10. Keira
KEIRA
T wenty-four hours later, I sit in the east library once again, and my mind is still a storm.
Ruairí is on my side, or so he'd have me believe.
Then why is he watching me like I might detonate at any point?
And curiouser, why won't he involve me in the business of finding out what my family name is being used to achieve?
Tonight, the rain is nothing but a rumor against the window, the drops more suggestion than sound.
The guards are less visible now, replaced by an algorithm of motion sensors and silent pings that make me feel less like a prisoner and more like a specimen under glass.
I am in a dressing gown and nothing else.
I like the way it clings, the way it invites accidental glimpses.
I tell myself this is strategic, that even here, with no one to see, it pays to cultivate the illusion of vulnerability.
The book I'm reading is a history of Dublin's ports, written in the kind of bureaucratic English that can render even mutiny or smuggling as a matter of gentle correction.
The charts are beautiful—lines and dots and flourishes, a city reduced to tributaries and competing currents.
I run my finger along the Liffey and imagine tracing it in reverse, from the mouth of the sea back to the river's source, and then further, to wherever the first cut was made in the land and someone decided it was a harbor.
I do not hear the door open.
I do not hear anything at all, and so when I glance up from the page, Ruairí is already there, standing in the darkness just beyond the lamp's reach.
His hair is damp, and he has changed into a shirt I have never seen before, charcoal linen with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, the collar a little too sharp for comfort.
He carries no weapon, but his body is a weapon, the movement of his shoulders and the calculation of his stance communicating that this is not a social call.
He watches me for a long moment before speaking, and in that interval I pretend not to see him.
I let my finger hover above a notation on the map, a red X at the mouth of the Dodder, and trace a circle around it with my nail.
When he finally speaks, the sound is so low I feel it before I hear it.
"You've lasted longer than I expected."
I do not look up, but I close the book and let it rest in my lap.
"You say that as if it's an achievement."
He steps forward, slowly, as if approaching a creature that might spook.
He comes close enough for me to smell the echo of whiskey on his breath, the ghost of tobacco in his hair, and something else, metallic and clean, as if he has just come from a fight or a confession.
He crouches next to the armchair, so our faces are at the same level.
The lamp throws both our shadows up the wall in grotesque proportion.
He glances at the map, then at my hands, then at my mouth.
"You're avoiding me," he says, not a question .
"I'm keeping myself busy," I reply.
He grins, and it is not an expression of happiness so much as a flex of muscle.
He leans in so the book is between us, his hand resting on the open page.
His skin is hot, the pulse in his wrist visible even in the low light.
"Show me," he says.
I turn the book, so the map faces him.
My finger finds the port schedule for the year my father was born, the annotation in blue ink that marks the transition from coal to oil.
"Here," I say.
"They thought it was progress, but all it did was change the price of power."
He nods once.
His breath is warm on my neck.
He reads the schedule, lips moving in silence, and when he looks at me again, the distance between our faces has halved.
"History is written by the ones who win," he says, the cliché rendered strange by the context.
"But the future belongs to those who remember the small errors."
I laugh, and it comes out as a rasp.
"Is that why you keep me here?"
He does not answer.
Instead, he reaches past my ear and picks up a slip of paper from the side table.
It is a grocery receipt, left over from the last housekeeper to take inventory.
He turns it in his fingers, then tucks it into the book as a marker.
"I'm not keeping you," he says.
"You could leave anytime if you wanted to."
This is a lie, but it is delivered with such precision that I almost want to believe it.
I tilt my chin up, so our eyes are level.
"And go where? The city is carved up like a carcass. Even the air has been bought and sold."
He stands, and the sudden shift in elevation leaves me dizzy.
He sets the book on the table, the receipt protruding like a tongue, and circles behind the chair.
His hand finds my shoulder, rests there.
I do not flinch.
"You're not afraid," he says, more curious than impressed.
I turn my head, so his hand is at my throat, his thumb pressing gently against my pulse point.
"What's the point?"
His other hand finds the knot of the dressing gown and pulls it loose with a flick.
The fabric pools around my waist.
My body is cold, but I make no move to cover myself.
He traces a line from my jaw to my collarbone, slowly, as if testing the integrity of each bone.
He stops at the spot where a bruise has darkened to a deep, living violet.
He presses his thumb into it, not hard, but enough to remind me that it is his mark.
"Does it hurt?" he asks.
"Yes," I say.
"A little."
He bends forward, lips to the bruise, and kisses it with the carefulness of someone handling a lit fuse.
I feel the heat of his mouth, the roughness of stubble, and then the blunt scrape of his teeth.
He bites down, gentle, then not gentle at all.
I gasp, a sound that is more surprise than pain.
He pulls back, eyes searching my face for something I refuse to show.
I grab his wrist, twist it away from my throat, and pull him forward so our bodies collide.
There is nothing delicate about the way he pushes me back into the chair, nothing ambiguous about the intent.
He kneels between my legs, hands braced on the arms of the chair, and stares at me with a hunger that is not romantic but transactional.
I hook my ankles behind his back, and he laughs, low and approving.
He drags the gown off my shoulders, exposing the rest of me to the lamp and to him, and for a second, I see myself in the reflection of the window—head thrown back, mouth open, hair loose and wild, eyes burning with something that looks like victory.
He slides his hands up my thighs, spreading them apart, and buries his face between them.
The first touch is cold, the tip of his nose like ice, but his tongue is hot and sure.
He licks a slow stripe from the crease of my thigh to the center of me, and then circles, again and again, each orbit tighter and more insistent.
I arch into him, fingers gripping the coarse linen of his shirt, and when I come, it is with a violence that surprises us both.
My back slams into the chair, and I bite down on my own hand to keep from screaming.
He does not stop.
He licks and bites and sucks until I am raw, until I am shaking, and only then does he pull away.
His mouth is slick with me, and he wipes it with the back of his hand, smiling the way a cat smiles after the kill.
I pull him up by the shirtfront, yanking him level with my face.
I taste myself on his lips, the salt and the bitter edge of sweat and hunger.
I bite his lower lip, and he responds by cradling two fingers into me, the gesture as much a threat as a caress.
I ride his hand, grinding against him, and when I come again it is quieter, but no less total.
He lifts me from the chair, one arm around my waist, the other still inside me.
He walks us to the chaise lounge by the window, lays me down with a carelessness that feels like trust.
He unbuttons his own pants with his free hand, the zipper catching in his haste.
I reach up, help him, and slide the fabric down his hips.
He is hard and ready, the tip of him leaking.
I spread my legs and pull him into me in one shuddering movement.
His palm finds the window frame, the muscles in his forearm flexing with each thrust, and he begins to move, not with frantic desperation, but with a rhythm so sure, so perfectly measured, it feels like I am being played—like he knows exactly how I need it before I do.
The oil lamp flickers, painting us across the ceiling in long, tangled shadows, and I watch them stretch and ripple in time with the tension coiling low in my belly.
He adjusts his angle, shifts just slightly, and the next thrust brushes a place inside me that makes my vision scatter at the edges.
I gasp again, louder this time, and he hears it, feels the way I tighten around him, and growls low against my neck.
"That's it," he murmurs, his voice like smoke dragged across velvet.
"Right there. You feel that?"
I nod, or try to, but the movement breaks apart as he rolls his hips deeper, slower, then faster again, never frantic, always exacting.
One hand slides between us, his fingers finding that aching spot already slick and swollen, and the moment he touches me there, circling, pressing, my back bows and the first climax rushes through me with such force I cry out his name, my voice broken and bare.
He doesn't stop.
He rides me through it, his cock relentless, hand merciless, pushing me higher again before I can come down, and when the second wave hits, I nearly sob.
My whole body clamps around him, desperate and involuntary, and I feel him pulse harder inside me, feel the way his rhythm breaks, stutters, and then steadies again with sheer control.
"You don't get to stop yet," he says, words rough against my ear, and he shifts again, angling deeper, harder, each stroke hitting that place inside me with unerring precision until I am nothing but nerve endings and fire, until I am writhing beneath him with tears caught at the corners of my eyes .
The third climax builds slower, thicker, dragging through me like syrup, my thighs shaking around his hips, my hands scrambling for purchase in his hair, on his shoulders, anywhere I can hold him to me.
When it crests, it doesn't explode so much as shatter, my whole body going rigid before melting entirely, boneless and wet beneath him.
Only then does he let go, with a guttural sound torn from his chest, one final thrust that buries him deep, his whole body shuddering as he spills inside me.
He collapses over me, breathing hard, his mouth pressed to my shoulder, and we lie like that, our sweat mingling, our shadows gone soft on the walls as the oil burns low.
A while later, he stands up, drapes a blanket over me, and strides to the window.
For a while, I float on the surface of my own skin, nothing left but pulse and afterglow, the sweat cooling into salt.
The room is blue and black, all color leached by the dying lamp.
I stay on the chaise, legs tangled in the blanket.
Ruairí stands by the window, his reflection a double exposure against the world beyond.
He buttons his shirt with the slow precision of someone reassembling armor.
When he is dressed, he does not move to leave.
He rests his forehead on the glass and exhales a long ribbon of vapor.
Outside, the wind has picked up, and the branches of the old birch scratch at the pane with the persistence of small, angry birds.
I imagine him counting the seconds between gusts, recalibrating whatever internal clock governs his patience.
I sit up, comb my hair with my fingers, and pull the gown tight around my waist.
I am not cold, but I pretend to be.
It helps to have a cover story, even when the only witness is a man who has already mapped every inch of my nakedness .
"You know what I want," I say, my voice softer than I mean it to be.
He does not turn.
"Say it anyway."
"An hour each day. Alone. Outside the house."
I see the muscles in his jaw move, the faint twitch at the corner of his eye as he weighs the threat versus the concession.
"I want time in the stables," I continue.
"Unsupervised."
He finally turns.
The lamp is nearly out, and his face is a chiaroscuro of shadow and sharpness, the eyes black hollows, the mouth a narrow line.
"What will you do with it?" he asks.
I shrug, pulling the blanket higher on my thigh.
"Breathe. Think. Maybe plot your downfall if the mood strikes."
He almost smiles, but only with the left side of his mouth.
He crosses the room in two steps, stands close enough that I can see the ragged edge of his cuticle, the fine latticework of old scars on the back of his hand.
He reaches down, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and holds his fingers there for a moment, thumb pressed to the pulse point.
"You're dangerous," he says, voice low.
"So are you," I answer.
"That's what makes this interesting."
He releases me, steps back, and gives a single nod.
"One hour a day," he says, "unmonitored. If you're not back, I send the dogs."
I lean back into the chaise, tilt my head as if considering the terms.
"That's reasonable."
He heads for the door but pauses with his hand on the knob.
In the half-light, he looks less like a crime lord and more like a man trying to remember the last time he slept without fear.
"Don't make me regret it," he says.
I trace the spine of the port history with one finger, feeling the groove of the title embossed in gold.
"Regret," I say, "is for the weak."
The door closes with a soft click.