12. Lorcan
Lorcan
I woke up at four in the morning with my dick so hard it was throbbing painfully against my thigh, my sheets tangled around my waist, and my skin slick with a sweat that had nothing to do with the desert heat.
I was dreaming about her. Again.
In the dream, I didn’t stop at the bookshelf.
I didn't let her walk out of the study. I ripped those tight white shorts down to her ankles, shoved her face against the wood, and buried myself inside her from behind without a single shred of mercy.
I could still feel the phantom sensation of her tight, soaking wet walls clamping down around my cock, the desperate, high-pitched moans she was making into the leather-bound books as I pounded into her, my fingers digging bruising grips into her soft, round hips.
I had woken up right as I was about to come, my fist tightly gripping my own erection in the dark, my mouth tasting like the musky, sweet scent of her skin.
It’s six hours later, and the sour taste of that unfulfilled hunger is still sitting under my tongue. I’m in a piss-poor, aggressive mood, and having her sitting exactly three feet away from me in the back of the armored Suburban isn't doing a goddamn thing for my blood pressure.
"This is completely ridiculous," Atara says, her voice cutting through the heavy silence of the cabin. She’s wearing a soft cream sundress today, her bare shoulders looking entirely too soft against the black leather of the interior.
"I am not a briefcase, Lorcan. You don't just take me to work because you’re worried I’ll figure out how to open the electronic gates.
I had a whole day planned. I was going to finish the sky part of the puzzle with Maeve. "
"The puzzle can wait," I growl, not looking at her. I keep my eyes on the side mirror, watching the trailing SUV under Miller's command. "You don't stay in the house alone when I’m off-compound. You don't have the sense to stay behind locked doors."
"I have plenty of sense! What I don't have is a patience for your prehistoric, alpha-male control issues," she snaps back.
She shifts in her seat, and the friction of her thighs against the leather makes a soft sound that immediately images the dream right back into my head.
My jaw clenches until the bone aches. "Where are we even going?
Is this like those mafia movies where you do a neutral-ground handshake and look menacingly at old men? "
"It's a routine sit-down," I say, my voice clipped. "A secured location. A vetted route. Shut up and let me look at the road."
"Oh, the classic 'shut up.' You really need to expand your vocabulary, Don O’Shea. Maybe if you spent less time lifting weights and breaking people's joints, you could read a dictionary."
I turn my head slowly, all the while trying to calm my anger.
She’s leaning back, her arms crossed over her chest, pushing her breasts up.
Her nipples are tight little points against the cream fabric, and the sight of them makes a heavy, visceral ache thud straight into my groin.
I want to lean across the console, yank her into my lap, and tear that dress down to her waist. I want to see if she talks this much trash with my tongue down her throat.
"Keep testing me, Atara," I whisper, "We have a solid twenty minutes before we hit the city limits. I can easily have Kieran pull over onto the shoulder and show you exactly what happens to girls who don't know when to keep their mouths closed."
Atara’s breath hitches, her chest freezing mid-rise.
Her eyes widen, the gold in her whiskey-colored pupils darkening with a sudden, heavy flash of the same desperate lust that’s currently eating me alive.
She swallows, her lower lip trembling just a fraction before she bites it.
She knows I’m not joking. She knows how close I am to the edge.
Any sane person can see the tension oozing off me from a fucking mile away.
"You wouldn't…" she whispers, but her voice lacks its previous sting. It’s breathy.
"Try me," I mutter, turning my gaze back to the windshield.
The route is the North Pass—a winding, two-lane asphalt strip cut through the jagged red rock of the canyon. It’s the fastest way to the Senator's private estate without hitting the strip traffic. It’s a route we’ve cleared a hundred times.
A massive, deafening BOOM rattles the chassis of the Suburban. In the rearview mirror, the trailing SUV, Miller’s car, is suddenly engulfed in a ball of orange fire and black smoke. A heavy-duty dump truck had pulled out from a blind canyon cutout, ramming them broadside at sixty miles an hour.
"Ambush!" Kieran roars, his hands throwing the steering wheel hard to the left as automatic gunfire begins to chew through the rear glass.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
The specialized armor plating holds, but the heavy lead rounds leave white, spiderweb craters across the reinforced glass.
"Get down!" I roar at Atara.
She doesn't move. She’s completely frozen, her face stark white, her eyes locked on the shattered glass behind us. Her brain has flatlined under the sheer terror of the noise.
I don't waste half a second. I lung across the seat, my arm wrapping around her neck, and yank her down into the footwell. I throw my entire body over hers, pinning her against the floorboards, using my torso as a solid shield between her and the doors.
Two black sedans barrel out from the same cutout, flanking us on the narrow road. Men in gear are leaning out of the windows, their suppressed rifles spitting a relentless hail of lead against our side panels.
"Kieran! Pit the left!" I bellow over the roar of the engine and the screech of the tires.
"Hold on!" Kieran screams.
The Suburban surges forward. Kieran rams the front bumper into the rear quarter panel of the left sedan. The metal screams, sparks showering the windshield as the sedan spins out of control, flipping twice before smashing into the canyon wall in a violent shower of glass and debris.
But the second sedan is right on our bumper. A shooter is climbing through the sunroof, holding a heavy-gauge breaching weapon aimed directly at our rear tires.
I need to end this. Now.
"Keep it steady!" I tell Kieran.
I scramble back just enough to reach the hidden gun box between the seats. I rip it open, grabbing the customized Benelli shotgun. I hit the electronic release for the rear tailgate window. The glass drops six inches.
I roll onto my back, the hard floorboards digging into my spine, and poke the barrel through the gap. The wind howled through the cabin, howling like a demon.
I take one breath. One alignment.
BOOM.
The heavy slug punches straight through the windshield of the trailing sedan, exploding the driver’s head in a spray of red. The car veers sharply to the right, plunging over the unprotected edge of the canyon road and tumbling into the rocky ravine below.
Silence hits the car, broken only by the ragged breathing of three people and the heavy hum of the engine.
I drop the shotgun onto the seat. I’m covered in plaster dust, the copper smell of spent casings thick in my nose. My heart is hammering a brutal rhythm against my ribs. I look down into the footwell.
Atara is staring up at me.
Her face is flushed, her hair a wild halo of dark curls against the rubber matting, and her eyes, Jesus, her eyes.
They are bright, wide, and absolutely alive, glowing with a fierce, high-octane adrenaline that makes my breath catch in my throat.
She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time, her chest heaving against my chest, her body trembling with the sheer, raw electricity of survival.
They flick past my shoulder to the ruined glass, to the smear of red on the windshield where a man's head used to be, and I watch the horror of it roll through her.
The recoil. The understanding that the man who did that is the same one whose body is the only thing between her and the road.
Then her eyes come back to me, and she doesn't pull away.
Her fingers are fisted in my shirt, holding on, even as the rest of her flinches from what those same hands just did.
Bright. Wide. Awake. Two things are at war on one face, and she can't make either of them win.
I've had people look at me with fear. I've had them look at me with hunger. I have never seen both at once, in the same breath, on someone who understands exactly what she's holding on to.
God help me, the lust still hits like a freight train, a dark, violent urge to rip that cream dress open right here, amid the dust and the smell of gunpowder, and drive myself into her until we both forget the sound of the bullets.
I force myself to pull back, climbing onto the leather seat, my hands shaking with a mix of rage and unadulterated adrenaline.
"Kieran," I say, my voice a low, vibrating snarl. "Turn the car around. We’re going back to the compound."
"Boss, what about the Senator?"
"Tell him we’re rescheduled," I growl. "And tell Echo to get a cleanup crew to the pass. I want to know who owned those cars before the metal is cold."
"Copy that."
I turn to Atara. She’s slowly climbing out of the footwell, shaking the dust from her sundress. She sits on the leather, her breathing still ragged, her lips parted and wet.
"You could have died," I say, the words coming out like heavy stones. I’m so furious I can barely see straight.
The thought of a bullet tearing through that soft skin, of her becoming a body on the asphalt, makes a cold, sickening terror claw at my gut.
"You could have been erased because you don’t fucking listen to instructions. "
"I was frozen!" she shouts back, her voice cracking with the leftover adrenaline.
She glares at me, her cheeks bright red.
"And I wouldn't have been in that car if you hadn't dragged me out of my room!
I would have been safe inside the compound, doing a puzzle with your daughter! This is your war, Lorcan. Not mine."
"It became yours the second Silas saw you," I snap, leaning over the space between us, my face inches from hers. "Never again, Atara. You don't question an order when the glass breaks. You don't talk back when I tell you to move."
"You don't fucking own me," she whispers. Her eyes are fierce, stubborn, and entirely unyielding, even after facing a firing squad.
I look at her for a long, heavy beat. I look at her stubborn mouth, her sharp jaw, the way her fingers are gripping the leather of the seat.
"Not yet," I say.
I sit back, crossing my arms, and turn my face toward the side window. The car ride home is completely silent, the desert sun burning through the spiderweb cracks in the reinforced glass.
My mind is running two tracks simultaneously. The first is cold, hard logic: someone gave Silas the route. Someone knew the timing. The leak is close.
The second track is pure, torturous yearning. I can still feel the weight of her body beneath mine on the floorboards. I can still feel the way her chest pressed against my ribs.
This isn’t the right time.