42. Liath
LIATH
The next morning, in the back seat of the town car, Lorcan sat in the middle, close enough that his thigh brushed mine.
We said nothing as Blackwood town blurred past the tinted windows, a stream of gray stone walls and green trees that barely registered, my focus splintered between the warmth of his thigh against mine and the suffocating silence we both clung to.
The only thing we had agreed on was that silence was safest. That no one could ever know about us. Silence was the cover. Silence was the rule.
I hoped to God I hadn’t just lit my own life on fire by choosing him.
Christ, if it was Deargán’s camera, then he’d seen too much.
The way I had come apart for Lorcan. The way I’d begged him. The way Lorcan had uttered my real name into my mouth.
Anger burned sharp and sudden in my chest, cutting clean through the panic.
Deargán had crossed a line. He had not planted that camera for the mission. My bedroom was not the battleground.
Which means he had planted it for himself.
The only question was, what would he do about what he saw? What he heard?
I had called his burner twice this morning before getting in the car. It was disconnected. Unease crawled under my skin, tightening my chest, making my fingers restless in my lap.
I had to get to him before he escalated.
Before he did something that could not be undone.
Telling him to stand down would not be enough. He would not leave Lorcan alone unless I gave him a reason to.
I needed to reframe this. Make Lorcan something other than a threat. Make him useful enough that even Deargán, vicious and possessive and watching me from the shadows, would have to weigh the cost.
But how?
The problem sat heavy in my chest, unsolved, tightening with every mile that this damned car carried me farther away in the wrong direction.
To get to Deargán, I needed to get out of this car. I needed to get away from Lorcan.
Fuck, he’d practically shadowed me since we’d found the camera yesterday morning, refusing to let me sleep in my own bed. There was no way he was letting me out of his sight at Ravenwood.
How did I get away from him?
“Gray.”
His voice cut through my thoughts.
“What?” I turned to him and clocked too late from his scowl that he had been calling me for some time.
Something dark coiled behind his eyes. “Are you thinking about him while you’re sitting here with me?”
“No,” I said too quickly.
His scowl twisted further, my lie sitting heavy between us, and I braced for the consequences.
His hand slid onto my thigh, pushing the hem of my skirt right up against the crease.
Heat followed immediately, sharp and unwelcome.
He felt it. Of course he did. His gaze dropped to where my legs had tensed, and a muscle in his jaw moved.
In the space of a blink, his knife was out, the steel flashing at the edge of my vision.
“What did I tell you about lying to me?”
My body went rigid.
His blade. His game. The way he had taught me, when he caught me in Alistair’s bedroom, exactly what a lie would cost me.
A dark thrill rushed through me, soaking my underwear with warmth and need.
“Lorc,” I breathed.
He slid the blade against the silk at my hip, slicing my panties, first one side, then the other, before tucking his knife away.
He collected the material in between my thighs, brushing my pussy with his fingers, and dragged it free, slow enough that I felt every sliding inch of the movement.
He didn’t break my gaze as he held the panties to his nose, inhaling with a groan, then slid the ruined damp fabric into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
My stomach flipped.
He slid his hand back up my skirt, fingers finding my slick clit.
I bit back a moan and squeezed my legs shut around his hand.
“Lorc, not here.” My voice came out low and tight as I tried to push his wrist away.
He caught my wrists in his other hand, gathering them easily, and restrained them against my own thigh.
He leaned in, his breath hot against my ear. “You do not get to deny me. Open.”
I let out a whimper.
He pinned me with a warning look that one way or another, with or without my help, my thighs were opening for him.
Fuck him. I let my thighs fall apart, even as my jaw tightened as my whole traitorous body heated with need.
A ragged gasp tore from me as he thrust two fingers inside me, no preamble, just an aching fullness that made my thighs tremble.
He began to fuck me with his fingers, pinning me down with my wrists on my thigh as if he was punishing me. Like he was angry at me. Like he was trying to mark me. Or to obliterate another man from my mind.
In the mirror, the driver’s eyes flicked up and met mine.
Shit. If he saw. If he told. Alistair would know. Everything would collapse.
Lorcan glanced to the driver before returning to me.
I thought he’d stop.
Instead, he added a third finger, my pussy clenching around the stretch.
Bastard.
I forced my face still and stared straight ahead at the back of the driver’s headrest. I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t let the driver hear. I couldn’t let any of this be seen.
He thrust harder, the steady rhythm becoming urgent, demanding.
My hips bucked involuntarily against his hand, and he shot me a warning glance, eyes flashing with dark amusement at my struggle.
The driver’s eyes lifted again.
I turned my face into his shoulder, needing to hide, my breath breaking against his throat.
His fingers changed angle, went deeper, curling to rub my G-spot, and the small broken sound I made got buried in the fabric of his shirt.
The car seemed to spin around me as my world reduced to his hand.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, my body trembling on the edge as his relentless pace drove me higher.
The car turned. In my periphery, we passed through the Ravenwood gates. Oh God, we were moments away from pulling up.
Lorcan’s gaze met mine, dark and unrelenting. A warning. A claim.
I broke.
The orgasm hit fast and hard and I bit down on the sound, nails digging into my own thigh, my body shaking through it in silence.
His fingers worked me through each tremor, drawing out every last pulse of pleasure until my vision blurred at the edges.
A soft, shuddering breath escaped my lips as I sagged against the leather seat, boneless and spent.
He withdrew his hand and brought his fingers to his lips, tasting me, sucking them clean with a wicked smile.
“Mine,” he murmured, low enough that only I could hear.
I smoothed my skirt, forcing my breaths into an even rhythm as the car pulled up in front of the Ravenwood building, trying to act unbothered, as though nothing had happened.
As if I wasn’t still shuddering from the inside out.
As if I didn’t still feel the ghost of his fingers still inside me and my thighs weren’t still slick with the heat of him.
Fuck. I had solved nothing. I had barely survived the car ride.
I needed to get through this class. To ditch Lorcan. To find Deargán.
Before he did something neither of us could come back from.
I could still feel his fingers in me and the slickness he’d left behind as I scrambled away from the car, barreling through the front doors and racing into the Ravenwood corridor.
But Lorcan was right there at my shoulder.
I sped up.
He matched my pace. Damn his long legs.
I turned sharply at the first cross-passage, but he turned with me without breaking stride, his shoulder brushing mine.
He wasn’t even pretending he wasn’t crowding me.
I spotted Nuala at her locker, pulling books out for our first lecture. I cut a line straight to her. “Nuala.”
She turned toward my voice, her face pale and hollowed.
My stomach twisted. Something was wrong.
She grabbed my arm as soon as I neared her. “I need to show you something.”
Her voice came out low and strained. Her eyes flicked to Lorcan by my side.
“Go away, Lorcan. I need to talk to my friend.” I caught Nuala’s elbow and pulled her away from the lockers into an alcove, glaring back at him over my shoulder.
Lorcan stepped back across from me, settled his shoulder against the lockers, and slid his hands into his pockets. He didn’t bother pretending to look anywhere else.
I turned my body, putting Nuala between me and his sightline. “What did you want to show me?”
He shifted his weight, just enough to keep me in view.
Shite. Getting away from him is going to be harder than I thought.
Nuala pulled something out and held it against her chest. A photograph, face down. Her fingers stayed flat over the back of it for a second too long, like she was deciding whether she could go through with showing me.
Whatever was on it had already frightened her.
I stepped in closer and squeezed her arm. “What is it?”
She slid it into my hand.
It was a photo of a wall with writing all over it.
Red writing. Dark red, dried unevenly against the wall.
Jesus, were those fingermarks? It looked like someone had used their hand to write words all over the plaster in frantic lines.
My limbs went cold.
Blood. It was written in blood.
I’d stood in front of a wall like this before, in the rotting dark of Maggie’s room.
“This is Bridgit’s room,” Nuala whispered. “She wrote it before they took her.”
The words were manic, fragments, phrases doubling back, words repeating, the same three lines threading through the chaos like a refrain.
the Sons watch the Sons choose the Sons will silence the daughters
My stomach bottomed out.
the Sons
No. It couldn’t be the same phrase. Couldn’t have the same meaning.
It couldn’t be the same Sons that sat in Bewley’s letter in Alistair’s secret study. The same Sons that had been murmured about Lorcan in the drawing room.
Right?
Oh God. Bridgit hadn’t been having a breakdown.
She had known something.
She had been silenced.
Just like Maeve.
The urge to grab Nuala’s hand and tell her everything rose up in me. What I’d seen in the study, what I’d heard at Alistair’s drinks evening, what those words meant, who had taken her sister, why. We get her out. Now.
Then I caught myself.