11. Atara
Atara
My white denim shorts are damp.
I’m standing in the center of my bedroom, clutching the book to my chest like a shield, and I am so wet that my lace panties are clinging to my skin, heavy and soaked with my own slick, needy arousal.
“This makes no sense, Atara,” I whisper to the empty room, my voice shaking so hard it barely carries to the curtains. “Are you forgetting that you despise this man?”
I drop the book onto the bed. My hands are trembling.
I slide one hand down my stomach, my fingers brushing the waistband of my shorts, and let out a soft, shuddering breath.
My body is practically humming. The skin of my wrists still feels warm where his fingers clamped around them, and the back of my neck is tingling, still processing his mouth, the scraping bite of his teeth against my collarbone.
When he pressed his pelvis against mine, when that thick, impossibly hard length of him nudged right between my thighs through the denim.
.. I nearly lost my mind. My nipples are stiff, aching peaks beneath my yellow sweater, chafing against the knit fabric with a sensitivity that feels almost like pain.
They are starving for his touch. Starving for his lips, his hands, the rough slide of his tongue.
I wanted him to slide inside me. I wanted him to rip those stupid white shorts down and bury himself in me until the bookshelf rattled.
When he growled that he was starving for me, my brain didn't care about the fact that he texts my mother on my behalf or locks me in the East Wing.
My brain didn't care about logic at all.
My ovaries were currently holding a massive rally, voting to impeach my common sense, and demanding that I run back down the hall and throw myself at his feet.
“He is a criminal, Atara,” I tell myself, pacing the length of the plush rug. “He is a dangerous, grumpy, ink-covered warlord who thinks he can manage you like a corporate merger. You cannot want to ride him like a carousel. It is statistically unsound.”
But my body doesn't care about statistics.
The ache between my legs is a dull throb.
Every step I take makes the damp denim rub against my clit, sending a sharp, agonizing spike of heat straight to my core.
I want him. The yearning is a weight in my chest, a dark, heavy hunger that makes me want to scream.
I need a distraction. If I stay in this room staring at the ceiling, I’m going to end up playing with myself while picturing his smoke-and-ice eyes, and that is a level of defeat I refuse to accept.
I walk to the door. I turn the handle.
Surprisingly, it clicks open.
I peek my head out. The hallway is quiet, but there’s a new guard at the end of the corridor—a younger guy with a buzz cut who looks like he’s trying very hard to look intimidating. Miller is gone, probably reassigned because I called him a lizard, not my finest moment but ah well.
"Excuse me," I say, stepping out and putting on my best, most harmless 'Atara Sunshine' smile.
The guard turns, his shoulders squaring. "Miss Ross. You're supposed to stay in your suite."
"I know, I know," I say, walking toward him with a slight, theatrical sigh. "And I fully intend to. But I have a very serious medical condition."
The guard blinks, his stoic mask slipping. "A medical condition?"
"Yes. It's called low blood sugar. If I don't get a glass of apple juice and maybe a small bowl of those salted cashews I saw in the kitchen pantry, I will literally faint.
Right here on the Persian rug. And then you'll have to carry me, and honestly, neither of us wants that kind of physical labor on a Wednesday. "
The guard shifts his weight, looking down the corridor as if hoping Sean or Kieran will appear to save him. "I... I can call the kitchen to bring it to you, ma'am."
"Oh, don't be silly," I say, patting his arm. His bicep feels like wood. "The kitchen staff is busy preparing whatever five-course meal Lorcan is going to stare grumpily at tonight. I can walk. I know the way. You can even walk with me. Think of it as a chaperone service."
He hesitates, but the prospect of me fainting seems to terrify him more than violating the perimeter rules. "Just to the pantry, ma'am. And then straight back."
"Deal!" I beam.
We walk down the quiet, carpeted corridors of the East Wing, turning toward the service area. The compound is massive, a maze of luxury and hidden doors. The young guard stays a step behind me, his hand resting near his belt. I take note of every turn, every security camera, every window.
When we reach the service pantry, a massive room filled with shelves of imported oils, spices, and snacks, I slip inside.
"I'll just be a minute," I tell him, pointing to the shelves. "I have to find the specific brand of cashews. I'm very picky."
The guard remains at the entrance, his back to me as he watches the corridor.
I wander deeper into the pantry. It’s quiet, the air smelling of cinnamon and dried lavender.
At the back of the room, there's a heavy, insulated service door that leads to the utility corridors—the ones the domestic staff use to move laundry and supplies between the wings without disturbing the 'guests. '
The door is slightly ajar.
I’m about to grab a jar of cashews and play the good captive when I hear a voice.
It’s low, hurried, and coming from the other side of the service door, in the concrete stairwell. It’s a woman’s voice.
"I don't have much time; if he finds out, I’m dead!" she whispers.
I freeze. The jar of cashews is heavy in my hand. My finance brain, the one that detects anomalies in a dataset, immediately clicks into high alert.
"He changed the schedule," the woman says. Her English is perfect, but her accent is slightly Spanish. I recognize the tone. It's Carlotta, one of the housemaids. The one who spent yesterday dusting my suite and pretending she didn't understand when I asked her for the Wi-Fi password.
"No," Carlotta continues, her voice trembling. "He didn't tell the Senator. He's meeting him on Thursday, not Friday. The route is the North Pass. He's taking the armored convoy, but he's only bringing four men."
A long pause. She’s listening to someone on the other end of a phone.
"Yes," she whispers, her voice sounding frantic. "I got the routing slip from the desk in the West Wing. The security desk was empty for two minutes while Sean was... while he was dealing with the girl."
My heart stops.
Sean was dealing with the girl. That was me. That was this morning, when I was being dragged kicking and screaming in my nightdress. The commotion I caused created the two-minute window Carlotta needed to steal a routing slip.
"I have to go," Carlotta says, her breath hitching. "If he finds out... Silas, please. My brother—"
The line clicks.
The silence is deafening. I can hear my own heartbeat against my ribs.
Carlotta is a mole.
She’s feeding Lorcan’s routes, his schedules, his security layouts directly to someone— maybe it’s Silas? The man who shot up the resort in Ireland. The man who wants to peel my skin off. The man who wants Lorcan dead.
Oh lord, we are officially dead.
I hear the heavy, metallic creak of the service door closing. Carlotta is moving back toward the kitchens.
I shrink back behind a shelf of olive oil, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps. My mind is racing, throwing out equations, risks, and probabilities.
Option A: Run to the young guard, go straight to Lorcan’s office, and tell him everything.
What happens then? Lorcan deals with Carlotta. He probably puts a bullet in her head, or whatever it is he does to people who betray him. He fixes the leak. The compound goes on red alert.
And I?
I’m still locked in the East Wing. I’m still the captive girl with the ruined phone, waiting for the monster to decide when I’m safe enough to leave. I have no bargaining power. I’m just cargo he has to protect.
Option B: Keep quiet.
If I keep quiet, I have a piece of data that Lorcan doesn't. In the world of finance, information is the only currency that matters. If I can investigate Carlotta myself, find out how she’s transmitting the data, or get actual proof of Silas’s next move, I can hand Lorcan the leak on a silver platter.
But I won't give it to him for free, of course.
A week ago, I'd have bartered it for the obvious thing: a plane ticket, a new phone, a door held open while I walked back to my old life and never looked back.
Except I've run the numbers on that life now, and they come out to a body bag.
Go home, and Silas finds me; the men parked outside my mother's house and refreshing Tania's feed don't need me to do a single thing but exist within reach.
"Set me free" isn't leverage. It's just a slower way to get all of us killed.
So, I price what's actually worth buying.
Real protection for my mom and Tania, the kind that doesn't evaporate the second Lorcan's in a mood.
A seat at the table instead of a cell with a mountain view.
An actual say in the war that's going to decide whether I see twenty-four.
I don't want him to let me go anymore. I want to stop being cargo he relocates, and start being a party he has to deal with.
You don't survive a war by sprinting into it unarmed, you make yourself the one asset both sides can't afford to lose.
It's a massive risk, and not the kind I get to be cute about.
If Silas's men hit that convoy on the North Pass because I sat on what I know, Lorcan could bleed out on a stretch of red rock, and Maeve could lose the only parent she has left, the messy-handed wall who keeps the ghosts off her bedroom floor.
I'd be spending their lives to buy my leverage.
But Carlotta said the meeting is on Thursday.
Today is Wednesday. I have twenty-four hours to find the proof, to build my file, and to make my move.
Lorcan is a brilliant tactician, but he’s blinded by his own anger and his obsession with me.
He’s looking for leaks in his inner circle, his lieutenants, his guards.
He’s not looking at the woman dusting his shelves.
I stand up, my knuckles white around the jar of cashews.
The sensible girl in me is screaming that this is wrong. That I should protect the grumpy man who held me in the dark. But the stubborn, sassy woman who just got her life dismantled by Mark and then kidnapped by a mob boss is done being a victim.
I'm going to map this system. And then I'm going to buy my way out of being a hostage and into a position where no man, not Silas, not Lorcan, gets to decide my fate for me again.
I walk out of the pantry, my face perfectly calm, my smile firmly back in place.
The young guard looks at me, his eyes dropping to the jar in my hand. "Find them, ma'am?"
"I did," I say, offering him a bright, cheerful smile. "Salted and perfect. Let's go back to my prison wing, shall we? I have a puzzle to finish."
As we walk back, my skin is still tingling, my body still aching for Lorcan’s touch, but my mind is a cold, sharp machine.
He wants to teach me a lesson about rules?
Fine. I’m going to teach him a lesson as well.
Let the game begin.