I kiss her, hard.
She pushes back for one beat, then kisses back until I pull away to watch her for a moment, drink her in like something earned, like something owed, like the answer to a hunger I've kept beneath my skin for longer than I care to admit.
She blinks, dazed, lips swollen from the kiss, her breath quick and uneven now, but she doesn't move away, doesn't speak, doesn't reclaim the space between us, and when she finally lifts her eyes to meet mine, there's something raw in them, something pulled too tightly, as though her composure is a seam about to rip, and I cannot help but smile.
I move toward her again, slower this time, predatory, patient, the way a man approaches something that is already his, and I lift my hand to the line of her throat, not to choke, not to control, just to feel the flutter of her pulse beneath my palm, to remind her that I am here and that I see her—truly, deeply, fully—and that I am in no rush to let her go.
She doesn't flinch.
Her chin tilts ever so slightly upward, offering herself without saying the words, and that tiny, defiant, devastating act of submission nearly undoes me, so I let my fingers trail down her collarbone, then lower still, across the silk of that dress that still clings to her, following the slope of her breast without touching it, watching the way her body tightens inresponse, the way her nipples harden beneath the fabric, the way her breath catches and holds like a note left suspended in air.
"Is this what you want?"
I murmur, my voice low, close to her ear now, my hand hovering just above the place where her thighs press together, not touching her, only offering the suggestion of what I could take from her if I chose to, and the way she shivers tells me she feels it already, the pressure, the promise, the inevitability.
She nods, but that isn't enough.
"I asked you a question," I say, letting my mouth brush the shell of her ear, my breath warm, my hand still maddeningly still, and when she parts her lips as if to answer but no sound comes out, I let the silence stretch long enough to make her ache with it.
"Please," she replies, mouth parted.
And that is what I've been waiting to hear.
6
KEIRA
Ruairí does not give me time to second-guess what I've said or the sound of my own voice breaking on the word, does not offer me gentleness or mercy or even a moment to catch my breath, because the second I give him that sliver of permission, the second I say please, he moves like a man who's been starving and has finally been given the right to eat.
He kisses me again, but this time there is no restraint, no hesitation, no testing of boundaries, only heat and hunger and the kind of brutal need that turns everything else to ash.
His mouth is hard and unforgiving, and when I gasp, he takes advantage of the opening like a man claiming territory, his tongue pushing past my lips with such confidence that I don't think, I only feel, only cling to the lapels of his jacket as his hands move lower, rough and sure and unrelenting.
He drags the dress off my shoulders with a sound like tearing silk, not because the fabric rips but because something in me does, something stitched together by pride and silence that has no place between us now.
The cool air hits my skin and then his mouth follows, down my neck,across my chest, lips and teeth and breath against my breasts, against my nipples, licking and sucking until my knees buckle and he catches me easily, shoves me back against the nearest wall like he's been planning to do it all night.
"You've been strutting around this house like you don't know what you're doing to me," he growls, his mouth hot at my ear, his fingers digging into the meat of my ass as he grinds me against the stone, "wearing that tight little dress like you're untouched and untouchable, like you didn't come here to be ruined."
"Ruairí—" I try to speak, but he cuts me off by dragging one hand between my thighs, cupping me through the soaked fabric of my panties, rubbing hard and slow against the heat there like he wants to punish me for keeping this from him, like he wants to hear me cry out just to know I still can.
"Dripping for me already," he says, voice thick with satisfaction, "and I've barely touched you."
He lifts me—just lifts me like I weigh nothing—and I wrap my legs around his waist, my back slammed flat against the wall as he pushes my panties aside, not bothering to take them off, just baring me to the cold and the heat and him.
His cock is already out, thick and hard and leaking against my inner thigh, and when he pushes into me, it's all at once, no warning, no slow slide, just a deep, bottomless thrust that knocks the air from my lungs and makes my head fall back with a cry I don't even recognize.
"Fuck," he snarls, his hips pistoning up into me with a fervor that makes my mouth open in a suspended scream, every inch of him driving deeper than I thought I could take, every stroke angled to hit the spot that makes me shake, makes me clench around him like my body's trying totrap him inside.
"You feel that? That's what you've been needing. Not just a husband. Not just a protector. A man."
"Yes—God, yes," I gasp, and I don't care how I sound, don't care who hears, because I've never been this full, never felt like every part of me was being used the way it was meant to be.
He fucks me against the wall until I come undone around him, shuddering and crying out as my orgasm rips through me so hard I go limp in his arms, and he keeps going, growling filth at my throat.
"That's it, let them hear you," and "I want you cock-drunk and ruined, is that clear?"
He spills inside me with a broken groan, thrusting deep and holding there, forehead pressed to mine, breaths ragged and raw.
