33. Liath
LIATH
Deargán let the silence thicken until it felt on purpose. No one in our circle shifted. No one cleared their throat. We all waited for him.
He tugged the therapist’s chair across the floor, the loud scrape like a warning, and set it directly in front of me before sitting.
Too close. So close that my knees nearly brushed his.
He smoothed his jacket and laid out a notepad on his knee as if this were all civilized, as if he’d done nothing out of the ordinary.
“Thank you all for your cooperation,” he said.
His eyes found mine and stayed there long enough for heat to creep up my neck.
Fuck. This wasn’t group therapy anymore. It was punishment. It was about reminding me that he set the rules and teaching me what happened when I pushed back.
“Today,” he said evenly, “we’re discussing the gap between physiological response and conscious choice. When the body reacts before the mind consents.”
The words snapped through me. His gaze held mine as if I were the only example that mattered.
“Specifically,” he continued, “how arousal, fear, and shame can coexist inside the same nervous system.”
He pulled a pen from the end of his notepad and brushed the end of it against his lower lip without breaking eye contact.
A phantom brush skimmed across my own mouth. My tongue felt too big, too aware of itself. I swallowed and told myself it was nerves, that was all.
“This may feel uncomfortable,” he added. “But we’re speaking conceptually here.”
His gaze swept the circle, then paused on me.
“What happens,” he asked, “when physiological arousal activates in contradiction to conscious desire?”
Bláthnaid leaned forward, waving a hand toward his face. I barely registered her answer because he tapped the pen against his mouth once, then again.
Each tap landed on my lips. Then the sensation slid lower without permission, and a pulse answered between my thighs.
He stopped abruptly and the sensation cut off mid-rise, leaving me hollow and irritated, like he’d taken something that hadn’t belonged to him in the first place.
“Can the nervous system activate sexually while the conscious mind experiences fear?” he asked.
He slid the pen slowly along his lips, teeth grazing it this time, slower and deliberate.
This time my clit tingled. Heat traveled through my body, heavy and unwelcome.
I stared past him at the wall and fixed my eyes on a crack in the plaster so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
Fiona said something about wanting what you shouldn’t.
“Rua.”
The room turned toward me.
I was forced to look at him.
“Why would someone deny their own somatic reactions?” he asked, all innocent, as he tapped the pen on his lip.
This wasn’t just a phantom pulse, it was the undeniable, localized pressure of his fingertip circling my clit. My thighs pressed together before I could stop them.
Panic spiked, hot and bright. Oh God. My synesthesia was overreacting. Not now. Not here.
His eyes flicked to my thighs and lingered there a fraction too long, like he was filing it away for later.
Bastard. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“Rua?”
My mouth opened and no sound came out. The heat between my legs pulsed harder the longer he watched me struggle.
“She doesn’t have to answer that,” Dervla snapped.
Relief hit fast and sharp, then vanished just as quickly.
He tilted his head at her, the pen resting lightly against his lip, and the phantom pressure returned to my clit.
“Dervla,” he said softly, “is your reaction protection or projection?”
She stiffened in her chair. “What?”
“You attach yourself to women who need saving,” he continued calmly.
The pen pressed harder against his lip. My breath shortened in time with the movement.
“Is that because you couldn’t save your mother?”
Redness crept up her neck before she could hide it, a stricken look on her face like she was being strangled.
My jaw locked so hard it hurt. My nails dug crescents into my palms under the chair, and hatred climbed into my chest until I could taste its bitterness all over my tongue.
She folded in on herself, shoulders curling inward, her lashes growing wet, her pain mirroring in my own body. I hated that I could do nothing to stop it.
Fuck him. I hated him for slicing her open without raising his voice.
The whole time he played with that goddamn pen against his mouth, brushing it, tapping it, dragging it slowly along his lower lip. Every small movement echoed inside my traitorous body, as if it were my pussy against his mouth.
If anyone looked at me long enough, they would see it in the way I sat, in the way my knees pressed together, in the way my nipples pressed hard through my cotton dress.
They would know my body was betraying me for him, in front of them, in front of Dervla who had just defended me.
Fuck. I wanted to snatch that pen from his hand and snap it in half.
I hated him.
God, how I wanted him.
And the bastard knew it.
“Now,” he said, his gaze fixed on me, “Rua, let’s try this again. Why would someone deny their own somatic reactions?”
“Maybe,” I managed, my voice thin, “it’s because she—”
“She?” Deargán asked lightly.
Heat rushed to my face. “I mean, they know it’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” He lifted an eyebrow and paused just long enough to make the word sting. “Are you in the habit of applying morality to basic anatomy?”
I grit my teeth. “Are you in the habit of having none at all?”
A few others let out a gasp, but they sounded so distant they were muffled. Like he and I were the only two in the room.
Deargán’s stare didn’t flinch. “Morals? Or bodily reactions?”
I leaned forward. “Both.”
The top of Deargán’s lip lifted. Barely. Touché.
“Define repression,” he said, his tone clipped as he pointed the pen at me.
The sensation dropped from between my legs and I almost whimpered. I should have been relieved that he’d decided to stop torturing me.
Except I wasn’t. I was furious that he’d stopped, and even more furious at myself for wanting him to keep going.
“I’m not repressed,” I snapped, anger bleeding into something far less steady.
He smiled, slow and faint. “But perhaps there is something you’re repressing.”
He started playing with that fucking pen against his mouth again, watching me the entire time, measuring the way my knees trembled harder, the way my breathing grew shallow no matter how I tried to slow it.
“Repression is when your mind knows your body is making a sick mistake,” I said, words tripping over each other as I fought to ignore the feeling of his tongue between my legs, “so it shuts the feeling down to survive.”
“And you believe the mind knows better?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So then can we truly ever repress anything,” he asked the room, his voice turning almost thoughtful, “or is it only a matter of time until it erupts?”
Someone answered. The words floated somewhere to my left, but he didn’t look at the speaker.
He looked at me, like I was the only data that mattered.
He leaned forward and the space between us shrank until the air felt shared.
“The body responds,” he said. “Regardless of morality. Regardless of anger. Regardless of shame.”
This time he slid the pen between his teeth, slow and deliberate.
My pussy answered instantly like he’d pushed a finger inside me. A deep, relentless pulse built without mercy. My thighs pressed tighter. My spine stiffened against the chair.
God, I hated him. I hated myself more for reacting.
Each word landed low and deep inside me.
The pressure inside me climbed, sharper and higher, until my hands gripped the sides of the chair and my pulse roared in my ears.
My orgasm built too fast. Control slipped through my fingers.
Oh God. I was going to come. In front of everyone. They would see it.
He would see it.
I wouldn’t be able to hide what he was doing to me.
He kept eye contact the entire time.
He knew. He fucking knew. He was playing me like a puppet. And he was going to tip me right off the edge.
Oh God.
He pulled the pen from his lips.
The sensation dropped out from under me so suddenly it made my chest stutter and left a hollow ache in its place, deep and humiliating.
The silence that followed was deliberate.
He forced me to sit there vibrating with an unsatisfied ache, thighs sticky, and a thick, frustrated hatred twisting through my chest.
He stood as if nothing at all had happened. “Session over. You’re dismissed.”
Then his gaze settled on me again. “Except you.”
Chairs scraped back across the floor.
I grit my teeth and stood, feeling like a schoolgirl waiting for punishment.
Dervla grabbed my wrist, her hand trembling against my skin. “Do you want me to stay?” she whispered.
The color had drained from her face, leaving her skin a chalky gray, lips bloodless and pressed thin, stark against her black bangs.
Guilt twisted through me. I shook my head. “No. You go. I’ll be grand.”
She hesitated, searching my face, then nodded and left with the others.
He stood there, simply watching me.
The door closed behind the last patient and the room changed, the air feeling thicker, hotter.
There was no audience now, no witnesses, just him and me.
Fear twisted in me.
He’d just proved he could control my body without touching me. He could turn my own body against me.
And yet some twisted part of me wanted him to.
“Now,” he said, his voice low and controlled, “where were we?”