Iris Post-Race Reflection
Iris
Desire is louder when the engines finally go quiet.
Instead of going to the finish line, I send Otto instead—let him handle the crowd, the cleanup, the questions that don’t have answers. Let him be the face of Cupid’s Run tonight.
I can’t.
Instead, I drive.
South along the causeway, away from the lights and the sirens and the boats already scrambling toward the wreck. Away from the crowd dispersing like smoke, their appetite fed, their phones full of footage they’ll watch later.
I drive until the road ends.
Until there’s nothing left but salt and rust and the skeletons of beautiful boats that used to float.
The old dry dock.
It squats at the edge of the bay like a corpse—concrete cracked and slick with brine, metal rails rusted to lace, boat cradles hanging empty like gallows. The water slaps against the pilings below, rhythmic and relentless, eating away at the foundation one wave at a time.
This place is dying.
Just like everything else I touch.
I kill the engine and sit in the silence, hands still gripping the wheel, breath coming too fast.
Five men dead.
Five names I’ll never forget.
And for what?
Tradition. Legacy. Control.
My father’s ghost.
I close my eyes and try to breathe through the nausea rising in my throat.
A sound cuts through the silence—another engine, low and familiar, rolling to a stop beside me.
He always finds me.
I hear his door open. Hear his boots crunch on gravel and broken glass. Hear him stop just outside my window, waiting.
“Iris.”
His voice is rough. Raw. Still shaking from the high.
I know what he needs.
I know what we both need.
I open the door and step out into the wind.
It tears at my hair, my clothes, my skin. Salt stings my eyes. The bay roars below us, black and endless, swallowing everything, just like it swallowed Elias.
Ronan stands three feet away, hands loose at his sides, chest rising and falling too fast. His eyes are dark—pupils blown wide, adrenaline still coursing through him like voltage.
He looks at me like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
Like I’m the only thing that matters.
“He went into the water,” I say. My voice sounds hollow. Distant.
“I know.”
“They won’t find him for days.”
“I know.”
“His family—”
“Iris.” Ronan steps closer. Close enough that I can smell smoke and sweat on his skin. “You have to stop. You have to separate yourself from this. You are not evil because you were forced to uphold your father’s fucked up empire.”
“I can’t.” My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking. Part of me wants to run from him, part of me wants to collapse into him. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep—”
He closes the distance between us in two strides and pulls me against him. His body is hard, his embrace feels desperate, like he’s trying to fuse us together. His heartbeat hammers against my cheek, a countdown clock to something I can’t face.
I break.
The sob tears out of me before I can stop it, raw and ugly and too honest. I hate myself for this weakness, for needing him when I should be stronger.
I bury my face in his chest and let it come—all the fear, all the guilt, all the weight of five deaths and two more waiting and the knowledge that I could have stopped this three years ago.
But I chose this, even when I told myself I had no choice.
I’m the architect of my own destruction.
“I should never have taken this on. I should have died with his debt.” The words taste like poison and salvation all at once.
“They would have killed you, Otto, and anyone involved with your father.”
“Yeah, but then it would all be over.”
And maybe that would be better than this half-life of loving the man who kills for me, of wanting him even as his blood-soaked victories make me hate myself more with each race.
He doesn’t respond.
He just holds me, and I let him, even though I don’t deserve the comfort.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs finally. “I’ve got you.”
When the tears finally stop, I pull back just enough to look at him. His face is shadowed, all sharp angles and hard lines, but his eyes—
His eyes are soft.
Devastated.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“For what?”
“For this. For all of it. For—”
His mouth crashes against mine, teeth scraping my bottom lip until I taste copper.
A collision of need and terror and something feral that burns between us like gasoline.
His hands twist in my hair, yanking my head back until my throat is exposed and vulnerable.
The pain blooms sharp and sweet, a counterpoint to the thundering of my heart against my ribs.
He takes control with the same precision he takes corners at 140, and my body surrenders before my mind can catch up.
I kiss him back like I’m drowning.
This is our ritual after death.
The aftermath of adrenaline and survival.
The only salvation we’ve found in the wreckage of what we’ve become.
“Not here.”
“Where?”
I glance toward the dry dock—the rusted cradles, the cracked concrete, the shadows thick enough to hide in.
“There.”
Ronan follows my gaze, then looks back at me. Something flickers in his eyes—desire, hunger, the same reckless need that’s eating me alive.
He takes my hand and leads me toward the nearest boat cradle—a massive steel frame that once held something beautiful, now empty and corroding. The concrete beneath it is slick with salt and algae, treacherous in the dark.
I don’t care.
Ronan backs me against one of the support beams, hands bracketing my face, eyes searching mine.
His mouth crashes into mine again, harder this time. His hands slide down my sides, gripping my hips, pulling me flush against him. I can feel his hard length pressing against my thigh, a rough reminder of how much he needs this, how much we both need to forget.
Even if it’s just for a little while.
My hands shake so violently that I can’t unfasten his belt buckle.
In one fierce, fluid motion, he tears it free—and suddenly he’s lifting me as though I weigh nothing, slamming my back into the cold steel beam.
The metal’s edge bites into my spine. The wind claws at us, tearing at our clothes and skin. Beneath us, the bay roars like a beast.
“Iris,” he breathes into my neck, voice ragged with need. “Tell me to stop.”
I press my palms flat against the beam. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
He groans, and his fingers fly at my jeans, popping the button, dragging the zipper down. My boots hit the deck with a thunk. I help him peel the denim free until I’m naked from the waist down.
Vulnerable. Exposed.
Exactly where I want to be.
He falls to his knees, and my pulse shatters. This man—who just killed for me, this man who is undefeated, relentless—bows before me. My breath catches, my chest splits open.
“Ronan—”
“Let me,” he rasps, hands already gliding up my thighs, prying them apart. “Let me take care of you.”
I can’t find my voice. I nod, my heart hammering in my ears.
His mouth closes over my pussy. The first brush of his tongue against my clit has me gasping. The second—moaning. By the third, I’m clutching his hair, my head thrown back, completely undone.
“Yes, please, Ronan. I need more.” I cry out, grinding my hips against his rough mouth, chasing relief from the ache pulsing between my thighs.
He looks up at me, eyes smiling, as he continues circling my clit. He slides two fingers inside of me, curling them forward until I am screaming.
He worships me inch by excruciating inch, lips and tongue mapping every nerve, every shudder. The wind devours my cries; the river’s fury drowns them. No one is here. No one can hear us.
Just as I feel my body about to fall off the edge, he pulls back. I whimper at the loss.
“Not yet,” he growls, rising. His eyes are dark flames, his mouth wet with me. “Not until I’m inside you.”
“Then hurry,” I whisper.
He spins me around and presses me hard against the beam. His grip in my hair is brutal. He arches me back until my stomach muscles burn. And then he drives in.
God.
The first thrust steals my breath. He fills me to the brim, stretching me deeper, staking his claim beyond flesh.
“You’re so fucking tight, Iris. Stretch for me, baby.”
His thrusts are slow and gentle at first, then cruelly harder, faster, and more desperate.
I dig my nails into the metal. It groans and shakes. Rust flakes drift down like black snow. The whole structure quakes under our assault—unstable, on the brink of collapse, just like us.
“Look at me,” he demands.
I tilt my head back. His eyes blaze, pupils blown, and his face twisted in a storm of pain and hunger—and something that could almost be love, if either of us dared name it.
“Say my name,” he snarls, his hands digging into my hips.
“Ronan,” I pant, each thrust sending sparks racing behind my eyelids.
“Again.”
“Ronan!”
He slams into me harder, hammering that spot that makes my vision white-hot.
“Louder.”
“RONAN!”
The world shatters. I’m suspended in a wave of bliss so violent it burns deep inside my stomach. My cries explode into the wind. He silences me with his mouth, kissing me breathless, anchoring me as I dissolve.
His body convulses against mine seconds later, a guttural groan vibrating through my neck.
His grip bruises my sensitive skin. I feel every hard muscle tighten and his hips stutter.
He spills his release inside me, continuing his forceful thrusts as he moans my name over and over.
We cling to each other, trembling, unstable, and utterly wrecked.
For a long moment, we just breathe.
Ronan eases away from me, his hands steady on my hips until he’s sure I won’t collapse. Turning around to face the water, I almost do. The beam against my back is the only thing keeping me upright while my lungs remember how to work.
We don’t speak as clothes find skin again—denim rasping up my thighs, the clink of his belt buckle cutting through night air. The wind has settled to a whisper, but beneath us, the water still claws at the pilings.
Once we’re covered, I look out at the vast black mirror of the bay. The night swallows everything. Somewhere out there, Elias Moreno’s body is sinking. Somewhere out there, boats are searching. And soon, a phone will ring in some living room, about to shatter a family forever.
And I’m the one who made it happen.