Goon Number One's grip tightens, cutting off just enough air to make the point without making me pass out.
Not yet, anyway.
I blow out a breath through my nose—controlled, measured—and let one final thought crystallize before this goes exactly where I knew it would.
Emmaleen.
Every calculated risk I'm taking in this moment—every deliberate word I chose to provoke them, every step I allowed them to drag me forward through these gates—it's all for her.
If I don't end this here, today, she'll spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for the LaRiccias to figure out she's a living witness to the murder of Luca's heir.
That's not a life, that's a punishment she didn't earn.
And I cannot stand for it.
So this is for her.
Not for the family back in Pittsburgh.
Not for territory, or pride, or some abstract concept of honor.
Forher.
Because somewhere between red shoes and an epic never-ending poem, she became the one thing I never expected to have.
Someone worth protecting at any cost.
In about thirty minutes—assuming I live that long—she'll never have to worry about the LaRiccia crime family again.
Something hard cracks against my temple.
White light.
Then nothing.
20
I stand in Lorcan's kitchen with perfect coffee in my hands and his note staring at me from across the marble counter.
Tonight, I'm going to teach you Position Tertia. It involves the altar, your wrists cuffed behind your back, and my mouth between your legs until you forget how to recite the prayer. We'll see how long you can hold stillness when I'm making you come on my tongue.
My pussy clenches.
I set the coffee down before I drop it.
The fantasy builds itself—Lorcan's gray eyes watching me arranged face-down on cold stone, wrists locked behind my back, legs spread. His mouth between my thighs while I recite prayers I can barely remember through the pressure of his tongue circling my clit, slow then fast then slow again, building me up and backing off until I'm sobbing in broken Irish I don't even speak.
Heat floods between my legs, slick and immediate.
My hand drifts down before I consciously decide to move it.
Fingers slide beneath the waistband of Lorcan's sweatpants, finding wet heat.
God.I'm soaked.
And then?—
No self-touch.
