26. Molly
Molly
“ I ’ll give you what you want, Owen. But only if you let him walk out of here unharmed.”
I had played my ace. Now, I had to hope Owen’s ego was large enough he would take the bait.
He stared at me, unblinking.
Keir’s gaze was also fixed on me, trying to figure out my plan. He had to know I would never willingly go with this madman, but I couldn’t let Owen kill him. What started as a hate fuck and attempts to kill one another had somehow turned into a bond most people never got to experience.
“You’ll bind yourself to me for the rest of your life?” Owen asked.
“No!” Keir shouted desperately. “ Jynx , you can’t do this.”
Turning my head, I looked at the man who had peeked behind all my curtains and still accepted me for the person I was, rather than on my previous actions.
I was a murderer. An instigator of war. A victim.
Yet to him, I was something precious he wanted to protect.
I’d never experienced that first-hand before Keir.
I was always the one protecting others. My mother, even when she didn’t deserve it.
Orla, because the girl deserved everything in this shitty game of life we were playing.
My identity. My location. My body. And my heart.
Keir could single-handedly tear down my entire world, and in that moment, I would’ve let him. I would still let him…
But first, we both had to get out of this alive.
“I will. I’ll marry you.”
Fierce joy radiated from Owen, and he lowered his gun. “You’ll let me fill your belly with our children?”
“I will,” I told him, the words like ash on my tongue.
He was suddenly in front of me, gripping my jaw like earlier. I knew there would be a bruise there tomorrow, but I held back my pained grimace. I was selling him a fantasy and pain wasn’t involved … at least not yet.
Holding the gun down by his side, he pressed his lips to mine, prying open my mouth with his tongue. He swept inside, the invasion foreign and so very wrong. Owen had shut his eyes, his whole body focused on claiming me, and my gaze flickered to Keir.
“Get your fucking hands off her,” Keir snarled, his rage darkening his expression. “Or I’ll put you down like a rabid animal.” He had brought his gun up, aiming it at Owen.
With a feral snarl, Owen pressed the muzzle of his gun against my temple, pushing it to the place where he’d struck me before. This time, I couldn’t hold back my moan.
“Don’t be a hero, Flanagan. Your woman made her choice. Put the gun down or I blow her fucking brains out.”
Keir weighed his options for a moment before he tossed the weapon away, his sharp eyes on me.
With his gaze fixed on Keir, Owen smirked and leaned down to lick the fresh blood oozing from the wound on my head.
His eyelids flickered in ecstasy. “We could make a blood bond, kitten. I could claim you in front of him.” He pulled the gun away from my head and shifted his focus to Keir, bringing up the weapon and shoving it between Keir’s eyes.
“No!”
Owen turned back to me. “You’re mine now. If you become my wife, any other man who has ever fucked you will die. Starting with this cocksucker.”
Desperate to draw his attention, I fell to my knees in front of Owen and undid his pants. I thought my sudden acquiescence would shock him enough that he would lower the muzzle from Keir’s head, but Owen only watched me with heavy eyes and a smirk on his face.
“Did she suck your cock well, Flanagan? Lick your sac? Play with your arsehole?” He kept his attention on Keir while he continued to taunt him. Owen hummed, “I like it when a bitch plays with my arsehole.”
“Jynx,” Keir muttered, his voice so broken I flicked my gaze to him. He looked destroyed as he watched me lower Owen’s zipper and pull out his semi-hard dick. Jerking him off with splinters in my palms was difficult, but I shoved the pain aside. This was life and death now.
Owen’s free hand came to the back of my head, where he snatched my hair into his fist and pulled.
Pain shot through my scalp, but I didn’t stop.
“She won’t be swallowing my load this time, Flanagan.
I’m going to mark her pretty mouth and face with my cum.
Then when you’re dead, I’ll fuck her in your blood. ”
“I will annihilate you,” Keir replied, the timbre of his voice lower, sending a shiver through me.
While the men slung insults back and forth, I reached my free hand down to my ankle, feeling along the outside of my jeans until I hit the contours of my knife.
While Keir had been dealing with the Caddie, I’d scrambled to find it again in the near dark.
That blade had saved my life more than once, and tonight it would save me again.
Lowering back onto my heels, I focused on the men while pulling the knife free. I had to hurry, as I had no intention of putting my mouth near Owen’s cock. Touching him was bad enough, but it was nothing a long shower couldn’t fix.
Owen was hard now. “Spit on my dick, kitten,” he told me. “Get it nice and slick so I can fuck your throat while Keir watches.”
Hiding the blade against my thigh, I stretched up like I was going to follow his order. My gaze turned to Keir at the last moment, and his eyes were hooded as he tried to compartmentalize what he was seeing. He thought I was submitting, when in reality it was tactical.
‘Trust me’, I mouthed to him one last time before I slid the sharp steel under Owen’s cock and pulled up.
I clamped my mouth shut as blood sprayed on my face, and Owen’s bellows filled my ears.
Clambering to my feet, I tossed the flaccid lump of flesh across the hallway, where it landed with a thud against the wall.
“You bitch!” he screamed, dropping the gun as he tried to stem the bleeding. Both his hands were cupping his groin, though blood still poured through his fingers. I could only watch, rooted to the spot, until Keir took my hand in his and tugged me toward the door.
“Come on, Jynx.”
Outside, the moon had slipped from behind a bank of clouds to illuminate my little slice of hell. I couldn’t wait to leave this place. To get out of here and back to my sister. Back to Galway. Back to my normal life, where I was a nursing student and not some commodity to be traded back and forth.
“Jesus, what the hell happened in there?”
I spun to find Mila stepping out from behind an old tractor, her dark hair gleaming blue in the moonlight.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m Plan B.”
“She insisted,” Keir bit out, tugging me along so violently I almost fell. It was only his hand on my elbow that stopped me from eating dirt and gravel.
“Where’d all that blood come from?” Mila asked.
Behind us, there was a roar of defiance, a wounded animal refusing to fall. I turned to see Owen standing in the doorway of the farmhouse, blood pouring from his groin. He was hemorrhaging, but he was still moving.
Keir muttered, “Why won’t the motherfucker die?”
Mila was staring too. “Should this guy be dead?”
“He will be if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon,” I replied.
Her eyes shifted to me. “Sooo, do we want him dead?”
“Yes,” Keir bit out at the same time I said, “No.”
I was studying to heal people, not to harm them.
Mila’s gaze bounced between us for a brief second before she pulled a gun from the small of her back and took aim. Both Keir and I watched as she put a bullet straight between Owen’s eyes. He blinked once, his expression one of disbelief, before his legs gave out and he collapsed.
Keir slowly led me down the driveway and onto the road, where I saw his Rover parked parallel to a dry-stone wall. When he opened the trunk, I saw Orla sitting with a gun pointed directly at us. Leaning in, Keir placed his hand on the weapon and lowered it, but my sister’s eyes were trained on me.
“Cait,” she breathed, throwing herself into my arms. When she pulled back, her eyes bounced around my face. “Whose blood is that?”
“Owen’s,” I replied.
“What—”
“ Later ,” Keir interrupted her, motioning for Orla to get out of the rear compartment. As soon as she slid out, Keir lifted the floor panels as Mila craned her neck to get a better look.
“Whoa, is that an RPG?” she asked, wonder tinging her voice.
Keir didn’t answer. He simply lifted the weapon into his arms and turned to walk back toward the old farm. Over his shoulder, he called, “I want everyone in the car. Engine running. As soon as I’m back, we’re out of here.”
Orla opened the rear passenger door and got in, but Mila and I stood there and watched Keir march down the street and disappear down the driveway.
Mila turned to me. “What the hell happened in there? He looks like he’s ready to burn down the world.”
“What was necessary,” I muttered.
She arched a brow. “What was necessary got that much blood on you?”
“Yeah.”
I hoped Mila would drop it. While I knew I’d have to rehash this again—to Finnan, no doubt—I wanted to keep it to myself a little longer.
I’d already killed one man, and tonight I had contributed to the death of another.
The stain on my soul was growing darker, but if it meant I survived, it was something I could live with.
We both turned toward the farmhouse when there was a whooshing sound, closely followed by an explosion that ruffled our hair and pushed us back a step.
“Shit,” Mila said. “We’ve gotta bounce. Get in the back with your sister.”
Hauling ass, we ran to the car. I got into the rear with Orla, while Mila jumped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.
She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she looked in the side mirror. “Come on, come on, where is he?”
Turning in my seat, I watched and waited for Keir to reappear, my heart thundering in my chest. I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath until he appeared at the head of the drive, running with the RPG on his shoulder.
Mila leaned over the passenger seat and opened the door. “Get in!” she shouted.
After offloading the RPG into the back, Keir slid into the seat, slamming the door, and shouted, “Go!”
Mila shoved her foot on the accelerator. The rear wheels spun, spitting gravel and dirt until they finally gripped the road and shot the car forward.
“Where to?” Mila asked, navigating the roads easily.
“Galway,” Keir replied. “Back to fucking Galway.”