5. Ciara
CIARA
I’m still aching as I make my way through the quiet estate toward Cillian’s private wing.
His voice from earlier won’t stop looping in my head, and every time it does, heat drags down my spine and goosebumps rise over my skin.
Tonight isn’t over, my sweet Irish Cream.
That one sentence has had my whole body humming for the better part of an hour.
Every step closer to his door feels less like a choice and more like something I stopped being able to resist a long time ago.
It hits me around the second staircase how reckless this is.
I’m creeping through a house at midnight, heart pounding, underwear soaked, on my way to the one place I have no business going.
To my stepbrother’s room. The word should stop me cold.
It doesn’t. If anything, it makes the ache worse, that forbidden edge no logical part of me can talk my body out of wanting.
I almost laugh at myself in the dark hallway.
Three weeks ago I planned every hour of my day and measured every word before I spoke, terrified of losing control.
Now I’m standing outside a man’s door at midnight, chest still full and heavy, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this awake.
Boston me would be horrified. Boston me also never felt anything like this in her whole careful life, and I’m done pretending I’d trade tonight for that version of safe.
I raise my hand to knock. The door opens before my knuckles even land.
He’s outwardly calm, the first thing I notice, a deliberate contrast to the man who had me shaking against the stone balustrade an hour ago.
Coat gone, shirt half undone and clinging in damp patches, his collar open enough to show a sheen of sweat along his throat, like he’s been fighting to hold still since the moment we got interrupted.
Nothing rushed about the way he leans against the doorframe, but the tight set of his shoulders and the line of his mouth give him away.
Whatever calm he’s wearing on the outside, something hungrier is running underneath it.
He watches me like he’s already decided I’m not leaving this room tonight.
“You came,” he says, low, like he was not entirely sure I would.
“Don’t sound so surprised.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You asked me to.”
“I did.” The corner of his mouth curves, not quite a smile. Something sharper sits underneath it. “Still. There’s a version of you in my head tonight where you talk yourself out of this. So I half expected it.”
“I almost did.” I step past him into the room. Cedar and something warmer hit me as soon as I’m close enough to catch it. “Twice, actually.”
“What changed your mind?”
I turn to face him and let the question sit for a second instead of dodging it. “I guess something inside me is screaming to go for what it wants.”
His expression softens, unguarded, like he’s letting me see past the control for the first time. He shuts the door without ever looking away from me.
I’ve never been in his room before. It’s plainer than I thought it would be for someone with his family’s money.
No framed photos. No personal clutter. Just a bed, a desk stacked with papers I don’t let myself read, and a window looking out over the same dark water as mine.
It looks like a room someone sleeps in, not a room someone lives in.
Something about that makes my chest ache, and it has nothing to do with the dress or the way my body’s still humming.
He stays by the door, watching me take it in. The quiet stretches. My pulse is loud in my ears. Every second makes the air between us feel tighter, like even the room is waiting to see what I’ll do next.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.” A ghost of a smile, gone almost as fast as it appears. “It’s become a habit with you, hasn’t it?”
He’s not wrong. I don’t argue.
He reaches for me anyway. His hands settle on my waist first, steady and careful, nothing like the desperate grip from the balcony. When he tugs the strap of my dress down over one shoulder, I let him. My pulse is so loud I can feel it in my throat.
I watch his face the whole time, looking for any flicker of hesitation, any sign the hunger from earlier has cooled into something colder.
There isn’t any. If anything his hands go slower, deliberate, like he’s proving something to both of us by taking his time, like he knows exactly what this costs me and he’s choosing to be gentle with it.
He picks up right where we left off. His mouth finds my breast again, slower this time, so focused it makes my knees go weak.
I thread my fingers through his hair and let my head fall back.
Whatever restraint I had left gives out completely.
This isn’t rushed. This isn’t stolen in some dark corner with guests twenty feet away.
This is him, unhurried and completely locked on me, drinking like there’s nowhere else on earth he’d rather be, like the rest of the world can burn as long as he gets to stay right here.
I feel it building the same way it always does now, warm and insistent, except tonight something else rises right alongside it, something bigger than relief.
Every version of myself that’s lived in this house feels like it’s standing in this room with me: the girl who was terrified on the driveway, the one hiding pads in a locked suitcase, the one who cried in the dark because she thought no one would ever want to stay once they saw all of her.
None of them feel like something I have to apologize for anymore.
“Cillian.” My voice is already wrecked. “I want you.”
He goes still against me. “You have me.”
“No.” I pull back just enough to make him look at me, really look. “I want all of you. Tonight. I want your cock inside me. I want you to own me.”
Something in his face shifts hard. The control he’s kept wrapped around himself all night, all week, cracks straight down the middle. For one second I see exactly what it costs him to hear that, how badly he’s been holding himself back from asking for the same thing.
“Ciara.” My name sounds like a warning and a prayer at the same time. “Once I do this, I don’t think I can undo it.”
“I don’t want you to undo it.” I press my palm flat against his chest and feel his heart slamming under my hand. “I’ve never wanted anything more than I want this. Than I want you.”
“You know what this makes us.” He says it quietly, not as a threat, just as a fact that needs to be spoken out loud before we go any further. “There’s no version of tonight where we go back to being just stepsiblings after.”
“I know exactly what this makes us.” My voice doesn’t shake, even though everything else about me does. “I stopped caring about that word somewhere around the boathouse. Maybe earlier.”
That’s all it takes.
He kisses me hard, both hands sliding up into my hair, and I feel every last thread of his restraint give out at once.
He walks me backward toward the bed, mouth never leaving mine, and when the back of my knees hit the mattress he lifts me easily, laying me down like I’m something precious instead of something breakable.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says, voice rough, hovering over me. “Any point. I mean that.”
“I won’t want you to stop.”
He undresses me slowly, like he’s learning every inch of me by heart.
The dress slips down my body, and when my breasts spill free, already heavy and aching, his eyes go dark.
I do the same to him, fingers shaking a little as I work the last buttons of his shirt free and push it off his shoulders.
When we’re finally skin to skin, nothing left between us, I feel more exposed than I’ve ever felt in my life, and for once it doesn’t scare me.
Not with him looking at me the way he’s looking at me right now.
“Fuck,” he breathes, eyes dragging slowly over every inch of me. “You’re so breathtaking. Every curve, every inch. Completely perfect.”
He runs his palm slowly down the length of me, from my collarbone to my hip, like he’s committing the whole shape of me to memory.
I shiver, not from the cold but from how completely he seems to want every part of what I am.
No flinching at the fullness of my breasts.
No hesitation when his hand finds the soft curve of my stomach.
He touches me like I’m worth taking his time over, and after weeks of avoiding mirrors and cinching myself into clothes two sizes too small, something in me finally lets go.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, voice husky. “The most delicious dessert I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve barely started.”
His mouth finds my breast again before I can answer.
This time there’s no rush, no stolen desperation.
He seals his lips around my nipple and sucks deep, drawing milk in long, steady pulls that make my back arch off the bed.
One hand works the other breast, kneading and squeezing until cream beads at the tip and spills over his fingers.
He licks it away without missing a beat, then switches sides, drinking like he has all night and nowhere else he’d rather be.
“Cillian—”
“Shh.” He lifts his head just enough to speak against my wet skin, lips still brushing the swollen tip. “Let me have this. You’re so fucking full for me. I could live on you.”
He goes back to work, slower, more precise, tongue circling, sucking, milking me in a rhythm that has my thighs pressing together and my breath coming in short, broken gasps.
Every pull sends another pulse of heat straight between my legs until I’m soaked and aching, hips shifting restlessly against the sheets.
“Please,” I whisper, fingers tightening in his hair.
He raises his head, mouth glistening, eyes almost black. “Please what?”
“I need more. I need you.”
“You have me.” His hand slides down between my thighs, two fingers gliding through the wetness there, slow and intentional. “But I’m not done tasting you yet.”