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My body locks except for my lungs, and I keep my torn up back to him, hiding Sera’s flushed face and bare breasts.

Her eyes pop wide and our gazes stay tangled.

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Alasdair sent me lookin’,” he says. “You don’t have a minute.”

“Fine,” I bite out. “Then give me thirty fucking seconds.”

I know he’s gone when the door clicks shut, and then reality bleeds back in under the lust.

Sera lies beneath me, dress caught around her hips, chest rising hard, eyes locked on mine.

She knows how close we came.

So do I.

I get off her before either of us can mistake it for something else.

“Get up.”

I push to my feet before I touch her again and drag my shirt from the mat, pulling it over the scratches burning down my back. The fabric catches against torn skin. I let it. Pain is useful. Pain reminds a man what desire makes him forget.

Sera rolls onto all fours and stands, pulling the front of her dress up. She fixes herself with her chin lifted, breasts tucked away, hair wild around her face.

I didn’t chase her for this.

I wanted her cornered. Wanted her to fight.

She needed to learn that under all that mouth and Tallon pride, I could put her back in my house, on my mats, beneath my hands.

Nothing more.

“You’re not leaving until I say so.”

Her eyes narrow. “Try stopping me.”

I step closer, slow enough to give her time to move. Except she holds her ground.

“That’s the problem with you, Sera,” I say quietly. “You dare me, then hate me for understanding the invitation.”

I turn for the door, tucking in my shirt tails as I walk, forcing my breathing into line, forcing the hard, ugly throb in my blood back under discipline where it belongs.

If Sera Tallon thinks this has changed anything, if she thinks marking means she’s taken something from me, she is mistaken.

She came here to stand beside her friend.

So she can stand in my home and watch me take Eilish’s hand. Watch me put a Harrington diamond on her best friend’s finger and know there’s not a fucking thing she can do about it.

Chapter 10

Sera

I follow Fionn back to the house with Eilish’s borrowed heels back on my feet, and my panties soaked under the dress.

We both know what was about to happen. Even if he chased me, pinned me to the mats, and took my nipple into his mouth. He still did it.

I got to him.