“You would have done this anyway? With an audience?”
He pulled me to my feet and held me close. “Only for you.”
We hovered in that moment, our lips inches apart, his eyes boring into me, smoky and hot. He leaned in, brushing that mouth of his against mine, sending sparks dancing down my neck, my chest, hardening my nipples.
But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he pulled his iPhone from the back pocket of his jeans. “Music.”
My eyes widened. “Are we dancing?”
He made a noncommittal sound and showed me the phone. “I made a playlist of stuff I thought you might like.”
My heart…
He pressed the first song and Dua Lipa’s “Physical” played over his phone at a medium volume. “Don’t want to disturb them,” he said with a nod at the butterflies.
For a second, all I could do was stare at this man who was miles deeper than anyone knew. Considerate and kind beneath his hard stare and black ink.
Then I smiled as joy—running on the currents of the music—poured out of me. I danced on the platform, letting the song and euphoria carry me where they wanted to go. I took Ronan’s hands and tried to get him to join me, but he shook his head and pulled out of my grip.
“I don’t dance.”
“You’re just going to watch?”
“Yes.”
God, how he could load one syllable with so much sex was beyond me.
Ronan crossed his arms and leaned against the railing, and I could feel his heated, hooded gaze watching me as the night sky darkened to dark blue velvet.
The song ended and “Umbrella” began. I closed my eyes and let Rihanna’s voice take me too. I thought I’d feel self-conscious with Ronan watching me but instead, I felt electrified. Uninhibited. I moved to him, turned my back to him, pressing myself against him. His hands came up and took hold of my hips.
“Fuck,” he gritted out, his lips near my ear, his hands sliding up my waist to my breasts. I slid out of his grasp and tossed him a coy smile.
“If you want to touch me, you have to dance.”
He started to shake his head when the song ended and Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” came on. A softer, slow song. I pulled him to the center of the platform.
“Now you can touch me.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, hardly moving. My arms went around his neck, my hands sinking into his hair. He pressed his forehead to mine, and the world disappeared. Just him and me, sharing a breath, his eyes locked on me. The playful sexiness mellowed and deepened, and I drew in a breath at the potency of the moment. What I felt for him. How much I felt for him.
So much. God, help me, it’s so much.
Ronan’s lips brushed mine and then he kissed me. Shallow and soft. Then harder, his tongue delving into my mouth. The fullest, most complete kiss of my life, the sucking pull drawing everything from me, and I let it. The kiss took over and there was no more dancing. Only the song’s lyrics floating over us among the sleeping butterflies.
On your corner in the pouring rain…
A moan fell out of me and my arms around him tightened. The moment swelled in me and crashed over, so strong it scared me.
“Ronan…?”
“I know,” he breathed, his hands sliding up my back, holding me tight to him as if he’d never let me go. I hoped he wouldn’t.
“Take me home,” I whispered. “Your home.”
He didn’t protest like I thought he might. He only nodded and kissed me a final time. Wordlessly, we cleaned up and packed the lights away but for one to lead us back.
The night was thick and warm, summer was fast approaching. Ronan took the wheel and drove us to his apartment complex. In the parking lot, he killed the engine but didn’t get out.
“I don’t live with my uncle,” he said in a low voice. “I only said that so I wouldn’t seem weird. A high school guy who lived alone. But I do. I live alone.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“When you were hurt, you never mentioned an uncle who might be worried about you. But I think I suspected even before that. You never talk about him.”
He faced forward, his lips drawn.
I reached over and sunk my fingers in his hair at the back of his head. “It’s okay. I don’t like it, but I don’t think it’s weird.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I don’t like that you’re alone.”
He looked to me, his gaze drinking me in. “I’m not tonight.”
Ronan led me to the upstairs corner unit with OFFICE marked on the door.
“It’s not much,” he warned, letting me in and flipping on the light.
He was right—the place was small and simple but clean. What struck me most was its emptiness. No pictures on the wall, no photos of anyone on the coffee table. No sign that anyone lived here. As if I could look in the closet and find Ronan’s suitcase still fully packed.
The loneliness of it broke my heart but hardened it too with fierce pride. More evidence that Ronan was pushing through the horror of his past the best way he knew how—suffering in silence to keep it from touching those he cared about.
“Show me the rest.”
He led me to the bedroom with a tiny, attached bathroom. The room was sparsely furnished—a bed with a plain dark comforter, a nightstand, a dresser. No art on the walls, no photos.
I turned at the foot of the bed. He was at the door, waiting for the verdict.
“Come here.”
He crossed to me in two long strides. His mouth found mine while my hands gripped him at the waist and pulled him close. He unzipped my dress in the back and I pushed the jacket off his shoulders. His shirt went next as my dress pooled at my feet. Down to my bra and panties, I wrapped my arms around Ronan and was enveloped in the heat of him. If there was a heaven, this was it. His warm skin, his hard muscle, and his heart beating against my ear.
I pressed a kiss there, then over his tattoo. The owl on his shoulder watched me with orange eyes. But I was no longer a stranger.
Ronan unclasped my bra, pulled it off my shoulders while we kissed with shallow, wet, licking kisses. His eyes drank me in, his hands on my breasts—they fit perfectly in his palms. He bent and his hair tickled my chin as he put his mouth to one hard nipple.
I moaned as he bit and sucked, sending shivers dancing up my chest and down my back, between my legs. My panties were already damp.
When my breasts were aching and heavy from Ronan’s relentless mouth, I pushed him away and fumbled at the button and zipper on his jeans. His erection strained against the denim and I reached inside to grip him. To stroke him while his mouth blazed a trail of wet kisses up my neck to my ear.
“Ronan…” I breathed. “I need…”
I needed him naked. I needed to be naked beneath him. Or on top of him, riding him until he came hard and deep in me, nothing left between us. No more rules or labels. Just him and me.
Ronan lifted me up and wrapped my legs around his waist to take me down to the bed. He settled himself over me, bracing himself on his forearms while his groin dug into mine, the stiff denim hard between my legs.
“Take those off,” I breathed and lay back, watching him as he stripped down to his boxer briefs.