22. Liath
LIATH
Iwoke to silence.
The sheets beneath me were clean, the fabric cool against my calves, a faint scent of soap lingering on my skin.
For a few seconds I lay still, straining for music, muscles tense and expectant.
Was it a violin I was waiting for, passionate and restless, or something lower, deeper, a rhythmic cello that vibrated under my ribs?
I couldn’t tell what I was waiting for exactly, only that the absence of it left a hollow in my chest.
The buzzing inside me was also gone. My skull felt lighter, the frantic pressure behind my eyes had dissipated.
Relief existed.
A low ache pulsed between my thighs, slow and insistent, muscle memory surfacing before I could shove it back down, and my thighs pressed together without thinking.
The mud. The rain touching me with icy fingertips. The cold ground as my bed. My pussy so swollen and needy, my fingers barely enough to satisfy me.
I’d wanted him. Wanted his muscled body pressing me into the dirt. His strong hands around my throat. His thick cock punishing me.
But he hadn’t. Not even when I’d begged.
He had just watched. He’d touched himself, the feeling echoing in my body like a phantom cock. He’d stood there in the rain and let me come apart in front of him, thunder swallowing my cry.
That awareness burned hotter than the act itself.
He could have fucked me right there in the reeds, but he didn’t.
He could have taken advantage.
He did not.
That didn’t make him safe. It made him controlled. He chose what he took. He chose what he withheld.
For some reason, that kind of restraint was more frightening than impulse ever could be.
His restraint was clear even in the bathroom as he washed me, turning me and moving me like something breakable. Like something… valuable.
The memory made heat crawl up my neck even now.
I had been naked under the dim bathroom light, smears of dark mud drying on my skin, streaked down my thighs, tangled in my hair. I had stood there shaking while he rinsed it away, the spray hissing against tile.
He had touched me everywhere he needed to.
Not like a man taking advantage.
Like a man trying very hard not to.
His hands had been careful, almost painfully so, guiding my shoulders, turning my hips, lifting my chin when muddy water ran down my throat. Each movement had been steady, controlled.
And the worst part was that I had let him.
I had stood there and let him wash the mud from the hollow of my collarbone, from between my breasts, from the inside of my thighs.
I had stood there and felt the heat of him the entire time.
He had kept his eyes up, his jaw tight, his focus precise, his hands steady as he brushed them over my naked body.
Only once had he failed. His gaze had dipped, burning across my body, my nipples tightening.
I thought he’d give in then. Thought he’d push me against the wall, wrap my thighs around his waist, and fuck me until I screamed. Or perhaps that was my stupid wishful thinking.
Instead, he’d lifted his eyes again. Had kept his jaw locked tight, his breathing measured, as if every second in that room was a test of control he refused to fail.
That was worse.
Because it meant the line between what he wanted and what he allowed himself to do was something he chose to hold.
Even when he’d pulled the clean dress down over my head and met my gaze. We’d been so close.
For a moment he looked at me without his clinical mask on and his stern features softened. It had taken my breath away.
Something had passed over his face. A flash of a real, raw yearning. And I could not stop replaying it in my mind.
I thought he’d kiss me.
But he didn’t. He’d pulled away with a restraint that felt deliberate and strained at the same time.
Perhaps that’s why I’d reached for him.
I could still feel the warmth of his skin beneath my palm as I held his wrist, his pulse there, steady and strong under my fingers.
“Stay.”
My plea had been quieter. Softer. More intimate than when I had begged for him in the mud.
That was the part that made my face burn against the pillow. That was the part that tightened my chest in embarrassment.
I had begged him in the mud because my body had been desperate and raw and unraveling.
That humiliation I could almost excuse.
But that quiet word in my bedroom had been something else entirely.
Something so much more intimate.
And the realization of that made my stomach twist in regret.
I stared at the ceiling, listening to the hollow quiet of the room.
How would he react to me now? The next time I sat across from him in that room, a shaded lamp humming nearby, how would he explain it?
I could almost imagine his voice, clinical and detached in that infuriating way of his.
“You experienced a stress-induced episode. That is all.”
If he said that, I might actually claw his face.
Or he might ignore it entirely. Pretend that it never happened.
For some stupid reason, that was worse.
Because pretending none of it had happened would mean the moments in my bedroom meant nothing.
The careful way he had washed the mud from my skin.
The way his hands had trembled once, just once, when his fingers brushed the hollow of my neck.
The look on his face when I said stay.
If he dismissed all of that like it was just another clinical observation, another symptom to write neatly into a file, I wasn’t sure which part of me it would humiliate more.
The girl who had lost control in the storm.
Or the one who had wanted him to stay.
I pulled the socks out of my hair and loose curls spilled out over my shoulders.
I picked up Bláthnaid’s contraband lip gloss, sitting heavy in my palm. I swiped it on, blinked, and stared at my face in the cracked mirror longer than necessary.
It was nothing. Just a stupid thing. A test, really. If he looked at me differently, then I’d know what the night of the storm meant. If his gaze paused on my lips, then I would have proof.
Proof that my body was not the only traitor in the room.
My fingers shook as I crushed the black violets I’d stolen from the gardens, Fiona’s trick, a poor substitute for perfume. Their sharp yet sweet scent filled the air as I rubbed them against my neck.
Okay, fine. I wanted a reaction.
I wanted him to look at me and lose that careful control for a second, so I could stop feeling like the last week had only happened inside my own head.
The corridor to his therapy room narrowed around me as I walked, my shoes clattering too loud on the floor. The air was too cold, the light too flat, my pulse loud enough to drum against my ears.
I knocked on his door.
There was no answer.
I frowned and knocked again, harder this time.
Still nothing.
The door handle yielded under my hand and I pushed the door open, peering through.
“Doctor?”
But there was no Deargán.
The chair was pushed in all the way. The desk was stripped bare. His kettle, teapot, and cups, usually stacked neatly on his sideboard, were gone. No files, no half-finished notes, no pen left askew. No heavy medical textbook laid open for reference.
Even his masculine scent that usually threaded the room had thinned out to almost nothing. I couldn’t even hear the low, steady cello notes that clung to the air even after he left the room.
It didn’t look like he’d stepped out. It looked like he’d never existed.
My stomach dropped.
I backed out and pulled the door shut carefully, swallowing against the sting in my throat that had no right to be there.
A nurse stood nearby with a clipboard, ticking boxes. Helena. The one with the tea tray in the library. My feet carried me to her before I could talk myself out of it.
“Excuse me,” I said, my voice coming out careful and polite. Just like Rua. “Where is Dea— Doctor Deargán?”
Her eyes did not lift from her clipboard. “Unavailable.”
The word hit like a slap.
I blinked at her for a few moments. “When will he be back?”
She finally looked up at me. Her gaze went straight to my lips, too glossy. Then to the loose curls around my face.
“That isn’t information you’re entitled to,” she said, disdain tightening her features.
Heat climbed up my neck in a rush, hot and prickling, because she had seen it. The effort. The want. The ridiculous, pathetic attempt to be noticed.
I nodded as if I had not been cut open. I turned away like her answer didn’t matter.
In the dining hall, my eyes searched for him before I even realized I was doing it. I told myself I was scanning the room for O’Shea. I told myself I was keeping an eye out for staff.
But my gaze landed on his usual table.
His chair was empty.
My lungs tightened on my inhale, as if the air had caught in my ribs.
Bláthnaid looked up and grinned, pointing at me with her fork. “Shite, that lip gloss looks deadly on you. Keep it. You’re welcome.”
Fiona leaned in, eyes glittering with mischief. “Which of the orderlies are you wearing it for?”
Bláthnaid squealed, far too loud for a room full of listening ears. “Or maybe it’s one of the doctors. Go on, Ru, you can tell us.”
A laugh burst out of me, sharp and wrong, like it had been forced through clenched teeth as blood heated my cheeks. “Don’t be thick.”
Dervla said nothing. She just watched me. Then her gaze slid past me, over my shoulder, and landed on Deargán’s empty chair. It lingered there, a slight frown pressing at her dark brows.
It unsettled me more than their teasing.
The next day, I told myself I was just passing by, just happened to take the long way to art therapy class.
His door was still shut.
The day after, I stopped outside it.
I stood there a full minute, staring at the ornate brass handle as if it might open by itself. As if he might step out and lift an eyebrow at me, calm and cruel and unbothered. “Good morning, Rua.” As if nothing had happened.
But the handle remained still. And the room behind that door stayed silent.
The day after, I found myself counting the hours.
Session time came and I told myself I wouldn’t check. It was beneath me. I had pride.
My feet carried me there anyway.
His door remained closed. Silent.
Fuck him. No word. No notice. No explanation. Like I was nothing. Like he hadn’t carried me out of the mud and the storm. Like he hadn’t washed my naked body and stayed with me while I slept.
Don’t be thick, Liath. Who the fuck did I think I was, expecting anything from him? Like I was more than just a job? Like I actually meant something to him?
Fucking pathetic.
I should have felt safe. Free. Relieved that I didn’t have to suffer through his cold observations and slicing judgments anymore.
Instead, I felt stupidly untethered. Unmoored. My body was practically vibrating with a phantom withdrawal I didn’t want to admit I was suffering from.
A darker thought slid in under the rest, quiet as a blade. What if he had decided I was no longer interesting? What if the storm last week had been a test and I had failed it?
That fear sat in my gut and rotted there, sour and relentless.
It didn’t matter what I told myself. It didn’t matter that I hated him. That I was better off without him. My body still yearned. Still ached.
The days stretched quieter, everything growing gray and hollowed.
I found myself yearning for the way reality split apart with a sharp, sliding crack inside my skull, tracing my fingers on the wallpaper and wishing they were dark wood panels.
I walked back along the lake, eyes on the opposite edge, looking for ghosts. I found the faint, muddy depression in the reeds where Deargán’s weight had pinned me to the earth, and I stood there with the wind cutting through my dress until my teeth ached.
I wrapped my hand around my own wrist and squeezed hard, trying to summon the memory of Deargán’s grip. That immovable pin. That authority that my body answered to before my mind could argue.
But there was no buzzing in my skull, no crescendo of violins. No dangerous boys with shadowed eyes.
I even touched myself that night in the shower, imagining his eyes on me, my fingers slow at first, then faster when nothing sparked.
I came, slumping against the tiles, but it felt wooden. Hollow.
My body stayed silent. No buzzing. No heightened senses. No fractured realities. No relief.
Just me and my skin and the empty space where something had been.
The quiet should have been a blessing. Instead, it unnerved me.
Because it meant my body no longer belonged to me. It belonged to the monster who had locked me in this hell, and without him, I couldn’t even find my own pleasure.