Chapter seven
Red-Laced Whiskey
Siobhán
Idon’tsit.Icollapse. The bed gives beneath me, silk slipping across my thighs like a lover’s touch I didn’t ask for. One bare foot hits the floor—cold wood, colder than his voice when he called me Dove like it still meant something. My boot is somewhere behind the door. Probably dented the damn thing. Should’ve aimed higher.
The closet doors gape open across from me, hinges still rattling from the way I yanked them wide. It’s obscene how much is in there. Lace and silk, velvet and leather. Emeralds, sapphires, blood red rubies. Gowns hung like museum pieces. Lingerie folded like secrets. And all of it my size. He didn’t just plan this. Hebuiltit.
A wardrobe for a woman he hasn’t seen in five years. A shrine dressed in fabric and fantasy. I should be horrified. Iamhorrified. But I’m not horrified. Not really.
I’m dripping in silk and memory, and every inch of this room sings of him. Every thread, every hidden clasp, every fucking hanger lined in velvet. It’s sick. It’s twisted. It’shim. That maddening devotion disguised as cruelty. He never forgets. He never lets go.
And that’s what ruins me. That’s what slicks heat down the inside of my thighs while my pride screams for distance. While my heart claws at its own damn cage. Because even now—after everything—I still ache for the way he ruins me best: slowly, with intention. Like a composer designing a dirge.
There’s a knock at the bedroom door. Gentle. Hesitant. Then another—just loud enough to say he’s still there. I don’t answer. I sit on the edge of the bed, ankle crossed over knee, swirling a glass of amber whiskey in my hand like it’s a storm I summoned.
“Siobhán,” he calls softly, muffled through the thick wood. “Dove, come out. I made you something warm.”
I smile, but there’s no kindness in it. Just teeth and heat.
“Darling,please.”
There it is.
I lean back, letting the silk of my robe part slightly at the thigh. I know he can’t see me. But the moment I picture his mouth forming that word—darling—my grip tightens on the glass. He knocks again. Waits.
Then, voice lower. “You’ve got to eat. Don’t punish your stomach on my behalf.”
I let the silence stretch. Let it become somethingtightbetween us. Then I say, smooth as a knife in the dark, “Beg for it, Cillian.”
A pause. Then…“I’ll do worse for you, if that’s what you need,” he says. “I’ll get on my knees right now.”
My heart skips. Still, I wait.
His voice softens again. “I’ll say it in Irish. If that’s the language you like your sins in.”
That does it. He knows what that does for me,the bastard. I rise, barefoot, slow. I open the door just enough to see him standing there in the hallway, hair rumpled, shirt undone at the throat like he’s been pacing.
I tilt my head. “Say it, then.”
His throat works around the words, and when they come, they land like a confession. “Géillim. Is mise do sheirbhíseach, a ghrá geal.1”
I let it hang in the air, the Irish still clinging to the corners of my mind like smoke. Then I tut.Soft. But enough to slice through the moment like a pretty little blade wrapped in silk. I step into the hallway, one bare foot in front of the other, chin lifted like I’ve got a crown balanced on top of my damn head. He watches me like a starving man watches a feast he knows he doesn’t deserve.
I lean in, lips ghosting the shell of his ear. “I thought you saidon your knees, Cill.”
His breath catches. Just a flicker. Then he drops. Hard. One knee hits the floor with athudthat echoes down the stone corridor like a fucking prayer. He doesn’t look away—not once. Those melted chocolate eyes stay locked on mine, dark and unblinking and full of something that makes my stomach somersault into hell.
His voice is a rasp now, deep and low and wicked with worship. “Géillim. Is mise do sheirbhíseach, a ghrá geal.”
I feel it in every inch of me. The heat. The power. The goddamnmadness. Because there he is—Cillian O’Dwyer, my enemy, my ghost, my devil—kneeling like a sinner at the altar, and I’m the only salvation he wants.
I smirk. Slow. Lethal. Like a blade unsheathed. He stays kneeling, watching me like I’m carved from stardust and sin, like he’d burn down the world just to keep me looking at him like this. I reach for the glass of whiskey I abandoned on thewindowsill earlier. It’s still warm from the room, but I sip it like it’s sacrament.
“Thank you,” I murmur, voice light, teasing. “For the apology. It wasalmostas pretty as you.”
Then I step around him, like he’s nothing more than a shadow on the floor. And he lets me. Doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t breathe too loud. I feel him track me with those eyes of his—eyes that have seen blood and power and ruin—but they look at me like I’m the most dangerous thing he’s ever known.
