by Jane Henry
The boy grimaces. “Three.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
“Speak plainly, Deacon. Tell the truth. Men sometimes lose their tempers, but a meek man will apologize and take the punishment he’s due.”
The boy grimaces again at the word punishment, when the headmaster opens his door. He’s about Malachy’s age, tall and strong, and I wonder if all the men related to the McCarthy clan are that way. Former fighters or the like.
“Ah, Tiernan!” They’re all pleased to see him, and it makes me happy to see. The headmaster’s a tall, large man with a thick gray beard and glasses. “Welcome home, son. And I see you’ve brought a guest?”
Tiernan shakes his hand. “Aye, sir, this is Ruby.”
“Pleased to meet you. Doran Clifford.” His eyes are sharp, his grip firm. “I’ll see you at supper, then?”
“Aye,” Tiernan says, turning to leave, as Clifford beckons the boy into his office.
“What will happen to him?” I ask Tiernan. I feel so badly for the boy.
“Well, he’ll be disciplined for his fit of temper, won’t he? I would know that dance fairly well. Had a temper myself. Damn near got expelled the first day I was here, but Keenan insisted I stay. Lachlan and Nolan helped me out quite a bit. Grateful they did. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without them.”
I hold his hand as he leads me about the campus. I’m honored that he’s brought me here, that he’s taken me into this place. But deep in my belly, I know something’s wrong. I tell myself it’s because I’m only playacting, that I’m here in disguise because I’m a wanted woman. That there’s only so long this can go on. I hate that I’m a wanted woman.
Even holding Tiernan’s hand, I can’t soothe the knot in my stomach or still the trembling in my hands.
Chapter 13
Tiernan
It feels odd being back here. I imagine it’s the way a soldier might feel returning home from battle. Everything looks the same. Hell, everything even feels the same. But… I’m not the same person I was back then. I’m hardly the man I was a week ago, now that I’ve got a charge here with me.
A charge. Fucking hell, the way my mind works sometimes… She isn’t a charge. She’s Aisling. My Aisling.
I show Aisling the campus and introduce her to everyone we meet up with. Every once in a while, I do an almost double-take, she looks so different than she did before. She’s polite and adorable, damn near fetching with her hair hanging down on her forehead as she bites her lip.
She asks questions, and I do my best to answer her, but my mind is elsewhere.
Will they find us here? Is she still being pursued?
After I’ve given her the full tour of the grounds, I take her back to the room we’re staying in. She unpacks, and I call Brady.
“Any update?”
“No, brother,” Brady says. “They’re still looking for her. Someone got ahold of Vivian, and she told them she hasn’t seen Aisling since that night of the fight.”
Which would likely corroborate the suspicion that she’s a suspect in Edmund Doyle’s disappearance.
“Excellent.” I sigh. “What else?”
“So far, nothing. They’ve interviewed her flat mates, and they…” his voice trails off.
“What?”
“Well. There was an attack.”
“An attack?”
Aisling goes quiet, not moving a muscle in the bed while I talk with Brady. She knows I’m hearing something that involves her, but bloody hell, she’s got the self-control to wait. Good girl.
“Aye. The place where she lived was ransacked, Tiernan. They found… all sorts of paraphernalia. If she gets found, she’s going to jail for possession of multiple narcotics as well as suspected murder.”
I wince. Christ, no. She’s clean now. “Anyone hurt?”
He sighs. “Girl named Karla sustained a gunshot wound, bloke named Shane got shot too. Someone on the attack came there first, police after.
“Bloody hell.” She’ll want to see them, or at least talk with them, but I can’t let her.
“Lay low, Tiernan. We’ll see what we can do on our end. I’m working closely with Walsh to cover up everything we can, but you know, the prime minister’s son…”
Don’t I know it. Fuck.
I hang up the phone and turn to Aisling. “What is it?” Her eyes are wide, stark against her pale skin, underscored by her pale white cheeks.
I tell her everything. “Oh my God,” she whispers, shaking her head from side to side. Tears fall down her cheeks, and my heart aches for her. “Karla.”
“She’ll be alright, love.”
“And… what about… Shane?”
“They were both attacked but they’re fine,” I tell her. “They sustained only minor injuries.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “How, Tiernan? How will we get out of this?” She whispers. “I just… I don’t know how to deal with this. I used to… get high. Get my mind off the things I can’t handle. But that crutch is gone now.”
I take her hand. “Do you miss it?”
She frowns. “Well, no. I’m much happier sober, if I’m honest. I just don’t know how… how to really cope when things are out of control.” She stumbles over the words, and my heart goes out to her. I want to see my confident Aisling again.
I lace my fingers with hers. “Things are not out of control right now, love.”
She sighs. “They feel like they are.”
I kneel beside her on the bed and kiss her forehead, then her nose, then each cheek, until I get to her mouth. “Sometimes, you have to just keep on moving, babe. Sometimes, that’s the only choice you have.”
Keep going. Keep playing. Keep fucking fighting.
“And sometimes,” I whisper in her ear, “You give control over to someone else. You put it all down. And let someone else carry it for you for a little while.” I trace my finger down her cheek. She closes her eyes, reaches for my hand, and kisses my palm.
“Do you do that for me? Will you?’
I nod. “Aye, love. Of course.”
She opens her eyes. “How long, Tiernan?”
I swallow hard and suspect I know what she means, but I need to give her explicit answers. “How long what?”
She blows out a breath, but her voice is a whisper. “How long will you keep me? How long do you want me? When will I go back home?”
I don’t know how to respond.
How long will I keep her? Jesus.
I want her here with me. I don’t want her to go back. Not now. Not fucking ever.
Does she want me as much as I want her?
My tone is harsher than I intend when I answer her. “Don’t worry about that right now.”
“Don’t worry about it? Are you mad?”
I feel the growl low in my belly. “You’re mine, Aisling. You’re under my protection while we see to it you’re no longer a threat and you’re no longer in danger.”
“But then what? What happens after that, Tiernan? After the danger is over?”
I hold her face in my hands, and her eyes look to mine, filled with so much fear, and hope despite her fear, I can’t help myself. I need to kiss her.
I’ve seen the dark side of Aisling. And I know the light side, too.
She moans when I capture her lips between my teeth. I glide my palm along her belly and slowly lift her top. Her hands wrap around my neck, and she holds on tightly to me, her body arching into me.
So gorgeous. So fucking beautiful. She trusts me, and she gives this to me.
“But I’m not the kind of girl you take home to your mama,” she says with a self-deprecating laugh. Her voice catches.
“Not sure you noticed, babe. But I’ve got no mama. And my family fucking loves you.”
She’s crying, real tears streaming down her cheeks. When I kiss her, I taste the salt from her tears and make them my own.
I forget where I am, where we both are. I need to claim her, make her mi
ne again, to make sure she knows beyond a doubt that she belongs to me. I lay her down, my mouth never leaving hers, as we frantically strip our clothes off. Her fingers fumble with my zipper, my fingers unclasp her bra, and before I know what’s happening, we’re naked, skin to skin, my body on hers as she yields beneath me.
“Tiernan,” she whispers, her head back, neck bared. She moans when I lick my way down her neck to the fullness of her breasts, capturing first one tender bud, then the next. Her fingers tangle in my hair and her body arches into me. I glide my cock to her pussy and gently nudge the entrance. I groan when I feel her slick juices coat my shaft.
“Need to be in you,” I whisper in her ear. I capture her wrists and hold her down, then lift up just long enough to hold her gaze with mine. The wild need to possess her suffuses me. “Spread your fucking legs.”
She whimpers and obeys, spreading her legs while her eyes widen and her mouth parts in anticipation.
“Yes,” she moans as I slide into her, her eye-lids shuttering closed. “Yessss.”
Her pussy grips my cock. I groan, lifting my hips then plunging into her. She gasps with every vicious thrust, but the way her legs wrap around me and she rocks her hips to every motion, I know she needs this as much as I do.
“Yes,” she repeats, a tortured plea for more. My fingers are in her hair as I yank her head back. I want to mark her, consume her, fill her until every thought is of me and every breath she takes is mine. Her fingernails scratch down my back, and I growl in response, my cock throbbing at the feel. She’s as fucking possessed as I am.
I thrust so hard she screams, but her breaths are coming quicker, as my own pulse beats in double-time.
“You won’t doubt me, Aisling.”
“Wasn’t you”—she pants—“I doubted.”
Thrust.
Scream.
Pant.
“Then who fucking was it?”
Thrust.
Groan.
Pant.
“It’s… Jesus, it’s me, Tiernan.”
She thrashes beneath me, but I pin her down. My thrusts quicken. I want to punish her for doubting us, for thinking that anything will come between us. Not now, not fucking ever.
“You’re mine, Aisling. I want your body to remember what it feels like to have my cock in you. I want you to remember me when my hot come leaks from your pussy and your core aches with the memory of being fucked.” I reach my hand to her arse and pinch it. “I want you to feel my palm, to ache for my cock.”
“Oh my God,” she whimpers.
“I own your hot, tight cunt. I own your pretty, wicked mouth. I own your arse. You.”
Thrust.
“Are.”
Thrust.
“Mine.”
Thrust.
She screams on a climax, her wrists caught in my hands again. She’s rising in bliss, but I push her onto the bed and give into my own release, roaring through the pleasure that ravages me, pounding into her until I’m spent and we’re both panting.
“Fucking. Mine.” The rhythm slows, and she shudders through the aftershocks of climax. I blink, surprised to see her cheeks tear-stained, bright red fingerprints along her wrists, her shoulders, and her breasts.
She grins at me and sighs. “That was fucking epic,” she says, with a shrug and a giggle.
“Bloody hell,” I mutter. “Thought I damn near broke you, and you’re fucking giddy?”
“Oh, aye,” she says, giggling. I kiss her cheek, then playfully slap her arse before I draw out of her.
“Atta girl,” I say when she mewls with the loss of me, reaching to pull me back. “You don’t want to be apart?”
She shakes her head and closes her eyes. “No,” she says, her voice catching. “Hold me a little while longer, will you?”
I wrap my arms around her, roll over on the bed, and hold her to my chest. “Babe, I’ll hold you as long as you need me to.” She shudders a little, and for a moment I think she’s crying again.
“You okay?”
She nods, then she shakes her head, then she laughs.
“Shh. Please.”
I hold her in silence, gently rocking her, smoothing my hand through her short black hair.
“Didn’t know what it was like fucking a little black-haired pixie.”
She giggles and whispers, “Well, now you know.”
I kiss her fingertips, one by one. “Aye.”
She tucks her head on my chest, resting her fingers there. “I didn’t know what it was like fucking a man possessed.”
Mmm. Possessed. I like that.
Accurate.
“Well, now you know.”
She shivers. “What will we do here, Tiernan?”
Besides fucking hide?
“I can think of ways to occupy you.”
She grins. “I bet you can.”
I grin back. “Not sure. Maybe Malachy will have me teach some martial arts while I’m here.” I’d like that.
“Oh, hell yes. I’d love to see that.”
“Would you?”
She nods. “Of course I would. Except you’d better clear your schedule, because you know that gets me hot as hell.”
I lift her chin. “Does it?”
She looks at me in surprise, her eyes wide while her jaw slackens.
“You didn’t know?”
I shake my head. “Well, no.”
Her brow furrows. “I thought all you men fought just to get laid.”
I laugh out loud. “Jesus, all these years I’ve been missing out…”
She rolls her eyes. “I think we can make up for that.”
I grin at her. “I bet we can.”
She frowns and looks around the small, rather spartan room. “And what will I do here?”
I think on it for a bit. “You need to hide, babe.”
She sighs. “You get to teach classes and I get to sit in a room by myself. Sounds lovely.”
I tug a lock of her hair and kiss her cheek. “You know I won’t leave you alone.”
She worries her lip, and her cheeks flush a bit. “You know, I was very good at art at one time.”
“Art? Like drawing?”
She nods. “Oh, aye. Used to be a fair hand at it, actually. But not these days. I mean, I haven’t picked up a pencil in ages.”
I need to ask her questions. “Aisling, how many years were you… working with Vivian?”
She looks pained, but to her credit, she only nods. “Aye, nothing to hide there. Not years. I was only with her a few months. I don’t know her or the other girls that well. One could say I was… freelancing before that?”
She looks away. I grasp her chin and draw her eyes back to me. “Did you know when I lived in Stone City I was a runner for rivals to the McCarthys?”
She frowns and shakes her head. “Well, no.”
Of course she doesn’t. Hardly anyone knows.
I nod. “Keenan took me in. Knew who I was and how I’d worked for his rivals, but still took me on as one of his own. And I don’t regret it, lass.”
Her brows furrow. “You don’t?”
I shake my head. “I won’t judge you for what you did. People get desperate sometimes. And I suspect that was what happened with you.”
She’s still frowning. “I don’t understand how you can be so… how you don’t judge me.”
I kiss the top of her head. She was a different woman then, slave to the drugs and using desperate means to fill her belly and pay her bills.
“I see the woman you are now,” I tell her. I don’t tell her I also see the woman she has yet to become. I’m not even sure where the sentiment came from, to be honest. How could I see the future?
“You looked lost there for a minute, Tiernan,” she says soberly. “Are you… what are you thinking?”
“Was thinking of a future with you, lass. But I don’t want to scare you.”
She laughs. “Well, now, I saw you kill a man and didn’t run. I’ve been kept as your prisoner, fucked se
nseless, and made to obey your highness, and still haven’t run.”
I narrow my eyes but feel my lips quirk up.
“Do you really think,” she continues, “That I’m worried about you wanting me?”
I nod.
She laughs again. “Alright then, fine, you’d be right about that as well.”
I chuckle, but she quickly sobers. “No, Tiernan. I love it. I love the way you look at me. I can’t quite wrap my brain around my place in the McCarthy clan, but honestly, the thought of not being with any of you anymore makes my heart ache.”
She closes her eyes briefly, as if to process the pain of the thought of separation.
“Good.”
She blinks. “Good?”
“Aye. This is how things go, you know, lass. At least with the Clan.”
She looks at me quizzically.
“Oh?”
“Did you talk to the girls about how some of them came to be women of the clan?”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, aye, I did.”
I entwine my fingers with hers and squeeze a little. “And?”
“And I… a part of me fears such a fierce possession,” she whispers. “I’m not a submissive woman, Tiernan.”
I chuckle. “You don’t say?”
She tucks her head back onto my chest and sighs. “I just…” her voice drops. “I don’t want to be anywhere but right here.”
I hold her to me so fiercely she gasps.
“I love the girls. I love the McCarthy family. And I…”
My heart stutters. Will she actually say what I think she will?
“I’ve always had a crush on you,” she finishes, her eyes twinkling.
I hug her again. She was close. I know she was, but she needs more time.
A bell sounds in the distance, and she sits up quickly, her eyes wide and alarmed.
“What the bloody hell is that?”
I chuckle, gently pushing her off me so I can get to my feet. “You don’t recognize a dinner bell when you hear one, Aisling?”
“Seriously?”
I push out of bed and tug some clothes on. “Better straighten up that ‘just fucked’ makeup and hair, lass.”
Her fingers fly to her hair, making me laugh again.
“Oh, God.”
“You’re fine,” I say, tossing her clothes to her. “But I do want you to come with me to meet some of my old teachers, alright? We’ll come right back here after, though.”
