Declan #2
Her head snaps up. “He’ll be worried.”
“He’ll want explanations you can’t give. And he’ll sense you’re rattled. If he hears hesitation in your voice—one flicker of doubt—they’ll use that against you too.”
She swallows slowly. “So I do disappear.”
“You stay alive.”
A beat passes. Then she says quietly, “Declan… I can’t hide forever.”
“I’m not asking you to.” I lean back, folding my arms. “I’m asking you to give me time to figure out who’s pulling the strings and how deep they’ve reached. Once we know that, we can deal with the rest.”
Her gaze drops to her hands. “I don’t like relying on people.”
“You don’t rely on people,” I say. “You partner with them.”
Something flickers across her expression—surprise, wariness, something else she tries to blink away.
“You sound like you’ve been waiting to say that.”
“Maybe I have.”
The rain hits the window in soft, steady taps. The city outside is blurred by the storm, as if we’ve been cut off from the world entirely. It’s too quiet in here. Too intimate. The kind of quiet that forces people to tell truths they aren’t ready for.
Ailish wraps her arms around herself, fingers gripping her elbows. “Declan… I need you to answer something honestly.”
“Ask.”
“If it’s really her. If Nadia’s friend is the one who marked my car.” She turns the mug a slow half circle on her knee. “What’s left of her, Declan? Is there a version of Dara that Nadia would still recognize, or did they finish her a long time ago?”
I let out a slow breath. That question’s been circling my mind since the alley.
“It means she’ll blame herself,” I say.
Ailish nods. “I thought so.”
“She’ll be broken,” Ailish murmurs. “If she finds out she’s being used to destroy me—”
“She won’t be broken,” I interrupt. “She’ll be furious. And she’ll insist she has help us, Liam and his overprotectiveness be damned.”
Ailish studies me for a moment. Then her voice softens. “And what about you, Declan? What does this bring up for you?”
I stiffen. I wasn’t expecting that.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve hunted these women before,” she says quietly. “You know how this machine works. You know what it does to them. If we’re right—and I think we are—then someone who never had a choice now has orders to kill me. How does that sit with you? Honestly.”
Her question hits deeper than I want it to.
I lean back, eyes drifting toward the rain-streaked window. “It sits like something I’d burn the world down to stop.”
Her breath catches.
Ailish stands slowly, placing her mug on the table with a faint click. She steps closer, her expression soft but determined.
“What are you afraid of?” she asks.
I huff out a humorless breath. “Losing a fight I can’t see.”
“Or losing me?” she says quietly.
I look at her. Really look. And something in my chest gives way.
“I’m afraid of failing to protect the one person who should have never been dragged into this war,” I say. “And yes, I’m afraid of losing you before I even—”
I stop myself.
Too close. Too raw.
She takes another step closer. “Before you what?” she whispers.
I don’t answer. Because if I do, there’s no turning back.
Her breath brushes my chest. “Declan… I’m not asking you to make promises. I just need to know I’m not facing this alone.”
“You’re not,” I say, voice rough. “Not for a single second.”
The tension between us shifts—warmer now, charged enough to pull the air tight.
She reaches up, fingers brushing lightly along the front of my shirt, a tentative touch. Testing the distance. Testing me.
I catch her hand gently. “Ailish,” I murmur, “you should rest.”
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
She doesn’t let go of my hand. “You stopped at ‘before I even.’” Her thumb moves once against my knuckle, absent, like she doesn’t know she’s doing it. “You’ve been stopping at that sentence since the night you made me choose.”
She has me by the balls, though, staring me down like she is. How am I supposed to answer that? “You’re an asset,” I settle on. “A strong member of the team, no matter how I feel about it. If one link breaks, we all do.”
She gets deadly quiet. “So it has nothing to do with jealousy about Liam’s control over me? Nothing to do with feeling something?”
She’s daring me to say it, the thing I almost did five months ago. This confining space isn’t forgiving either. But I can’t say it now. Things are so different. She doesn’t feel like mine to want anymore.
“Maybe you and Liam feel differently, but in my world, mixing business and feelings is a dangerous game. And not the kind I find thrilling, either.”
I turn away from her, unable to face her after that. She reaches up and tugs at my shoulder, and something trained and stupid in me moves before I do. I have her against the wall with her wrist pinned above her head before I understand that the hand doing it is mine.
Two seconds. Maybe three. Long enough to register that she didn’t flinch.
“Sorry,” I say. I don’t let go.
“I know.” Her breath is uneven against my jaw. “You can let go now.”
“I know.”
Neither of us moves. Then her fingers uncurl above my grip, slow and deliberate, and she says my name once, and whatever I have been holding shut for two years tears loose. I’m at her clothes with both hands, the ruined blouse, the torn seam, wanting every thread of tonight off her body and gone.
Buttons spill out, and one ricochets off my knee and rolls somewhere under the sofa. I bend, fumbling, slamming it with a finger, and held it up accusingly before letting it drop.
Then, I’m on her, dragging her sleeves down over her shoulders, yanking at the seams until something rips and the sad gray fabric gapes. Beneath, sallow skin, a line of bruises dotting the bone—they aren’t mine. They belong to those attackers. Those Russian cowards.
I hate that. hate the idea of other hands leaving marks. I dig my own nails in, seeding new constellations on her shoulder blades. This body is mine now, even if just for tonight, mine to mark or spoil as I saw fit.
Ailish whimpers as I pull her naked body into me, her warmth making something slither through me, a lightning and heat I’ve never known.
But it’s not a whimper of fear. It’s of need, which I confirm as I slide a possessive hand down her leg to her center. I find her sweet and slick with want.
I press two fingers to her, feeling her pulse and the lustful quickness of her breath on my cheek.
I grin against her jaw, biting just hard enough. Satisfaction hammers through me as her hips stutter up, greedy despite the pain she must be in, despite the bruised look of her.
I like her like this—hungry and ragged, clinging to my neck with both hands as if she thought I’d vanish.
I force myself not to hurry.
It’s a struggle. The need is volcanic, a pressure that makes my hands tremble as I hold her steady and work through the slick heat of her.
She bucks against my hand, shoulder blades dragging on the wall behind her, and then moans so ragged I can't tell whether it's pleasure or fear. I want it to be both.
I slide my other hand up, twisting in her hair, pulling her head back until she meets my eyes again. I don’t have to say anything as I press my nose to the hollow of her throat and take in her scent.
I get an arm under her and lift, and she’s lighter than she has any right to be. Three steps to the sofa. Her mouth stays on my jaw the whole way, like letting go is the thing she’s afraid of.
The couch stinks of smoke and mildew, a secondhand store reject with threadbare arms and stuffing poking through a rip in the back.