Iris
Wanting her made him unstoppable. Loving her made him reckless.
The bartender at the dive bar off Twelfth knows us.
Joe knows not to ask questions, knows to pour heavily, and knows that when we show up after a race, we’re not here for conversation.
The bar is exactly what it sounds like—sticky floors, neon beer signs humming on the walls, a jukebox in the corner playing something old and forgotten.
The crowd is thin tonight. A few regulars hunched over their drinks.
A couple in the corner booth pretending they’re not fighting.
A group of college kids slumming it, laughing too loud, trying to prove something.
Ronan orders a drink he won’t touch.
I lean against the bar and try to remember how to breathe normally.
The adrenaline is still there, refusing to dissipate. My hands shake when I reach for my beer. I hide it by wrapping both palms around the bottle, the condensation cold and grounding against my skin.
Ronan’s voice cuts through the noise.
“You hate this one.”
I snap my gaze to him. He’s watching me with that surgical focus—the one that flays me open, the one that sees every wire and circuit of my heart like I’m just another engine on his lift.
“I hate watching you race it,” I say, throat tight. “That curve has blood memory.”
He moves into my space.
Too close for witnesses.
“You at the finish line,” he says, each word a precision strike, “makes me untouchable.”
I meet his eyes, and find them burning.
“Ronan.”
His voice drops, “I will always come back to you, Iris. Even if I have to outrun death to do it.”
The air between us tightens—charged, restrained, dangerous. His presence presses in just as the Overtown streets did earlier.
Someone laughs too loudly behind us. A chair scrapes the floor. The jukebox switches songs—something with a heavy bass line that thrums through the air.
Ronan leans in, just enough that his mouth brushes my ear.
“Back room,” he murmurs. “Now.”
My pulse stutters.
I should say no. Should walk away. Should remember that we have rules, that we keep this contained, that doing this here—in a bar full of people, with laughter leaking through the walls and witnesses a door away—is reckless even by our standards.
I nod.
He moves first, peeling away from the bar with that casual confidence that makes it look like he’s just heading to the bathroom. No one watches him go. No one cares.
I wait thirty seconds.
Count them.
Then follow.
The back room is exactly what I expected—cramped and grimy, smelling of stale beer and cleaning chemicals and something vaguely organic that I don’t want to identify.
Boxes stacked against one wall. A mop bucket in the corner.
A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows that make everything look sordid.
Ronan is waiting when I slip inside and lock the door behind me.
The lock is flimsy. It wouldn’t stop anyone determined. But it’s enough. Enough to give us the illusion of privacy.
“We shouldn’t,” I say, but I’m already moving toward him.
“I know,” he replies, and his hands are already on me.
He backs me against the door, palms flat on either side of my head, caging me in. The wood is rough against my spine. The jukebox thrums through the walls—bass and drums and a woman’s voice singing about heartbreak.
Laughter erupts somewhere in the bar.
It almost sounds like they’re standing right outside.
“Someone could hear,” I breathe.
“Then be quiet,” he says, and kisses me.
His mouth crashes against mine with a violence that makes me gasp—demanding, ravenous.
I bite his lower lip until I taste the blood, my fingers clawing into his hair, twisting until he groans against my tongue.
I arch my body into his, my skin burning everywhere we touch, and still I pull him harder against me, as if I could break through bone and flesh and crawl inside him where the heat is even more unbearable.
His hands drop to my waist, fingers digging into my skin. I arch into him, needing the pressure, needing the pain, needing something to ground me before I fly apart.
“Ronan,” I gasp against his mouth.
He makes a low sound in his throat, and his hands move to my jeans, popping the button and dragging down the zipper. The sound is obscenely loud in the small space, even with the music thumping outside.
Someone walks past the door.
My senses are heightened. I can hear every footstep, voices, and their laughter.
We both freeze.
My heart hammers so hard I’m sure they can hear it through the wood. Ronan’s breath is hot against my neck, his body tense, coiled, ready to move if the door handle turns.
It doesn’t.
The footsteps fade.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“Ignore it,” he murmurs, and shoves my jeans down my hips.
There’s no finesse to this. No romance. Just need, recklessness, and the particular thrill that comes from doing something you know you shouldn’t.
I tear at his belt, he helps—one hand braced against the door, the other yanking his jeans down just enough to free his cock, thick and straining. We don’t have time to undress. Don’t have time for anything but this.
He lifts me with a growl.
I wrap my legs around his waist, back slammed against the door, as he drives into me in one merciless thrust that splits me open. The ruthless force makes me bite down on his shoulder hard enough to break skin.
The door bangs against the frame.
Someone in the bar shouts something—a joke, maybe, or a toast. More laughter. The jukebox keeps playing, oblivious, relentless.
Ronan doesn’t move.
Just holds me there, impaled, stretching me to my limit, forehead pressed to mine, his breath hot and ragged against my lips.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, voice guttural with restraint.
“Fuck me harder,” I reply.
The door crashes with each brutal thrust, hinges screaming, and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from howling. It’s not enough. Broken sounds escape anyway—desperate moans and whimpers and his name fractured into pleas that don’t make sense.
His hand slides between us, finds my slick, swollen clit, and I nearly convulse.
“Quiet,” he commands, voice wrecked, and I bite down on my palm hard enough to draw blood.
The pleasure builds violently, too intense, sharpened by fear and the obscene sound of our bodies colliding and the knowledge that anyone could walk by, could hear us fucking like animals.
That’s what makes it filthy.
That’s what makes it transcendent.
“Iris,” he groans, and I feel him throbbing inside me, feel the way his rhythm falters, the way his fingers bruise my hips.
“Fill me,” I gasp. “I need—”
My orgasm detonates like a bomb.
I bury my face in his neck and convulse around him, every muscle seizing, pleasure tearing through me in violent waves that leave me sobbing. Ronan follows seconds later, hips slamming into me one final time, a primal sound ripped from his throat as he empties himself deep inside me.
We stay like that for a moment.
Breathing hard. Hearts pounding. Bodies still locked together.
The jukebox switches songs.
Reality bleeds back in.
Ronan lowers me carefully, and I have to grip his shoulders to keep my legs from giving out. He steps back, already tucking himself away, movements efficient and practiced.
I pull my jeans up with shaking hands.
Neither of us speaks.
My hands shake against the lock. I check both ways before slipping into the empty hallway.
Thirty seconds tick by.
Ronan emerges.
Back at the bar, I wrap my fingers around lukewarm beer, the carbonation long dead. I swallow it anyway. Something to occupy my trembling hands. Something to justify the heat climbing my neck and my rabbit-quick pulse.
Ronan materializes beside me a minute later, claiming his stool just as casually, as if we’d never left.
Joe slides a fresh whiskey neat in front of him.
Not a single glance our way.
Our secret stays ours.
And that’s enough to make my skin feel too tight, my breath comes too fast, my heart beats out a rhythm that feels like a warning.
This is what we’ve always been.
Two people using violence as foreplay and calling it something else.
Two people tempting fate and pretending we’re in control.
Two people racing toward an ending we both see coming and refuse to brake for.
“I need air,” I mutter, sliding off the stool. Crumpled bills scatter from my fingers to the sticky bar top as I turn away.
Outside, the city hums—neon bleeding into pavement, sirens wailing in the distance, the night thick with humidity and exhaust and the particular electricity that follows a storm.
Another race down.
Another name erased.
And the noose?
It tightens.
Just like it’s supposed to.