4. Cillian
CILLIAN
I’ve worn tuxedos to a dozen of these gatherings. It’s always felt like armor. Something I step into so I can say the right things to the right people and keep the surface calm. Tonight it feels like a cage.
The ballroom is packed with the usual faces.
Distillers from three counties. Investors that Declan has spent years cultivating.
Men who measure my worth in shipping contracts and inheritance timelines.
I know most of them by name. I know which ones need flattering and which ones need a firmer hand.
Any other night I’d move through this room on autopilot, charming and useful and completely untouched.
Then Ciara walks in on her mother’s arm and every carefully prepared line goes straight out of my head.
She’s wearing green. Deep emerald silk that moves with her, catching the light with every step.
Days have passed since she walked into my office and asked me to take care of her. Days of watching her across dinner tables and hallways, of keeping my hands to myself in public while my whole body remembers exactly how she tastes.
I know she chose that dress without a second thought for who might be watching.
I think about it anyway. I think about the marks I left on her skin last night, hidden now beneath that silk, and a fierce possessiveness coils low in my gut at the idea of every man here admiring her without knowing the taste of her sighs or the way she trembled for me.
She hasn’t slept. I can see it in the faint shadows under her eyes, the careful grace in her posture. I haven’t either. The nights we’ve shared since have only fed the fire she started in me.
When she enters the room, the air seems to still.
Head high, silk shimmering, dark hair brushing her shoulders, she draws every eye without effort.
Three men follow her across the floor, their stares blatant.
I stay exactly where I am, glass in hand, jaw tight, playing the part of a man who doesn’t care.
But I do. God, I do.
Declan’s already deep in conversation with two men I recognize from a shipping contract we closed last spring.
He waves me over without looking, expecting me to fall into place the way I always do.
I go. That’s the job. Show up, shake the right hands, laugh at the right moments, let my father believe every part of this family runs exactly the way he thinks it does.
“Cillian.” My father’s voice cuts through the room, low and pointed. “Come. There’s someone I want you to meet properly.”
I already know who’s standing next to him before I turn. Maura Kelly is exactly what I expected.
Poised and polished, she wears the usual expensive, structured piece I see on women in these circles.
It photographs well but feels plain and unremarkable to me.
She’s not unattractive. She’s simply not Ciara.
Standing this close to her, I feel nothing except the low grinding awareness of what my father wants this introduction to become.
“Cillian.” She offers her hand like we’re closing a deal. “Declan has told me so much about you.”
“All good things, I hope.” The words come out smooth and practiced, the version of me I’ve performed my whole life. Nothing in my expression betrays that my attention has already drifted back across the room.
“Mostly good.” Her mouth curves in a slight, playful smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Cillian. You look even better than the last time our paths crossed.”
My father lingers, watching us both. He talks business the way he always does when he wants me standing somewhere I don’t want to be.
Territory lines, shipping contracts, partnerships between old families.
I nod at the right moments. None of it actually reaches me.
This is the life Declan has always mapped out, and standing here in front of Maura, all I feel is the same tired weight of expectations I never chose.
Maura studies me once Declan’s attention drifts elsewhere. “You’re not really here tonight, are you?”
“I’m standing right in front of you.”
She gives a small, knowing smile. “You know that isn’t what I mean.”
I don’t answer that, and she doesn’t push, just smiles faintly and picks her champagne back up like she’s already moved on to something else entirely. “Kinsale’s smaller than people think,” she says instead. “Everyone ends up standing in the same rooms eventually.”
The words land deeper than they should. I think of the driveway, of mistaking Ciara for someone else entirely, and a quiet smile tugs at my mouth before I can hide it.
My father steers the conversation back to business, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder while he rattles off shipping numbers.
I give Maura the polite, empty smile the room expects and let my gaze drift across the space to Ciara.
She stands surrounded by a cluster of businessmen twice her age.
They watch her with open entitlement, their eyes tracing her as if she’s something they have every right to claim.
Tension coils tight in my chest. I don’t decide to move. My feet simply carry me there.
“Ciara.” Her name slips out rough at the edges. My hand settles on the small of her back before I can stop myself. “Gentlemen.”
The men straighten immediately, adjusting their posture now that the heir has staked his place beside her.
One of them, older with silver at the temples, gives me that calculated smile men use when they think they’re subtly measuring competition.
He fails. I keep my voice light and even, nothing that would draw attention.
My hand remains exactly where it is, thumb pressing deliberately into the warm curve of her spine.
Mine. The word hangs unspoken between us, heavy and clear to anyone truly watching.
She goes very still beside me, her body tense under my touch.
“Ciara was just telling us about Boston,” one of the men offers, still smiling in a way that tightens my jaw.
“Fascinating city.” My tone stays pleasant, controlled. My hand doesn’t leave her. “If you’ll excuse us, my father needs her for photographs.”
He doesn’t. The excuse falls from my lips without thought. Ciara’s eyes cut to mine, startled and half amused, before she lets me guide her away with a graceful goodbye that convinces everyone except her.
“Photographs,” she murmurs once we’re clear of them, her voice low.
“I panicked.” The words come out rougher than I intend. Seeing that man look at her as if she were something to be consumed had shattered what little composure I had left.
“You could have simply said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I could have.” I offer nothing more. She doesn’t press, but the small, knowing curve of her lips tells me she feels the weight of what just happened as clearly as I do.
We settle at the head table. Before the first course arrives, I find her hand under the tablecloth. She startles at the contact, glances sideways at me, but doesn’t pull away. That small surrender burns away the last of my patience.
The room continues its familiar hum around us. Money, land, alliances, and the endless calculations of men like my father. None of it reaches me. My entire focus has narrowed to the heat of her skin beneath my palm.
I trace slow, deliberate circles along her inner thigh, starting feather light.
She maintains her composure for the table, nodding at whatever Declan steers the conversation toward, but I feel the precise moment my touch drifts higher.
The sharp hitch in her breath. The way her knee presses instinctively toward mine beneath the heavy cloth.
“Behave,” I murmur against her ear, sliding my hand back down. “Or don’t. I’m not particular.”
“You’re impossible.” She stays exactly where she is.
When my hand moves to her waist a moment later and grips with enough pressure to feel like both warning and promise, she softens beside me.
A flush rises on her cheeks as she bites the inside of her cheek to keep her expression neutral for everyone else.
Declan discusses expansion plans and gestures across the room.
I insert the occasional comment that sounds engaged, my voice steady while my hand remains possessively in place.
Ciara’s water glass trembles when she lifts it.
She sets it down with careful control, stealing a moment to steady herself.
“You’re enjoying this,” she whispers, barely moving her lips.
“Immensely.”
“I could make a scene.”
“You won’t.” I know it with absolute certainty now. The catch in her breathing confirms she knows it too.
I watch her fight to hold herself together through the entire course of mindless small talk, flushed and shifting under my touch.
I catch the soft curve of her smile when she thinks no one’s watching, the genuine spark in her eyes that no one else seems to earn, and my chest tightens with something far deeper than desire.
Maura glances our way once from farther down the table, her expression unreadable, before looking away.
I push the moment from my mind. Tonight I want to think of nothing except the woman trembling beneath my hand.
The wife of one of the investors leans across the table to ask Ciara about Boston, about the move, and how she’s settling into the family.
Ciara answers every question with a warmth that feels completely genuine.
She laughs at exactly the right moments, her voice light and kind, and I sit there watching her with something fierce and tender twisting in my chest.
Someone proposes a toast. Glasses rise around the room.
Ciara lifts hers with a smile so perfectly composed that I’d almost believe it, if I hadn’t already seen the real her in private moments.
I raise my own glass and catch her eye over the rim.
For the briefest second her composure softens, and that small, secret smile touches her lips. Just for me.
By the time the toasts end, I’ve lost the last thread of patience I walked in with.
“I need air,” I tell her, standing. The look she gives me says she understands exactly what I mean.
She joins me on the balcony four minutes later.
The party noise fades behind the closed doors.
The Kinsale night wraps around us, cool and thick with salt.
Below, the cliffs fall away into darkness while the Atlantic roars unseen, loud and restless beneath everything.
She’s barely stepped outside before I pull her against the stone balustrade, my mouth claiming hers. Four hours of restraint snaps in half.
“Cillian.” Her voice breaks out breathless, half laughter and half surprise at how quickly we crossed from air to this. “Someone could see.”
“Let them.” Part of me wants exactly that.
I want to display her, to shout to every person inside that room how completely she belongs to me and how fiercely she wants me in return.
But she’s my stepsister, so I have to swallow it, some careful corner of my mind still tracking the doors and the noise level, calculating how much time we have.
Everything else in me that was still holding together comes apart the moment she presses into me, urgent and willing.
I pin her back against the cold stone of the balcony wall before either of us can talk ourselves out of it. My hands find the edge of her bodice and tug it down just enough. The sight of her hits me hard. Flushed. Swollen. Already leaking faintly from the pressure of the whole evening.
“You’ve been like this all night,” I say, voice low against her skin. “Aching for it and pretending you weren’t.”
“I hate you.” Her voice breaks on the last word.
I grip her ass hard and lift her clean off her feet, slamming her higher against the wall.
Her arms lock around my neck as I shove my face into her chest. I latch onto her right breast with zero gentleness and suck, deep, urgent, starving.
Warm, sweet milk floods my mouth instantly.
I groan low and savage, drinking her down in desperate pulls while the party continues just beyond the glass doors.
Any second. Any fucking second someone could walk out.
The danger only makes me suck harder. I stay on that one breast, refusing to switch, devouring her with single-minded greed.
My tongue works the swollen nipple as I pull rhythmically, greedily, milk spilling down my chin.
One hand grips her ass possessively, fingers digging into soft flesh, holding her suspended while my cock throbs painfully against her.
I grind up into her once, twice, letting her feel exactly what she does to me.
Her soft, panicked whimpers fill my ears.
She’s terrified of being heard, but she can’t stop the tiny, broken sounds escaping her.
I suck harder, faster, almost brutal now, milking her with my mouth while the sea crashes below and voices drift closer.
That’s what finally pushes her over. No fingers.
Just my mouth locked on her leaking tit, the threat of discovery, and my bruising grip on her ass.
She comes apart with a strangled, desperate sound she tries to bury against my shoulder.
Her whole body jerks violently in my arms, thighs shaking, a fresh flood of her milk breaking across my tongue as her orgasm rips through her.
She bites down hard on her own arm to stay quiet, eyes wide with terror and ecstasy, tears pricking the corners.
The moment her trembling starts to ease, I force myself to stop. No time for more.
I lower her quickly to her feet. My hands are rough with urgency as I yank her bodice back up, covering her soaked, swollen breast. Milk still glistens on her skin and on my lips. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, then drag my thumb across her bottom lip, letting her taste herself.
Then I cup her jaw and kiss her. Slow and deep. Nothing rushed or stolen about it this time. She melts into it, both hands fisting in my shirt, and for a few long seconds neither of us remembers there’s a party happening twenty feet away.
Footsteps sound on the stone just beyond the balcony door. We break apart at the same instant, both of us going still.
“Cillian.” My father’s assistant, apologetic, already retreating a step. “They need you for the speech.”
I rise slow, not rushing despite every instinct telling me to stay, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand while Ciara straightens her dress with shaking fingers. Both of us catch our breath in the cold air.
“I have to go,” I tell her, thumb brushing once over her kiss-swollen lips.
“Go.” Her voice comes out wrecked, soft, nothing like the composed daughter who walked in on her mother’s arm an hour ago.
I don’t move yet. I lean in instead, mouth close to her ear, voice dropping into something dark and certain. “Tonight isn’t over, my sweet Irish Cream.” I pull back just enough to catch her eyes. “Meet me at my room.”
I walk back inside and force the mask into place before anyone has the chance to notice how far it slipped.