Page 54 of The Captive
"Like I'm being split open," she gasped, inner walls clenching around me. "Like you're fucking me so deep I can feel you in my throat."
Christ. I slid my free hand between our bodies, finding her clit with unerring precision. She bucked against me, a strangled cry escaping her lips as I circled the sensitive bundle of nerves.
"That's it," I encouraged, feeling my own release building at the base of my spine. "Come for me, Aoife. Let me feel you fall apart."
Her eyes locked with mine, pupils blown wide with pleasure. "Make me," she challenged, even as her body trembled on the edge.
I yanked her hair roughly, forcing her to arch her back as I drove into her with renewed force. "Come for me now," I commanded, thumb pressing hard against her clit. "That's a fucking order."
Something about the command—the pull on her hair, the dominance in my voice—pushed her over the edge. She shattered with a scream, inner walls convulsing around my cock in rhythmic waves that threatened to drag me with her.
"Alexander," she sobbed, clinging to me as pleasure overwhelmed her. "Oh god, don't stop?—"
I maintained my rhythm through her climax, only allowing my own release when her tremors began to subside. With a hoarse shout, I buried myself to the hilt and came harder than I had in years, possibly ever.
Afterward, we lay tangled together, her head on my chest, her breath warm against my skin. I traced idle patterns on her back, unable to find words for what had just happened between us.
"What are we doing, Alexander?" she asked eventually, voice muffled against my shoulder.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her. "I have no fucking idea."
She laughed softly, the sound vibrating against my chest. "That's reassuring."
"Nothing about this is reassuring," I replied, though my arms tightened around her. "You're an O'Malley. I work for Ronan Flanagan. By rights, we should be trying to destroy each other."
She propped herself up on an elbow, studying my face in the moonlight. "Instead, we're fucking."
"Instead, we're fucking," I agreed, reaching up to tuck a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. "And I can't bring myself to regret it."
Something softened in her expression—not vulnerability exactly, but a lowering of guards. "Neither can I." She traced the scar on my wrist, the crescent shape that had drawn her since our first meeting. "What happens now?"
It was the question I'd been avoiding since she walked into my room. What did happen now? We still had Beatrice to find. We still had family loyalties that placed us on opposite sides of a war that had been raging for generations.
"Now we sleep," I said, pulling her back against my chest. "And tomorrow..."
"Tomorrow we go after Beatrice," she finished, settling against me with surprising ease, as though we'd been sleeping together for years rather than hours.
"Tomorrow we go after Beatrice," I agreed, feeling sleep begin to claim me despite the enormity of what we'd just done. "After that... we'll figure it out."
It wasn't a promise, not exactly. But as Aoife's breathing evened out, her body warm and trusting against mine, I realised it was more commitment than I'd offered anyone in years.
Tomorrow would bring complications, recriminations, and the harsh light of reality. But tonight—for these few precioushours—I allowed myself to hold the enemy I couldn't stop wanting, and pretend that somewhere, somehow, there might be a future where this wasn't a betrayal of everything I stood for.
Sixteen
AOIFE O'MALLEY
The evening shadowsstretched across Eleanor's borrowed bedroom as I stared at my reflection in the antique vanity mirror. My hair still damp from a second shower, skin bearing faint marks from Alexander's mouth and hands—evidence of what had happened between us the night before. Between my thighs, I was still tender, a delicious ache that reminded me with every movement of how thoroughly he'd claimed me.
What the hell was I doing?
I traced a finger over a purpling bruise at the junction of my neck and shoulder. Alexander had put it there, his teeth marking me as if I were something that could be claimed. The worst part wasn't the mark itself—it was how my body responded to the memory, nipples tightening, a pulse of wet heat between my legs. How I'd begged him for more, pleaded for his marks, wanted everyone to know I belonged to him in that moment.
This wasn't part of the plan. The plan had been simple: infiltrate Flanagan operations, gather intelligence, avenge my father. Fucking the enemy certainly hadn't been on the agenda.
Except Alexander Moore didn't feel like the enemy anymore—at least not when his cock was buried deep inside me, his mouth hot against my neck, his hands pressing bruises into my hips as he drove me to the edge of sanity.
"Get a fucking grip," I muttered to my reflection, tightening the belt of my borrowed robe. "It's just sex."
