6. Keira #2
One hand fists in my hair, pulling my head back so my spine curves like a bow, and the other is gripping my hip, bruising hard, anchoring me in place as he fucks me from behind like he's trying to fuck the past out of me, like he's trying to fill every place I've ever been empty.
"You're gonna come again," he says, voice dark and feral, hips snapping into me with a rhythm that borders on brutal, "and then I'm gonna fill you so deep you'll be leaking me for days."
His words make my pussy clench, my body trembling with another rising climax, and when he reaches down and rubs my clit with rough, perfect circles, I break.
The orgasm hits me like lightning—white-hot, blinding, my body locking up before it crashes down into wave after wave of pleasure, wrung out of me by the pressure of his cock, the movement of his hands, the sound of his voice in my ear telling me to give it to him, to take it, to let go.
And I do.
I come hard, body convulsing, throat hoarse from moaning, nails clawing at the sheets, and still he doesn't stop, not until he grunts, thrusts one final time, and spills inside me with a groan that sounds like surrender, like victory, like everything in between.
He stays there, buried deep, his chest against my back, our bodies shiny with sweat and breathless in the afterglow.
Hours later, I wake up to a split-second confusion, the usual displacement of someone who doesn't expect to survive the night and so refuses to get attached to the furniture.
I blink once, twice.
The ceiling is not the one I was raised under.
It is low and whitewashed, the beams above uneven and hand-hewn, the kind that creak when the weather changes and catch the morning light in small, golden slats.
A single lamp glows at the far end of the room, its linen shade tilted slightly, casting a warm amber hush over the stone walls and the quilt pulled halfway down my bare legs.
Everything is rife with the scent of him—oakmoss and something smoky, like old books and firewood and the last pour of a good bottle left breathing on the table.
The sheets beside me are still warm, the fabric rumpled where his body had been.
I reach toward that space, not to call him back, but to feel the residual heat of being held.
My muscles ache, but gently, like after a long swim or a slow stretch, a lingering fullness where he had been inside me, a flush across my skin that has not yet cooled.
Ruairí has left a soft robe at the foot of the bed, pale blue, embroidered at the cuff with the family crest.
I slip it on, the fabric cold against my skin, and knot it tightly at the waist.
I pad barefoot to the window and pull the curtain aside two inches.
The morning is gray and still.
The garden below is lit by the last breath of the sodium lamps, their orange glow catching on the ironwork and the gravel path.
There are three men on the grounds, two near the south gate and another farther off by the garages, their postures hunched, their faces tipped upward in that peculiar way people have when they are expecting something heavy to fall.
I watch them for a minute, until the cold from the window presses against my collarbone and reminds me to move.
I shower and dress in a long skirt and soft wool, and then I leave my room, taking the stairs.
Ruairí's office door is unlocked.
The room is quiet and low-lit, warmed only by two shaded lamps whose gold light settles in the corners and across the worn rug that muffles my footsteps.
The desk is heavy and old, carved from something dark and local, the wood smoothed at the edges by generations of use.
The shelves that line the walls are crowded but not careless, filled with books on legal history and trade records, the brittle politics of old Europe, and several slim volumes of poetry in Irish, the margins filled with faint pencil marks.
Near the far edge, where the spines lean slightly as if left undisturbed too long, sits a small row of storybooks, their covers faded but lovingly preserved, the kind of bindings you would not notice unless you were searching for comfort, the kind passed down quietly from a mother's lap or kept beside a child's bed through winters long enough to imagine magic.
I linger on them longer than I mean to.
Above the desk is a framed photograph.
His father stands beside a bishop, both men unsmiling, their hands clasped in a formality that suggests no affection.
The only signature belongs to the bishop, inked in slanted cursive across the bottom with the words May your strength always serve your people.
I move behind the desk.
On the left, a stack of ledgers sits beneath a web of colored tabs and ribbons, each page annotated in Ruairí's tight, slanted hand.
A closed laptop blinks faintly at the hinge.
The mug of pens beside it is worn and cluttered, several of the handles chewed to soft grooves.
The drawers are familiar in the way a man reveals himself without knowing.
Coins, old receipts, tangled cords.
A folder labeled RECEPTION holds a single guest list from that night.
My name is marked by a short note— Watches the staff, counts exits .
I smile, but only slightly.
In the bottom drawer I find an envelope, unmarked but thick.
I pull it free, close the drawer, and open the flap, fanning the contents across the desk with careful hands.
There are three groups of photographs.
The first shows my father at a café near Malahide, speaking with a man whose face is turned from the camera in every frame, though his hands are visible—broad and pale, the nails bitten down.
In the second group, clearer and taken closer, the same man is seen with an Italian broker I recognize, a man my father once refused in anger after a proposal that still makes me sick to remember.
The final photographs are more recent, taken from above at my engagement party.
The lens is not on me but on the doorway behind, where two men in council colors pass something between them.
In the margin, in Ruairí's writing, a single note reads, Twelve hours before the call.
At the bottom of the stack is a printed sheet, plain, marked only with a tracking number at the top and a paragraph of summary beneath.
It outlines an agreement between the Italians and the Crowleys, dated two weeks before my father's funeral.
In the corner, a scrawled annotation in another hand reads, Donnelly noncompliance equals escalation .
I read it twice, then once more, before gathering the pages, replacing them in the envelope, and returning it to the drawer, locking it as I found it.
The room is still warm, but I am not.
Back upstairs, I sit at the edge of the bed and let the robe fall open at the collar.
My skin is flushed.
I fold my hands in my lap and look at the carpet, waiting for something in me to settle .
When Ruairí enters, he says nothing at first.
He closes the door behind him, and I feel him watching me before he speaks.
Then, quietly, he says, "You were in my office."
I nod, albeit weakly.
He replicates the movement.
"Then I suppose you know. The deal was in place before I knew. I've been trying to track who pushed it through. Your father wasn't the only one left out of the room. But he may have been the first to understand the cost."
He crosses to the window, resting one hand on the frame.
"Whatever else you think of me," he says, "know that I plan to finish what he could not."