14. Lorcan
Lorcan
My hands are still stained with the lingering smell of cordite.
The report on my desk is a disaster. Two warehouses in the northern district, the primary hubs for the cross-border distribution, are currently smoldering craters.
Silas dismantled a decade of infrastructure in forty minutes. I had to personally deal with Carlotta in the sub-basement, a task that left me feeling more like a butcher than a businessman. The information she leaked has compromised three of my best men, and the cleanup will take weeks.
I am tight. I am jagged, wired, and so incredibly angry that I can feel the pulse in my neck ticking like a bomb.
And then there is Atara.
She is the only thing in my life that isn't on a spreadsheet. She is the only thing I can't predict, the only thing I can't calculate, and the only thing that makes me want to burn the world down just to see if she keeps looking at me with that fucking fire in her eyes.
I don't go to her room to talk. I go there because my blood is boiling, and I know that she’s the only person who can match that heat.
I don't knock. I turn the handle and step inside.
She’s already halfway across the room, her eyes flashing the second she sees me. "You have some nerve! Do you honestly think I didn't see the security detail shift? You moved the perimeter guards again! I was trying to—"
I don't let her finish. I don't let her get a single word out.
I cross the room in three long strides, grab the back of her neck, and press my mouth onto hers. I kiss her until the oxygen is gone, until the tension in her jaw breaks, until she’s forced to lean into me because her legs have gone soft.
She pulls back, gasping, her lips swollen and red. "You don't—you don't get to just—"
"Make me stop," I say, my voice a low, raspy threat.
I wait for her to push me away. I wait for her to slap me.
She doesn't. She just stares at me, her chest heaving, the yellow sweater she’s wearing hanging off one shoulder. She looks like she’s vibrating. The fury is still there, but it’s mixed with something heavier, something darker.
"I hate you," she whispers, but her hand is clutching my bicep.
I move. My hand snaps up, grabbing both of her wrists and pinning them against the wall above her head. I lean into her, my hips hitting her thighs, my chest crushing the soft wool of her sweater.
"I can change your security detail anytime I want, Atara," I growl. "You were right there in the line of fire, and you froze. I can’t trust you not to be that stupid again."
"Stupid?" she snaps, her eyes flaring. "I was a hostage! I didn't get an invite to the bullet-fest, Lorcan!"
"You’re a liability," I mutter, though my body tells a different story. I can feel her heart hammering against my chest through her sweater, a frantic, drum-like beat that matches the throbbing in my own cock.
I use my free hand to trace the line of her throat.
I move down, past the collarbone, to the soft, rounded swell of her breast. She gasps, her back arching against the wall.
I don't need to touch her skin to know that her nipples are already hard, already aching for the friction.
I can see the way she bites her lip, the way her eyes roll back when my fingers find the sensitive spot right at the base of her throat.
"You like this," I say, my voice dripping with cold, satisfied cruelty. "You like being caught. You like knowing that as long as I have you pinned to this wall, you don't have to make any of your own decisions."
"I don't—" she starts, but her mouth falls open as I drag my thumb across her nipple through the wool.
She whimpers. A high, pathetic, beautiful sound of pure want.
"You're lying to me," I say, and I let my hand roam further, sliding down to the band of her leggings. I can feel the heat radiating off her. She is soaking wet. She has been wet since I walked through the door. "You’re furious. And you’re starving for me. You can be both. It’s a messy, pathetic way to live, isn't it? "
"Fuck. You." she says, her voice shaking.
I look at her, really look at her. Her hair is a wreck, her skin is flushed, and she is fighting me with every ounce of her stubborn soul. I want to ruin her. I want to own every single thought in that brilliant, infuriating head.
I trail my hand down, right to the center of her, pressing my palm flat against the damp, hot fabric of her leggings. I can feel her clit, hard and swollen, pressing back against me.
She lets out a choked, desperate sound, her hips grinding against my hand of their own accord.
"Lorcan..."
"Ask me," I say, holding her wrists tight against the wall.
"I hate you," she sobs, her head falling back against the wall, her eyes squeezed shut. "I hate you so much. You're a monster."
"Ask me properly," I say, my voice a growl.
"Go to hell," she spits, her eyes snapping open, blazing with that fierce, unrepentant fire I can't stop craving. "Go to hell, Lorcan. I hope you die in there."
I smile. It’s a cold, hard, pleased expression. I can feel the way her body is screaming for me, the way her clit is pulsing against my palm in a frantic, desperate rhythm. She’s fighting the urge to beg, and I find it almost exhilarating.
I pull my hand away.
The sudden loss of contact leaves her gasping, her body sagging slightly. I let go of her wrists, stepping back until I’m standing by the door.
"Stay here," I say.
I'm reaching for the door when her voice stops me.
"You didn't come here because of the security detail."
I don't turn around. "Go to sleep, Atara."
"You came here straight from doing something downstairs you can't stand to think about.
" Her breathing is still ragged, but the words come out level, and that's what makes them land.
"It isn't cologne I can smell on you. You walked out of whatever that was, and the first door you opened in this whole house was mine. Not Kieran's. Not a bottle. Mine."
My hand stops in the air.
"You don't do all this—the pinning, the cruelty, leaving me strung up on the wall—because you're in control of it." I hear her push away from the wall behind me. "You do it because for ten minutes in this room you get to not be the thing you were down there."
The quiet after that has a current running through it.
I have men who wouldn't hold my eye on the night I burned a traitor out of my own walls. This woman, denied, shaking, furious, just told me exactly what I am, to the back of my head, and got it right on the first pass.
I could turn and tell her she's wrong. She'd see the lie the way she sees everything else.
I turn and walk out, shutting the door behind me.
I stand in the hallway for a moment, listening. There is absolute silence inside the room, followed by the sound of a frustrated, muffled scream and the thud of a pillow hitting the door.
I head to my study, my cock throbbing with such intense, persistent ache that I have to adjust my trousers. I sit in my chair, staring at the empty desk, the scent of her still clinging to my skin like a curse.
She thinks she won. She thinks that because she didn't beg, she held onto her pride.
She doesn't realize that as long as she stays here, as long as she keeps looking at me with that desperate, wet hunger, she is already lost.
She won't give me the satisfaction. She won't give me the 'please.'
She’s wrong.
I can feel the clock ticking. I can feel the tension winding tighter, and tighter, and tighter, until something finally snaps.
And when it does?
I’ll be the one holding the pieces.