No.
I shove her away—hard, rougher than I mean to.
She stumbles back onto the bed, the force knockin' her off-balance.
"Don't," I snap, voice comin' out harsher than intended. "Don't fuckin'—just don't."
Emmaleen curls into herself immediately, knees pullin' up to her chest, arms wrappin' around her legs. She makes herself small—impossibly small for someone who moments ago was reachin' for me like I was salvation.
And then she starts cryin'.
Not the performative tears from before, when she was beggin' for her King and her Master. These are different—raw, broken, the kind of sobbin' that comes from somewhere deep and unreachable. Her shoulders shake with it, her whole body tremblin' as she presses her face against her knees and justbreaks.
I stand there, still hard, still breathin' too fast, hands clenched into fists at my sides.
Father Patrick's voice cuts through the chaos in my head, sharp and knowin'.Lorcan, mah boy, what've ya done now?
"Fuck off," I mutter under my breath.
Ya brought her here. Ya cuffed her to yer bed. Ya got hard lookin' at her throat. And now she's cryin' on yer sheets and ya don't know whether to comfort her or call Giovanni and beg him to take her back.
"I said, fuckoff."
But he's not wrong.
I don't know what I'm doin'. Don't know if I'm helpin' or hurtin'. Don't know if draggin' her away from Giovanni was an act of mercy or just another layer of cruelty in a situation already so fucked up I can barely see the edges of it anymore.
All I know is that she's naked and broken on my bed, cryin' like the world's endin', and my cock is still thick and wantin' against my jeans because apparently I'm just as much of a monster as Giovanni.
I'm just better at pretendin' I'm not.
I suck in a deep breath.
Let it out slow.
And then I pull my phone out of my pocket and find his number.
Giovanni picks up on the first ring.
His growl is deep and his words are hard. "Aboutfucking time."
11
"Aboutfucking time," I snap into the phone, my voice raw with barely controlled rage.
Lorcan's accent comes back at me. "Giovanni, listen—I know how this looks, right, but I was only tryna protect ya. Uncle Fearghus, he sent me to yer place on orders from the LaRiccias, they wanted dirt on ya about Rico, evidence ya killed their boy or kidnapped him or—but I wasn't lookin' for anythin', I swear on Saint Patrick himself, I was never there tofindthings, I was there to report back that there was nothin' to find, that ya had nothin' to do with Rico goin' missin', that it was all just?—"
"Lorcan."
He doesn't stop. The panic in his voice escalates. "—and I know I shouldn't have been in yer house at all, shouldn't have used the codes from when I put your security in, but I thought if I just got in and out quick, filed the report sayin' everythin' was clean, the LaRiccias would drop it and ya'd be safe, and I never meant to?—"
"Lorcan," I repeat, harder this time.
"—she just appeared, Giovanni, came walkin' out of yer library wearin' nothin' but that collar and I just—I lost time, I don't even remember decidin' to grab her, it justhappenedand now she's?—"
"Lorcan."
Silence.
