10. Declan #3
Then she starts to move. She fucks me while controlling the pace, the pressure, and every breath she steals from me.
It’s not gentle. It’s a punishing rhythm, a hard, grinding ride that speaks of all the anger and frustration she’s held onto.
She rises up, almost letting me slip out, then slams back down, taking me to the hilt.
The sound of our bodies meeting, the wet slap of skin on skin, is the only music in the room.
I watch her, mesmerized. I watch pleasure strip the caution from her expression, replacing it with a raw, unguarded need.
Her breasts bounce with every movement, her nipples tight and flushed.
I want to touch them, to taste them, but my hands are still pinned.
The sight of her, lost in her own pleasure, using my body to chase her release, reaches beneath every layer of discipline I have built.
It bypasses the cold, calculating boss and the hardened criminal and finds the man who has been hollowed out for seven years.
Nothing about this feels like reclaiming property.
It feels like being granted entry into a country I once destroyed.
I am a trespasser here, and she is the queen, and I am at her mercy.
When my control begins to fracture, when the need to touch her, to possess her, becomes unbearable, I free one hand.
I don’t push her off. I don’t try to take over.
I bring my hand up and cup the back of her neck, my fingers tangling in her hair.
She leans into the touch, a subtle, instinctive gesture of surrender that doesn’t break her rhythm.
Her eyes, which had been closed, snap open and meet mine.
Our gazes lock, and in that moment, seven years of anger, grief, and hunger collide.
It’s a fucking cataclysm. There is no tenderness clean enough to call this healing.
We are too damaged for purity and too honest for pretence. This is raw, ugly, and necessary.
My other hand is still pinned, but I don’t care.
I use my free hand to pull her down, to crush her mouth against mine in a brutal, messy kiss.
It’s all teeth and tongue and desperate sounds.
Her rhythm falters for a second, then she redoubles her efforts, her movements becoming more frantic, more erratic.
She’s close. I can feel it in the way her inner muscles start to flutter around me, in the way her breath hitches in her throat.
I thrust up to meet her, matching her pace, driving my cock deeper, harder.
I want to break her. I want to ruin her for any other man.
I want to fuck her so thoroughly that she can never forget the feel of me inside her.
She breaks with a sharp cry, my name tearing from her lips without hatred.
It’s just a sound, raw and ragged, a pure, unadulterated expression of release.
“Declan.” The sound of it, spoken in that moment, pulls me after her.
My own orgasm crashes through me, a violent, explosive wave that starts in my spine and rips through my entire body.
I come inside her, a hot, deep pulse that feels like I’m pouring every ounce of my soul into her.
It’s a claiming, a branding, a desperate plea all at once.
For several minutes, neither of us speaks.
The only sounds are our ragged gasps for air and the frantic pounding of our hearts slowly returning to a normal rhythm.
Maeve collapses against me, her body limp and sated.
She lies partly across my chest, one leg tangled with mine, while the first grey light of morning reaches through the curtains, casting a pale glow over the wreckage we’ve made of the bed.
My hand moves along her back, tracing the elegant line of her spine, before I notice I am soothing her the way I used to after nightmares.
She used to deny having them. I used to pretend I believed her.
“This changes nothing.” Her cheek remains against my chest, weakening the declaration. “We are still investigating your organisation, Callum is confined, Keane is dead, and someone wants our son murdered.”
“It changes one thing.” I press my mouth to her hair. “You are in my bed.”
“Your powers of observation are breathtaking.”
“You are also terrible at leaving it.”
She raises her head and gives me a look sharp enough to restore balance to the universe. “Do not become smug. I remember several flaws I was too angry to mention.”
“I look forward to the written assessment.” I tighten my arm when she begins to move away, then release her before the gesture becomes a cage. “You and Cillian will never disappear from me again.”
Maeve sits beside me and gathers the sheet around herself. The warmth vanishes from her expression, though not from her body. “Protection does not make me your prisoner. If staying here becomes another name for captivity, I will leave. This time, you will not find even eleven dollars.”
The warning strikes every possessive instinct I possess.
I want guards around her, cameras on every road, and my name attached to every breath she takes.
But wanting control is not the same as earning trust. I sit up and take the lighter from the pocket of my discarded shirt.
The metal rests between us, proof of everything hatred failed to destroy and everything love failed to save.
“Stay because you choose me,” I say, placing the lighter in her palm. “Fight me every day if you must. But I will never again pretend losing you did not destroy me.”