Tears slipped down my cheeks. “Ronan.”
His thumb brushed over my lips. “Don’t fight what you don’t have to. I’m not going to hurt you, Songbird. Not because it would be hurting myself, but because you are my reason.”
Inhaling past my fears, past my doubts, I cupped his cheek and gave him that last piece of my heart. “Okay.”
Like he always did when I cried, he didn’t wipe my tears. He spread them across my cheeks and swept the salt across my lips. “You’re beautiful.”
I laughed once in embarrassment. “Because I’m crying?”
“Because you’re crying for me,” he corrected.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I own you,” he quietly returned.
Yes, he did. “Thoroughly and completely.” I smiled.
His expression remained serious. “We have to head back.”
I reached to tie my bikini back up. “Why?”
His hand over mine, he stopped me. “I didn’t tell you to get dressed.”
Tendrils of desire raced across my heated skin and flew toward the sudden heavy emptiness between my legs. “Oh.”
His eyes on mine, his fingers trailed up my spine, and he grasped the tied string around my neck. “I’m going to fuck you, and I’m going to swim with you one more time and make love to you in the ocean. Then I’m taking you back to Miami Beach.”
My mouth watered, and my hands went to the large bulge in his swim trunks. “Why?”
“Why am I going to fuck you?”
He was so hard, always so hard for me. I wanted him in my mouth as desperately as I wanted him inside my body. “No, I know why you’re going to make love to me.” I stroked him through his shorts.
“Because?” he demanded, lifting my chin and bringing my eyes back to his.
“Because you own me.” Aching for his mouth on mine, I wet my lips. “Because you take care of me. Because you make me feel good.” I squeezed him hard. “Because you love me,” I whispered.
“More than anything.” His mouth crashed over mine, and he thrust his tongue in how I knew he could thrust his body into mine, and I whimpered for more.
My arms went around his neck, and I kissed him back with all the passion in my heart he evoked in me, but it wasn’t enough.
I needed to be connected to him in the most intimate of ways, and I needed it now.
“Please,” I begged. “I need you inside me.
His hands already at my hips, the ties on the sides of my bikini bottom released and the nothing scrap of fabric fell to the deck.
I pulled his hard length free of his shorts, and he grasped my waist.
Lifting me up, he rasped out a single demand. “Legs around me.”
I did as he said, and in the next instant, the head of his huge, hard erection was pushing at my soaked entrance. I wanted him to slam into me. I wanted his hands so tight on my waist that it would leave marks as he pulled me down while he drove himself up. I wanted his teeth on my neck, biting me how he did when he lost control. I wanted him to be hard and merciless as he took me for himself.
But my Ronan, my beautiful, controlled Ronan, did none of those things this time.
Achingly slow, gripping a tight handful of my hair, he unhurriedly filled me with crushing restraint.
When his hard length met the deepest depth of my core, he stilled.
I exhaled in the blissful second of relief the connection gave me before punishing desire ripped through me. But in the next second, he didn’t start to move in and out of me like I expected him to.
Going perfectly still, he gripped my hair with both hands and held me captive in his embrace as he stayed seated deep inside me. “We need to go to back to Miami because a storm is coming.”
Hot, bright sun all around us, it didn’t look like there was storm coming, but I knew how deceptive the weather could be in the Caribbean. “Okay.”
His expression turned unreadable, but he pulsed deep inside me. “We can’t stay on the boat forever.”
My hands feathered across his hard biceps, and my hips ached to move with him inside me, but I needed to know where he was going with this. “Okay,” I said slower, not wanting to leave this boat, but knowing logically he was right.
“There’s an oceanfront house in Golden Beach I want us to look at.”
I swallowed. No more boat. A house. Roots. A place to raise children.
Panic and hope and joy and fear all swirled together. A house was a life. The boat was a dream. I feared one and craved the other.
“I love you, Sanaa Narine.” His hold tightened. “Take my ring.” He inhaled deep. “Marry me.”
Tears welled, my core pulsed, and all at once, my fears dissipated.
I smiled, wide.
There was only one answer. “Yes.”
My always serious, always fierce, unwaveringly alpha man smiled brilliantly. Then he crushed his mouth over mine and he was moving. Thrusting deep into me, holding me close, he touched my soul, and he touched a place inside me no one ever had.
Before I could draw a full breath, my body was doing what it always did around him, and I was falling, falling, falling.
“Sing for me, Songbird,” he demanded, his lips on mine. “Come.”
Oceans parting, stars falling, heavens aligning, I didn’t have words great enough for the soul-deep love in my heart or for the orgasm that seized my body.
My legs shaking, my back bowing, the force of my release lifting me off him as I shook, I cried out. “Ronan!” Oh my God. Oh my God.
Standing to his full height, still driving into me, his angle changed. My back hit the dash, and a second orgasm came at me like a tidal wave, then I was screaming.
It hurt, it felt too good, it was too intense, it wasn’t enough.
“Ronan,” I sobbed.
Gripping my waist, his eyes locked on mine, he slammed into me deep and held me tight. “Feel me, Songbird. Feel me fill you.”
His hot seed pulsed deep inside me.
Crying, shaking, panting, I felt him everywhere. “I do feel you.”
He pulsed again deep. “I love you.”
A tremor went up my spine. “I love you more.”
Leaning over me, he brushed my nose with his. “Not possible.”
Covering my lips with his, he slid his tongue in, and slow and languid, he stroked through my mouth with the laziness of the hot afternoon. Expertly tangling his tongue with mine, always dominant, always in control, he set the pace of the kiss and worked me into a new fury of desperation. My back still against the boat, I tangled my hands in his hair and gripped as he grew all the way hard again inside me.
Then he thrust his tongue and his hips at the same time, and I was moaning into his mouth.
But the friction made his release start to drip out of me, and I pulled back. “You’re coming out of me.”
His face serious again, he issued a command. “Arms and legs around me.”
I complied because I never didn’t comply when he was like this. Everything he did made my body sing and my heart soar.
Tucking me tight to his chest with an arm around my back and one under my legs, he stood to his full height and stepped away from the bridge. But he didn’t walk below like I thought he would. Instead he strode to the back of the boat.
Looking down at me, keeping me secure in his arms, he gave me one warning. “Hold your breath.”