36. Deargán #2
I paused outside her room, my palm resting against the cold wood, fingertips tracing the grain like it might bite me.
I shouldn’t be here. This was wrong.
No. I was just checking on patient welfare, a reasonable concern given recent events. I was just ensuring no more unauthorized access by anyone to her room, no more “O’Sheas.”
But I didn’t inform staff. I didn’t log the visit.
I unlocked her door and eased it open, just enough to slip inside.
The darkness swallowed the edges of the room, soft moonlight bleeding in through the bars of her window and her ghostly curtains, casting everything in silver-blue shadows.
The room smelled faintly of old linen and her unmistakable scent of soap and black violets.
She lay there in her thin night dress, the curve of her breasts rising and falling against her soft breaths, her blanket kicked off her feet, her legs bare.
I stood at her door, fists clenched at my sides, willing my feet to stay planted. Just one glance. Just to be sure she was safe. That was all.
But I stepped closer.
The door clicked shut behind me, the sound final, like a sentence passed.
“You’re mine, Liath,” I whispered. “No door can keep you safe from me.”
I neared her, drawn toward her.
Her nightgown had shifted, twisted around her waist like a careless whisper. The curve of her hip peeked through, bare and delicate, her inner thigh speckled with tiny freckles, pale against the shadows.
I counted them like stars. Seven, eight, nine. Traced constellations in my mind. Named them. A sky that belonged only to me.
She shifted in her sleep, turning her face toward me, and her back arched slightly as she exhaled, pressing her breasts out enough to pull her dress tight across her and tease me with their fullness.
Then her thighs pressed together, just barely. But I caught it. I caught everything.
I knew it.
She could sense me. She wanted me closer. Was practically begging me in her sleep.
I moved even closer.
The floorboard creaked beneath my weight and my breath held, listening for any change in her rhythm. None came. She remained asleep, lips parted, lashes dark against her cheeks.
My hand lifted toward her.
I stopped just before touching, my fingers hovering over her mouth.
Her lips looked softer in sleep, unguarded, the faintest sheen on them catching the low light.
I imagined pressing my fingers between her lips, making her choke on them. The image arrived violent and intimate at once, sending a rush of heat through me.
I imagined her reacting, the flash of fear when she woke that softened, then flared into need.
I fought not to touch her, but my hands trembled with restraint, twitching with need.
No. If she woke right now, she’d scream. I’d have to fake an excuse—doable but messy. But it’d be the progress between us that would be eroded.
Even if she believed herself Rua, I still needed her on my side.
I wrenched my hand back. It felt like tearing something out of myself.
But then she cursed herself, cursed us both, by exhaling, a sound slipping out of her like a sigh, indistinct, and my entire body went taut.
Did she say my name?
If I had been in a more rational state, less sleep deprived, I might have concluded it had just been a sigh.
But in that moment my body reacted as if she had summoned me deliberately from the dark.
Bron.
My pulse slammed. My mouth went dry. The room narrowed until it was only her.
I cracked.
I reached down into my pants, fingers closing around my pained cock and pulling it out. The tip was already wet with pre-cum and I spread it down my shaft, sucking back a hiss as the raw sensation overtook me.
My hand moved up and down with violence, grip tight enough to ache, breath turning ragged too quickly. It wasn’t about release anymore. Not entirely. It was madness manifested in the shape of a girl who didn’t know what she did to me.
My eyes were fixed on her face, on the softness of her cheeks and the false innocence settled over her in sleep. The contradiction of it tightened something brutal in me, spurring my hand on faster.
I imagined ripping apart her nightdress, parting her thighs and burying my tongue in her pussy, sucking up every drop of her juices.
I imagined sinking my cock into her tight cunt, claiming her, marking her as mine. She screamed, her nails in my back, her hot wet pussy tightening around me.
It was pathetic how quickly I came, a low, feral growl trapped behind my teeth as I spilled cum over my own fingers.
Before I could stop myself, I wiped my thumb on her lip and painted her lips with my cum. A kiss she’d never remember.
She let out a soft moan, then sighed.
I stumbled to her bathroom, regret already curling through me like smoke.
It was just a temporary slip. An inappropriate location for my release. Thankfully, she hadn’t woken. She wouldn’t know. No one would. My plans were intact.
But as I wiped my hands on a towel, I caught my reflection in the wall mirror and flinched.
My features, usually steeled with purpose, were flushed and feral with hunger. Eyes that had been sharp now red-veined and shadowed.
My jaw clenched as my pulse drummed in my ears. Who was this man? This phantom in a white coat?
My stomach turned. My skin crawled. The silence in the room felt accusatory, as if the walls had witnessed everything and would speak.
She was supposed to lose her identity.
I wasn’t supposed to lose mine.
But here I was. Inside her room. In her madness.
And I didn’t know where she ended and I began.
I should have left then.
No, I should have left the moment I reached her door.
Instead, I stood in the shadows by the wall, the darkness wrapped around me like a cloak, my hands still unsteady.
Watching her.
Her breathing evened again, sleep pulling her deeper, face slack and innocent of what I had done a few feet away.
In the clarity that comes post-orgasm, rational thoughts began to surface, began to arrange themselves into something colder.
She was not breaking the way she was meant to. She was adapting. She was making her own calculations.
Which meant I had to adapt faster.
If she was learning me, I would learn her completely.
Every weakness.
Every lever.
Every secret.
I would regain control.
This lapse in judgment would never happen again.