41. Lorcan
LORCAN
Her body was warm under mine, my mouth still at the curve of her throat where I had buried my face after I came.
The pleasure drained out of me too quickly, leaving a cold, hard knot of dread beneath my ribs.
I was in too deep. She was already under my skin. Losing her would be like tearing flesh from my bones.
Fuck. There were too many ways to lose her.
My hand spread wider across her back, anchoring her to me like I could keep her there if I just held tight enough.
She tensed underneath me, an audible intake of air, causing my head to snap up.
Her eyes were wide open, fixed on something on the floor.
I followed her gaze.
The clay pot lay on its side in the wreckage of soil and broken violets.
But something dark and small lay among the broken ceramic.
A hidden camera.
I went very still.
Someone had been watching us.
The thought landed heavy and ugly, scraping something violent loose in my chest.
I leaped off the bed and crossed the short distance, lifting my foot over the camera.
“Wait!”
Her voice came sharp behind me.
I brought my foot down, the plastic cracking under my heel, and held the pressure there a second longer than necessary.
“Shit, Lorcan.” Her voice was tight as she pulled a silk robe around her shoulders. “We could have gotten something from it. About who.”
She belted the robe around her tightly, her hand at her throat holding the lapel shut.
“Who?” I asked, turning to face her, my voice gone flat.
She did not answer immediately.
“Alistair,” she said.
“No.”
“Lorcan—”
“Alistair isn’t covert enough for that.” I held her gaze. “If he wanted to know what you were doing, he’d torture it out of you. This was someone else.”
The question sat between us, pressing into the silence.
She chewed her bottom lip, her gaze fixed anywhere but on me.
She knew more than she was saying. She knew who it was.
And she was choosing not to give him to me.
Suspicion formed in my mind.
The dark eyes through the slits of the mask. The salt-and-pepper hair. The dropped accent.
I’d caught them outside her bedroom.
He’d been inside her room.
She had protected him. Just like she was protecting him now.
The realization settled sharp and cold like a blade, cutting deeper than it should have.
“The plague doctor.” I turned to her, my voice going quiet. “Who is he?”
She wouldn’t look at me.
I crossed to her in two steps. My hand slipped around her and found the back of her neck, drawing her in against me, no room between us, her face inches from mine.
I did not give her the option of distance, and I did not pretend I was going to.
“Gray.” It came out low, a warning.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
You can’t trust her. She’s already hiding things from you. I forced my father’s voice down, but the tension stayed, coiled tight and waiting for a reason to snap.
“Why are you protecting him?”
She swallowed, but she still would not look at me.
I nodded toward the broken plastic. “He’s spying on you.”
Her mouth parted, but no answer came. The silence stretched too long.
“Why do you trust him?” My voice sharpened. “He obviously doesn’t trust you.”
My grip tightened at the back of her neck, not enough to hurt, but enough to make it clear she was not walking away from this.
She was not walking away from me.
“Gray, I need to know.”
“I can’t,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “I made him promises before you.”
The silence that followed pressed in on me, heavy with what she had just admitted. Had I already lost her before I’d started fighting for her?
She tried to pull back from me, but I stopped her, my hold on her tightening.
I was not letting her step away from this. I was not letting her hide from me.
I clamped down on a bitter breath as a question built up like a pressure in my chest. If she answered wrong, it would ruin me.
I knew exactly what it would cost me to hear the answer.
I asked it anyway, because not knowing would destroy me slower.
“Do you love him?”
She went still in my arms.
My whole body tensed, bracing for her response, a part of me already deciding that I didn’t care if she loved him. That I would do whatever it took to win her over. Already calculating what I would take from him if I had to.
“I…” Her voice softened, and that softness scraped something raw inside me. “I care about him.”
Not love.
Not love.
The relief hit hard enough to hurt.
But she was still protecting him, still hiding him from me.
He was still a threat. And if he was resorting to spying on her, then he was a threat to her. Even if she didn’t see it.
And I did not share what was mine.
I did not let her go. Not yet.
I pulled out my mental dossier of the plague doctor, running through the details.
Broad shoulders. Tall. Salt-and-pepper hair above the silver beak. Dark eyes through the slits in the mask. Deep voice with an Irish accent under his fake Russian one.
The man had been familiar even then. I had not known why. I knew now.
He was the man I’d caught her with behind the Ravenwood library annex.
The Magdalene doctor.
I overlaid their memories. Yes, that was him.
I let my eyes drop to the floor where the camera lay smashed on the rug.
The man had hidden a camera in her bedroom to keep watch on her. He put it there himself.
That was his weakness.
She was his weakness.
I now had his face.
And I knew where to start.
Magdalene.
I’d hunt him down. Make sure that he no longer posed a threat.
To her.
Or to me.