“Do you know how hard I get every time I think of you?” His words scrape rough against my ear, all filthy promises. I shake my head once, helpless, my toes curling in my heels as the bass pounds through me, every beat dragging me closer to ruin.
“One thought of you and I’m fucking gone. I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe without you tearing through my head. It’s a brutal loop—how you taste, how you sound when you fall apart for me—and it’s driving me insane. I want to drag you back to me, tear down every wall you’ve built, ruin you until there’s nothing left but us. I want to own every breath, every scream, every piece of you. You’re mine, Lily Davis. You’ve always been mine. No one else will ever get you, ever touch you, not while I’m still breathing. I’d burn the whole fucking world before I let them.”
My breath shudders out, ragged and uneven. His confession is too much—too vicious, too desperate, too him—and I’m drowning in it, drunk on champagne and lust and the way he unravels me. How am I supposed to form words when his voice hits like bullets, and his touch has me teetering on the edge of something divine?
So I don’t. Instead, I rock my hips into his hand, letting my body answer for me. My pussy clenches around his fingers, as he mouths down my throat, licking and nipping at the spot just below my ear, the one only he’s ever found, the one that makes me fall apart without shame.
“Speechless? That’s okay, baby. I can do the talking for both of us. Just work that sweet cunt against my hand and give me what I want. Show me how much you’ve needed this, needed me. Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you?”
His words twist around me, dark and filthy, and the flick of his wrist tips me over the edge. I clench down on him, shattering, every nerve lit like firecrackers. For one devastating heartbeat, it’s only him—the weight of his fingers, the heat of his body, the way he makes me forget. Pleasure seizes me, merciless and blinding, until clarity tears through like ice water.
I shove him away, hard, my chest heaving, shame crashing in as fast and brutal as the orgasm had been. My limbs shake, my breath catches, and all I can think is how I let this happen. After everything. After all the hurt, the betrayal, the wreckage he left behind, Istilllet him touch me. I still shattered for him. Like nothing has changed between us… when the truth is, everything has.
He stares back at me, chest heaving, lips swollen and raw, eyes dark with the same hunger and madness still rattling my bones. There’s no apology there, no excuse on his tongue. Just him—relentless, consuming, a temptation I should have burned out of me long ago.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I whisper, my voice brittle. “What the fuck is wrong withyou?”
He doesn’t answer. And I don’t wait to hear him try, I don’t give him the chance to twist the truth into something prettier,to try and justify it, to drag me back into the fire I’m desperate to escape. Matthew O’Malley has already stolen too much of my life, and I won’t let him pull me under again. Not when I know damn well nothing has changed. It would be the same cycle of sneaking around, promising to look for a way out, with the added tension of dodging hate-filled looks from the men I once considered family.
I pivot on my heel and step back into the club—the blaring lights, the thrum of the music, the crush of bodies pressing past me, grounding my racing thoughts. This is where I belong, or at least where I’ve convinced myself I do. The life I’ve painstakingly built over the past year—the carefree fashion student, the camgirl radiating confidence and control—wraps around me like a shield. But even as the familiar chaos of the club embraces me, it feels fragile, like smoke slipping through my fingers. Every pulse of the music drags him back into me, reminds me of how he owns every corner of my skin, every inch of my memory.
Cora spots me first from her spot at the bar, then Abbie twists to see what's caught her attention. Concern flashes in their eyes, sharp and quiet. They each take a step forward, but I shake my head. I need space, and thank God they don’t push it. Instead, with frowns tugging at their lips, they stay put, their guards flanking them silently. A year ago, Liam or Aidan would have had orders to follow me, but now… they don’t. It’s a separate issue I don’t have the mental energy to untangle right now.
Not when Matt is still in my veins, like a toxic poison I can’t purge. His words echo in my head, his touch imprinted on every inch of me. I feel him in the back of my mind as I move through the crowd, hear his breath in the music, smell him in the lingering heat of my skin. Part of me is furious at myself for letting him claim me, for letting my body betray me, but anotherpart—an undeniable, aching part—is already waiting for him. Already craving the next time he will find me, take me, own me.
Chapter 28
The moment her body slips from my arms, the club collapses into silence.
All I can see is her. Every inch of her. Her skin still flushed from my mouth, lips swollen, eyes wild. The way her body arched into me, trembling, desperate for something she refuses to admit, and then the way she ripped away, like she could escape me if only she moved fast enough. I can’t stop replaying it, memorising every shiver, every curve, every gasp. She’s burned into me, seared into my veins, and I’d follow her through fire or hell just to feel her beneath my hands again.
But now she’s gone, slipping through the crowd and disappearing out of my line of sight while I’m left here like a man who just lost a war he started himself. I almost chased her,almost tore across the club, through the crowd, into whatever reckless freedom she sought—but I didn’t.
Instead, I watched the girl who owns my soul—no matter how much I fight it—run from me like I’m a fucking monster, the guilt crawling in. I still don’t know the full truth, still don’t know how to take down the damn ring we’ve been hunting for far too long. Nothing has changed… and yet, in a single fraction of a second, everything has.
Because I know now there’s no way I can let her run from me again.
I shouldn’t have touched her. Shouldn’t have burned my hands on the lace of the lingerie I sent, shouldn’t have pushed her to the edge, shouldn’t have pressed my cock against her hip until she trembled. I should have walked away, left her as nothing more than a memory, a fantasy and maybe then, I could have kept my distance for good.
Because the cold, hard truth is she deserves better than me. Better than the chaos I’m about to drag her into. Yet even if she looks at me like I’m the monster she’s feared—like I’m the worst thing in her life—I can’t walk away anymore.
I clench my fists until my knuckles scream, jaw tight, tasting the ghost of her on my tongue. The silk of her skin still stains my fingers, a phantom I can’t scrub away. Every nerve in my body is alive with her heat, and yet, beneath it, a chasm of guilt yanks at me.
My throat burns, raw from the way she kissed me, from the way I kissed her back, like I’d die if I stopped. I’m not sure I’m breathing until I taste blood where I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek.
Then my name—spat out sharp and furious by Cora—snaps me out of the haze Lily left me in. My eyes jerk from the lastplace I saw her, swallowed by the crowd, and land on Cora and Abbie. They’ve abandoned their perch at the bar, closing in with arms crossed, eyes blazing, like they’re one second from tearing me apart. My chest tightens. I shouldn’t care about them right now. I should focus. But all I can see is her—her flushed skin, the way her body arched into me, the trembling heat of her against my hand—and I’m caught between wanting to flee after her and facing down the two women who actually have the sense to make me answer for myself.
I’ve walked away from men with guns, men with grudges, men who would bleed me dry for information or revenge. But I can’t walk away from them, not when they’re tied to her, not when they know more about her than almost anyone else in the world.
“Don’t,” Cora snaps before I can even open my mouth. “Don’t even try to explain this to me.”
“She was… she was doing okay. She was getting better,” Abbie says, her disappointment cutting almost as deep as Cora’s fury.
I try to find words, but the memory of her—her scent, the taste of her lips, the curve of her spine under my hands—leaves me mute.
“I never wanted to hurt her,” I rasp, voice barely more than a ragged confession.
“Oh, fuck off,” Cora spits. “Do you think we’re stupid? You’re the reason she’s been bleeding for a year. The reason she can’t sleep. The reason she won’t let anyone in. And now you just—what? You show up here, sniffing around like a dog, and expect her to fall back into your bed? Nothing has changed, Matt. Can’t you see that?”
