Page 28 of His Forced Irish Mafia Bride

She let out a short, humorless laugh. “I was free.”

My eyes narrowed. “You don’t understand what that means right now.”

“And you do?” she fired back. “Because from where I’m standing, all I see is you controlling me and calling it protection.”

A silence followed that was heavier than the argument itself.

My voice lowered. “You left a controlled environment after an attack.”

She stepped forward this time. “I left a prison you put me in.”

That landed harder than anything else. It was direct, the kind of statement that refused interpretation. I moved closer without realizing it at first. The distance between us shrank in small increments, tension tightening instead of breaking. She noticed, but didn’t acknowledge it.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” I said.

“I’m thinking perfectly clearly.”

“No,” I replied, sharper now. “You’re reacting.”

She laughed once, brief and cold. “And you’re controlling.”

“You don’t know what people will do to get to me.”

“You keep saying that like I’m supposed to care about my life,” she fired back. “Maybe I’m tired of living inside a war you refuse to explain properly.”

My gaze hardened as my control started to fracture. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with,” I said, my voice lower now, tighter.

“And you do?” she snapped. “Because all I see is you deciding what I’m allowed to know, where I’m allowed to—”

She moved to step past me. She didn’t get far. I blocked her without thinking..

She stopped short, the distance between us collapsing in a single beat. We were close…too close, suddenly.

The atmosphere completely changed, like the room itself had forgotten how to breathe. I realized it a fraction too late, and she realized it at the same time. Neither of us moved away.

Her eyes flicked up to mine, anger still there, but now tangled with something else. “Move,” she said.

I didn’t, and it wasn’t because I was testing her. “You can’t walk out after everything that just happened,” I said.

Maeve let out a short breath that was almost a laugh, but sharper. “Or what? You’ll lock me in a box instead of a penthouse?”

“Stop pushing me,” I said quietly.

Maeve tilted her head slightly. “Or what, Sean?”

That was the moment everything broke. I reached for her wrist—not thinking, not calculating. Instinct.

I pulled her closer just enough to hold her in place, but the second we made contact, the entire dynamic collapsed into something neither of us was prepared for. Maeve reacted instantly. She didn’t retreat; she met me head-on and refused to pull away. I didn’t even think about it. I just pulled her in and kissed her.

The kiss happened fast and uncontrollably, all pressure and no permission. It struck me like a flash of lightning, and the amount of pleasure that washed over me was unimaginable. It wasn’t gentle. It was built from everything sitting between us since our first meeting—anger, restraint, a fear neither of us named, control that stopped working, defiance that never softened.

I froze for half a second. Then I lost it. My grip hardened, anchoring her against me. She matched my energy with equal force, refusing to yield even in that moment.

It turned into something all-consuming almost immediately. Her lips went over mine with ease. I pulled her face into mine and bit her lower lip.

Her breasts brushed my chest. Our breathing turned uneven. The room disappeared in pieces, and nothing else mattered for a few seconds.

I pulled back first. Maeve followed a fraction of a second later, both of us caught in the same aftershock. We just stood there, staring at each other like we’d just crossed a line neither of us had agreed to draw.