resurrected walking away from it.
“He knew,” I murmur.
“No, I don’t think—”
I shake my head, cutting him off. “Maybe not about me, but he knew. I wasn’t the first or the last.”
The silence is heavy, but then Sean sighs. “You’re probably right, that was a bit too easy.”
“There was nothing easy about it, Sean.”
“No, I mean Connor’s acceptance. He had to have known or suspected something.”
I nod, and we go silent again.
Outside, the rain has softened to a mist. Sean opens the passenger door of a black Range Rover, his hand lingering on the small of my back. It’s a possessive claim, a silent reminder that the violence is still simmering just beneath the surface, ready to be unleashed for me. Again.
“If that’s true, then no girl ever has to fear him again,” he says and steps back, closing the car door and sealing me in before he opens the driver’s side and climbs in.
I place my hand on the back of his neck, digging my nails in the way I know he likes. “You did good.”
He doesn’t reply. The engine purrs to life with a low growl that vibrates through the rich leather seats.
As we roll through the iron gates, leaving the fortress and the body behind, I look out of the window and lean my head back against the headrest. My shoulder throbs, a dull ache that pulses in time with my heartbeat.
But it’s nothing compared to the weight that’s been lifted from my chest.
For the first time in fourteen years, I can breathe without choking on shame.
When we arrive back at the penthouse, Millie is there, despite the late hour, pottering about as if she expected us.
“You’re alive,” she states when she sees us.
“Barely,” I remark. “I’m about to die from the stink of these clothes.”
Millie’s gaze rakes over the dried blood on my tee. She doesn’t flinch. “Get it all off. I’ll burn it.”
“Thank you,” I say, and without shame, pull everything off, standing there in nothing but the bandage stuck to my shoulder.
Sean’s eyes narrow. “Good thing she’s married,” he growls.
“Good thing I am too,” I counter and stalk off, trying to maintain my usual air of fuck this shit. But it’s getting harder to fake it when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry before I sleep for a week.
“Can’t argue with that, boyo,” Millie laughs as Sean follows me.
He catches up with me as I enter the guest bedroom, grabbing my hand lightly and turning me to face him. His gaze bores into mine. “Is it a good thing?” His jaw is tight, his thumb tracing circles on my wrist like he’s checking my pulse, like he needs proof I’m real. That I’m his.
“It’s the only thing,” I say, and the truth of it rings clearer than any bell.
“You gave me justice when no one else would. You gave me safety when I thought I had to be my own army.” I reach up, tracing my nails over the nape of his neck.
“I’m not married to the man who showed up at the church, Sean.
I’m married to the man who burned his world down for me. ”
The tension bleeds out of his shoulders, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. He lets out a breath that sounds like a prayer.
“Then come to bed,” he rasps, his grip finally tightening on my waist, pulling me flush against him. “Not in here. My bed. Our bed.”
“Our bed,” I agree, because the guest room is for strangers, and we are anything but that now. “But all my clothes need moving.”
“Later,” he murmurs against my lips.
“Millie—”
“Will be gone soon.”
I nod and let him lead me to the bedroom. I follow him, my hand in his, and the exhaustion I felt moments ago is replaced by something sharper. Hungrier.
I want him.
Not the desperate, frantic fucking we’ve done before. I want slow. I want his hands on every inch of my skin. I want him to claim me the way he claimed my justice—methodically, ruthlessly, completely.
He closes the door, and the soft click lands like a promise. The city is a hum beneath us; in here, there’s only the two of us and the heat running in my blood.
He reaches for me like I’m the only thing keeping him upright.
Maybe I am. I slide my hands under his tee and tug it up, slow, feeling every inch of skin as it reveals itself.
He lets me, patient for once, eyes on mine, mouth curved at the corners like he knows I’m taking this at my pace and he’s happy to burn for it.
“Lie down,” I murmur.
He does, backing onto the bed like a man obeying his queen, propped on his elbows, watching me. I climb over him, caging his hips with my knees. His gaze drags down my body, reverent instead of greedy, and my lungs forget how to do their job for a second.
“Slow,” I warn, fingers at his jaw. “I want to feel you taking your time.”
He runs his palms up my thighs, careful and possessive in the same breath. He kisses the uninjured skin first. My collarbone, the inside of my wrist, the hollow just under my ear—like he’s mapping me to memory. He turns us around so I’m underneath him, and he spreads my legs wide.
“I want to taste you,” he murmurs, ducking his head.
I thread my fingers into his hair and tilt my hips, a low sound escaping me when his mouth lands on my pussy.
It’s slow, reverent, nothing like the frantic edge we’ve been riding.
Heat pools low and heavy; the ache in my shoulder fades to a dull throb under the tide of sensation.
He drags his tongue in unhurried strokes that make my toes curl.
When he looks up, those blue eyes are all hunger and worship.
“Sean,” I whisper, not sure if I’m begging him to keep going or to crawl up my body and bury himself in me.
He answers by going lazier, meaner, sucking my clit in a way that has my spine bowing off the sheets.
My hand fists in his hair. I’m not gentle about it.
He groans like I’ve paid him a compliment.
His palm clamps hard on my hip as if to say: don’t move.
I don’t.
He takes me apart with patience, a ruthless devotion that has tears pricking my eyes when I come, shuddering, his mouth still on me like he’s drinking down every last tremor.
He kisses the inside of my thigh on the way up, then my stomach, then the corner of my mouth.
I loop my legs around his waist and pull him into me.
He slides in slow, deep, the kind of deliberate push that says mine without a single word.
I gasp against his lips and meet him, rolling my hips, owning it right back.
He sets a rhythm that’s unhurried and obscene, his forehead pressed to mine, breath mixing into one shared pulse until there’s nothing but heat and him and the drag of my nails down his back when I can’t take the slow anymore.
“Please,” I breathe.
He answers by driving in deeper. It’s not rough.
It’s total. He fucks me like he’s filing away every sound I make for later, like he plans to replay them when the world tries to swallow him whole.
I meet him, roll with him, take him, give back, until the rhythm stops being his or mine and becomes ours.
When I tip again, it’s quieter—no scream, just a long, shuddering exhale that feels like release and surrender and a vow soldered to bone.
He follows me over, choking out my name like he’s confessing in a church, burying his face in my neck as he pulses inside me.
I hold him there. I don’t let him move. I like him heavy.
I like the way his weight says I’m not going anywhere.
We lie there breathing like we’ve run a marathon. His heart hammers against my ribs. Mine trip-hammers back, then finds it, matches it, steadies.
He kisses the corner of my mouth, soft, almost grateful, and then rolls to my side, keeping one arm banded around my waist like he thinks I might float off if he doesn’t tether me.
I smooth his hair back and feel the aftershock tremor in his forearm. Not booze. Adrenaline. Battle comedown. I know this one. “You’re okay,” I murmur. “You will always be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”