"Yours," she whispers, the word breaking between us like a sacred thing.
I crash my mouth to hers, swallowing the confession, sealing it between us. My rhythm changes—still punishing, still claiming, but with an edge of desperation that I can't hide anymore. I'm unraveling for her, coming apart at the seams.
"Again," I demand against her lips, needing to hear it like I need air.
Her hands slide into my hair, yanking hard enough to hurt. "I'm yours," she gasps, her body arching into mine. "I've always been yours."
The words unlock something primal in me. I gather her up, lifting her from the table without breaking our connection, her legs wrapped tight around my waist. I carry her like that—still joined, still moving—to the nearest wall, pinning her there with my weight.
"Look at me," I growl, gripping her jaw to force her gaze to mine. "I want to see your face when you come apart for me," I command.
Her eyes lock with mine, glazed with tears and need. I can see her fighting it—the pleasure, the surrender, the raw honesty of what we're doing. My hips drive into her relentlessly, pinning her to the wall with each thrust.
"You feel that?" I growl, pressing deeper. "That's what you've been running from."
She gasps, head falling back against the wall. I grab her chin, forcing her to look at me again.
"Don't you dare hide," I snarl. "Show me."
Her body tightens around me, trembling on the edge. I can feel her close—so fucking close—but still fighting it. Still trying to keep that last piece of herself from me.
"Let go," I order, voice breaking with my own need. "Give it to me,Róisín."
The sound of her name on my lips does it. Her eyes widen, pupils blown, and then she's shattering—coming apart in my arms with a cry that might be my name or a prayer or a curse. Her body clamps down on mine, pulsing, dragging me toward the edge.
I watch her shatter in my arms, and it's too much—her walls gripping me, her tears on my skin, the sound of her surrender in my ears. I'm gone, utterly fucking gone. My release hits like violence, crashing through me in waves that tear sounds from my throat I didn't know I could make. I bury myself deep, pinning her to the wall as I empty inside her.
"I'll kill for you," she sobs into my ear, voice broken and raw as her body milks every last drop from me. "Anyone who tries to take you. Anyone who hurts you. I'll cut them open and watch them bleed."
Christ.Her words push me over another edge I didn't know existed. I come again, harder, my entire body shuddering as she whispers dark promises against my skin.
"I'd burn this whole country down," she gasps, nails breaking skin as she clings to me. "I'd make them pay for what they did to us."
I grip her harder, crushing her against me as the aftershocks ripple through us both. Her vicious words are a balm, a confession, a vow more binding than anything we said in that church today.
We end up sliding down on the floor. Not gracefully, not ceremonially, just a tangle of limbs and heat and shattered restraint, the cold stone biting into my back as I pull her with me, refusing to let the distance return. My chest heave, hers does too—ragged, uneven, like she’s still fighting the echo of everything she’s survived tonight.
She’s crying, quiet now, tears slipping sideways into my collarbone. I cradle her head against my chest, one hand firm at her back, the other threaded through her hair like an anchor. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t joke. Doesn’t snarl. She just breathes with me, each inhale syncing slowly, painfully, until the shaking eases.
“I didn’t mean to break,” she whispers, voice hoarse.
“Aye,” I murmur into her hair. “You were already broken. I just caught you.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt, tight. Possessive. Afraid. Alive. “I hate you,” she says, like a confession.
I close my eyes. Press my lips to her temple. “I know.”
Then, quieter—so quiet it almost disappears between heartbeats. “But I love you.”
The words punch the air from my lungs. I tilt her face up, thumb brushing the tear track on her cheek, forcing her to look at me. She’s wrecked. Mascara smudged. Eyes red. Still defiant. Still mine.
“I never stopped,” she adds. “I just didn’t know how to live with it.”
Something in my chest gives way—old grief, old guilt, old fury finally loosening its grip.
“Neither did I,” I admit. “And I never will.”
I pull her closer, wrapping us around each other on the cold floor like it’s the only solid thing left in the world. Outside, the night holds. Inside, my wife breathes against my heart. And for the first time in three years—I let myself believe we might survive this.
