Page 12

Chapter 12

Claire

H e shifts above me.

From fur to flesh.

Beast to man.

The magic ripples off him like heat from the earth, and I watch it unfold—bones cracking, shadows folding, sinew crawling under skin as he reforms from the monster that just marked me into the man who’s haunted my dreams and my nightmares for ten years.

Liam O’Reilly.

Still brutal.

Still mine.

He kneels between my spread thighs, broad shoulders rising and falling like he’s forgotten how to breathe around the sight of me.

Moonlight kisses every muscle and scar, turning his sweat-slicked skin to silver.

Ink coils down his arms onto his hands and across his chest like scripture carved in sin—wolves, weapons, Celtic knots, dark symbols I don’t understand and don’t need to.

They tell a story I’ll learn with my fingers later.

For now, they just speak one truth: I’m his and he is mine.

His cock is hard and leaking at the tip, proud and obscene beneath the ink that crawls down his lower abs.

One hand drags up the inside of my thigh, slow and claiming, while the other braces into the dirt beside my head.

“I’m gonna ruin you for anyone else,” he says, voice low and ragged.

There’s no humanity in it.

No velvet.

Just gravel and promise.

My breath catches.

“Every inch of you,” he continues, the weight of his cock dragging across my soaked entrance like a countdown.

“Every thought about any other man. Every fucking memory that doesn’t include my hands, my mouth, my cock. I’m taking them. Erasing them.”

A moan slips from my lips without permission—because I want him to.

I want him to do every wicked thing those words promise.

He leans down and grips my jaw, forcing my eyes to his.

His irises are blue fire, locked to mine like they’ll drag the truth from my soul.

“You’re mine, Claire. Say it.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

It’s not just my surrender.

It’s my declaration.

“I’m yours.”

His mouth crashes to mine, all teeth and fury.

And then?—

Then he thrusts.

I scream.

A full cry ripped from my throat like lightning.

He buries himself all the way to the base and I swear I feel him in my lungs.

It’s so much—too much—and somehow not enough.

He groans against my neck, grinding in deeper as if the depth he’s already buried in isn’t enough, as if he wants to crawl inside me and stay there until I forget my name and only remember his.

“You feel that?” he growls, hips snapping hard, making me gasp.

“That’s your cunt wrapping around what fucking belongs to it. What it’s been waiting for all this time.”

“Oh my God,” I stammer, wrecked.

“Liam?—”

“That’s it. Say my name. You remember this.” His breath scorches over my skin.

“You remember it every time you walk. Every time you sit down. Every time you even think about touching yourself—this is what you’ll remember.”

His thrusts are savage now, sharp, punishing, and I can’t stop myself from begging.

My hands clutch his arms, nails dragging down his muscles, my hips lifting to meet every devastating stroke.

It’s not like I imagined—not as a girl hoping for stolen kisses and meadow sex and whispered promises.

It’s better.

It’s filthy, raw, maddening.

It’s him.

He’s pressed over me like a shield, hands in my hair, breath on my ear, body driving into mine in a rhythm that feels more like confession than conquest.

And with each slam of his hips, I feel myself unraveling.

His cock hits some bruising place inside me that drags another orgasm boiling to the surface.

“Liam—Liam I—” I cry out, trembling, light exploding behind my eyes.

“Please?—”

“You gonna come on my cock, sweetheart?”

I nod frantically.

I’m past words.

Past sense.

Past everything but the feel of him and the heat between us.

“Then look at me when you do it. Look at me while I own every fucking piece of you.”

I open my eyes—and that’s all it takes.

I shatter.

My orgasm crashes over me with terrifying force.

My body locks, my throat goes hoarse, and I can’t do anything but sob his name as wave after wave slams through me.

My nails claw down his back.

My thighs seize.

I shake beneath him, overwhelmed and wide open and completely undone.

“You should see yourself,” he snarls, voice breaking with restraint.

“Wrecked for me. Fucking perfect.”

He doesn’t stop.

He keeps pounding into me, harder now—as if my orgasm makes him lose what little control he had left.

Each stroke drives deeper, meaner, like he’s trying to brand my womb from the inside.

“Beg me to come in you,” he growls, voice hoarse.

“Tell me you want me to finish inside, fill that sweet cunt with my seed. Knot you up so I fucking live in you for days.”

“Yes—fuck—yes, do it,” I gasp, everything clenched tight.

“I want it. I want all of it?—”

“You’re gonna take all of me,” he snarls.

“You’re gonna carry me. Smell like me. Bleed with my fucking name on your lips.”

And then he slams in deep, so deep it hurts.

He holds there.

He pulses.

And he explodes with a growl that echoes in my bones.

I feel it—feel him—hot and thick, endless.

My body clenches again like it’s trying to pull him deeper, trap him there forever.

His hands cage my head, his body wrapping around mine to lock us in place as he comes undone inside me with guttural, broken sounds.

Even after, we don’t separate.

His breath shakes against my throat, his lips dragging kisses across the mark he gave me like it steadies him.

My body still trembles with aftershocks.

My hand lifts, brushing his hair back from his forehead, and finally he lifts his face from my throat, eyes blazing.

“I own you now, mo chroí,” he says, voice low, full of dark promise.

“No more running. No more hiding. You were mine before you ever knew it.”

I should be scared.

Instead, I smile.

Because deep in my bones, I know he’s right.

I belong here: beneath him, beside him, marked and filled and completely his.

His weight settles over me through the aftershocks, anchoring me to the earth with every inch of slick, sweat-drenched skin.

He doesn’t move.

Doesn’t speak.

Just presses his forehead to mine and breathes, like he’s trying to remember what it feels like to be human again.

His mouth is against my neck, buried just above the bite he gave me, the air around us thick with the scent of sex and sweat and blood and pine.

I belong to him now.

Not just in name.

In body.

Bone.

Soul.

My fingers thread through his hair, slower now.

The violence is spent from both of us, but the heat between us still hums like a low current threaded through the dark.

His voice comes rough against my skin.

“Claire. Are you okay?”

I nod, still pinned beneath him, legs trembling, bite throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

“I told you,” I whisper against the curve of his jaw.

“You’d have to earn me.”

He lifts his head at that—just enough to meet my eyes.

And then he kisses my temple.

Different from everything before.

Gentle.

Full of too many things he can’t say all at once.

“I never intend to stop,” he murmurs, gravel-soft.

We stay like that for a long time.

Limbs tangled on the forest floor.

Breathing in sync.

Our bodies cooling just enough to make the night air prickle across damp skin, the moon now lower in the sky.

The burning pulse of the bond hums along the edge of my senses like a second heartbeat.

Eventually, Liam shifts again—this time only in position, not form.

He slides an arm beneath my back and another under my knees, lifting me as if I weigh nothing.

I don’t resist.

My head drops onto his shoulder, one hand resting against the expanse of muscle between his pecs.

His heart pounds under my palm, solid and real.

We don’t speak for a while.

He walks barefoot over the soft moss and broken leaves, carrying me back toward the manor.

It feels like a fever dream.

A procession.

A turning point in a story older than either of us.

Then his voice breaks the quiet, low and hoarse.

“I never kept it.”

I lift my head slightly.

“Kept what?”

“The video,” he murmurs.

“I deleted it the same night I took it from them. You were safe. Even then.”

My throat tightens.

“Then why?—”

“Because I needed you,” he says, voice low—not ashamed, not meek.

He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away.

There’s no apology in him, no regret for the line he crossed to bring me back.

His heartbeat thuds beneath my palm, not a rhythm of remorse, but of resolve.

“I didn’t think you’d hear me out. And I wasn’t willing to walk away without trying something you couldn’t ignore.”

The woods are quiet around us, the leaves whispering above like they’re afraid of interrupting.

The weight of what he isn’t sorry for settles heavier than any apology could.

I stare at him, my jaw locked tight with the sting in my chest; rage and relief colliding like a hurricane.

“You lied to me,” I say quietly.

“You threatened me.”

His grip on me stays firm.

Not cruel, just undeniably his.

Possessive.

Grounding.

“I did what I had to,” he replies, his voice rough sandpaper against my skin.

“I won’t pretend it was justified or the right thing to do. Things that matter this much don’t come without sacrifice.”

His words wrap around me like barbed wire.

They should cut.

And maybe they do.

But that pain feels honest in a way nothing else has been for years.

“I’m not promising I won’t do it again, if it means keeping you,” he continues.

“Not when it comes to protecting what’s mine. Loving you isn’t something I can make soft or safe. It’s not tame. And it never will be.”

He’s not asking for mercy.

He’s telling me who he is.

A man made of sharp edges and darker intentions.

A man who would rather break the world in two than lose the one thing he believes was meant for him alone.

“But I’ll try to do it better,” he adds, and this time his voice wears the edge of something scraped raw with effort.

“That much, I can give you.”

No apology.

No flourish.

Just truth.

The Liam O’Reilly kind of love—dark and unrelenting, steady as a vow burned into flesh.

I don’t reply right away.

I’m still not sure what this kind of promise means.

Still trying to decide if I can survive the kind of devotion that doesn’t ask, only takes.

But I find myself shifting closer, resting my hand just over his heart, because it’s beating like it’s been waiting for me to touch it again.

I don’t know what we look like from the outside,naked and covered in dirt and scratches, but I think we look like two people who were circling this inevitability for ten years.

“I can accept that,” I whisper into the curve of his throat.

His breath catches, just for a beat.

“Thank you.”

When I tilt my head back and look into his eyes, I see the storm behind the vows he made me, the part of him already calculating what he’d sacrifice to keep me.

But I believe it when he says he’ll try, because promises given from someone like Liam might as well be deals signed in blood.

“You’ll let me have a say in our future?” I ask, and I’m not teasing.

This is the only condition I need.

I may be marked, claimed, filled—but I need to know I’m not powerless inside it.

He doesn’t laugh.

He doesn’t hesitate either.

He lowers his mouth to my bare shoulder, lips brushing below his mark.

Then he speaks low and close.

“You’re the one who decides our future,” he says.

“But don’t expect me to ever play tame. Especially if it’s to keep you safe.”

I hum in response, something between approval and warning.

“Good,” I say, voice soft but sure as my fingers find their way back to his hair.

“Because I don’t want tame.”

His cheek brushes mine.

I feel the words he doesn’t say settle between us like iron: promises forged not in tenderness, but in need.

The forest parts ahead of us as he carries me through the final stretch of trees, his bare footsteps silent against the moss and leaves.

Moonlight pools in quiet threads along the grass, painting the world in silver.

The sky remains heavy with true night, not yet bruised by morning, as though time itself holds its breath in the aftermath of everything we’ve become.

The manor looms in the near distance, a dark and elegant silhouette against the quiet skyline.

Where there had been noise and laughter, now silence reigns.

The golden wedding lanterns have been snuffed out.

Even the wildflowers scattered along the ceremony path have begun to slump, their vibrant edges wilted like the final breath of a dream exhaled.

No guests remain.

No chatter.

No movement in the windows.

The event is over, the performance has ended, leaving behind nothing but a darkened courtyard garden.

I feel everything.

I feel him, dripping from me with every slow, measured step, warmth slipping down my thighs, proof of what he poured into me.

The bond sings like a second pulse in my bones, humming raw and new beneath the arch of my ribs.

My skin throbs where his mark spreads across my throat, the shape of his fangs still sharp beneath the stitched magic of our connection.

I feel open in places I can’t name, claimed in ways no one else will ever reach.

When I close my eyes, it isn’t because I’m exhausted, although I am.

It’s with the relief that only comes when the hurricane is over, when you’ve fought the gale force winds, swam the rising floods, and still wake up with yourself in one piece.

In his arms, I close my eyes with a smile because for the first time in seemingly endless years, something in me finally settles.

This choice, chaotic and brutal, stitched in blood and lust and layered with things I still haven’t fully reckoned with, is mine.

And even with its teeth, I trust it now.

I trust what I chose.

And I trust that he chose me just as fiercely.

My alpha kingpin mate.