Her eyes stay fixed on mine, widening with fear, but also with desire. I run my other hand down her body, round the curve of her arse so she can’t help but feel how much I want her.
‘Will you let me live if I let you…’ Her body trembles as she puts one arm around my neck and pulls my face down to hers, kissing me with a lot more finesse than she did that very first night we met. Her lips are chilled, but when I force them to part for me, her mouth is warm and wet and willing. I kiss her in the exact way I always want to, slow and deep, my tongue tasting her, the desperation in my senses clouding my judgement. I want her. I need to have her.
She whimpers as I move the hand on her arse down over her hip and catch the hem of her dress, pulling it up so that I can slip my fingers inside her underwear. I tear my mouth away from hers, kissing her urgently down the side of her neck, across her throat, my teeth sinking into the curve of her shoulder. She tilts her head back, gasping, and I run my lips up her throat, nipping along the line of her jaw.
Her hand slides around my waist, pauses for a moment, then she pushes it between our bodies, spreading her fingers over my cock, which hardens even further under her touch. I want to drag her to the ground, strip the ruined, bloody dress off her body and thrust inside her. And then do that over and over again until she’s shattered around me and I’ve filled her with my cum, claiming her in the most primitive way a man can claim a woman.
But then I’ll still need to kill her.
She pulls her lips away from mine, her breathing shallow and uneven. Her lips are parted, but she closes them slowly, her tongue running along them as she does. I watch as her eyes flicker open, filled with lust, and she stares at me, and I realise it’s not fair for me to think of her as pure. I’ve simply never given her the chance to learn, explore her own sexuality with someone her own age, someone who might have loved her and given her all the normal things I can’t.
‘Please, Cillian, please don’t kill me. I’ll not breathe a word to anyone. Ever. I’ll just disappear from your lives. You’ll never see me again. Please, you can trust me.’ She falls to her knees, clasping her hands in front of her.
‘That’s not possible, Niamh.’ I look down at her thinking of what I would much rather be doing with her there.
‘I promise you can trust me. Cillian!’
But I shake my head. The guilt would get the better of her, eventually. ‘You’re too good a person. Too honest. You’d go to the police. Want closure. Be overcome with guilt.’
‘No, the things they were going to do to me… They deserved… he deserved to die, so that he wouldn’t do it to anyone else.’ She wrings her hands for a moment, then the breath huffs out of her and she sinks back onto her heels, staring at me. ‘Cillian?’
I force myself to take a step back and then another.
There’s fear in those midnight-blue eyes, but also something else. Curiosity. I shake my head. What the fuck am I thinking? Is she only doing this, only allowing this because she’s offering herself up to me in exchange for her life? And while I don’t want to kill her, the alternatives, don’t bear thinking about.
At least I won’t let her suffer. Although in bringing her here and prolonging this, I’ve already made her suffer more than I should have. Initially, I was stalling for time, hoping I would find another way. When I drove out here with her in the boot of my car, it felt like something was drawing me to these woods, and I hoped against hope that a solution would present itself. But a hunt has been called and a hunt, with everything that entails, will happen.
‘What will you say to Rose?’
I shake my head slowly. ‘Rose won’t remember a thing, she’ll think you’ve just disappeared.’
She swallows and I can almost see her mind whirring, trying to find something else to bargain with.
‘She won’t believe that. She knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t just leave.’
‘Rose will understand that you’ve left to protect her and our family.’ I don’t add that this is something Rose already knows all too well.
Her face falls, uncertainty causing her to frown.
‘Cillian,’ she whispers. ‘I… I’ll do anything.’
Now that, I almost believe, although when she flicks the torn strap of her dress over her shoulder, then pulls the other one slowly down her bare arm, I realise I’ve misinterpreted her words. She pauses, and swallows before taking hold of the top of the barely-there dress and starts to pull it down over her breasts. I already know she’s not wearing a bra from when I cleaned her up, but the skin beneath her dress is smeared with the blood where it has soaked through.
I should tell her to stop, let her go. But I don’t want to.
Niamh is blushing so hard I can almost feel the heat radiating off her skin. I don’t want to resist what she’s offering, regardless of why. I take her hands off her dress and kiss her again. I cup her breast with one hand, feeling her jerk in my arms as my thumb circles her nipple. I kiss down her throat, loving the way she lifts her head, the upward stretch pushing her breasts eagerly against me.
I kiss across her collarbone, using a nail to flick the tight peak of one nipple before my fingers tighten on it and pinch. She cries out, as all my blood flows from my brain to my cock, leaving me as much a victim of desire as she is. I lift my head to take her mouth again, but pause as I notice her necklace against her pale skin. I’ve seen it before, a red garnet in the shape of a heart against a gold oval, but I don’t remember the delicate filigree tracery on the solid surface of the gold.
I touch the stone with my finger, feeling it pulse. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was made by Kinfolk, although not by any of the artisans I’m familiar with. But that’s impossible.
‘Where did you get this?’ I ask, sliding my palm beneath it and lifting it up.
‘My mother.’
‘It’s pretty.’
No, looking at it more closely, I realise I’m mistaken. The stone didn’t pulse, there is no filigree on the gold. I shake my head and let it fall back against Niamh’s pale skin. And the moment is gone, washed away in a sea of guilt.
