Chapter 11 Ronan
Ronan
I woke to the weight of an arm slung heavy across my chest. For a second, I didn’t recognize the smell—clean linen, faint cologne that wasn’t mine. The sheets weren’t mine either. My stomach flipped when I realized where I was.
The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the city outside and the sound of Wes breathing against the back of my neck. I remembered falling asleep on his chest. We must’ve shifted in our sleep.
His chest rose and fell against my back, warm and solid, and the hand resting over my ribs shifted in his sleep, pulling me in tighter. I should’ve shoved it off. I should’ve bolted the second I woke up. But instead I lay there, staring at the wall, and hated the way it felt… safe.
Safe with him.
My jaw clenched, and I tried to remind myself what this was. What he was. Dangerous, highly-trained. The kind of man who never lets his guard down. Except—he had. He was fast asleep, arm wrapped around me like I belonged there.
Like I wasn’t the one who’d tried to kill him, the one who’d caused the angry red gash on his side.
The one who was still trying to kill him.
It’d be easy to kill him right now. I could sit on his chest and smother him with a pillow.
I could snap his neck with my bare hands.
I could slit his throat with the knife that sat on the floor among my discarded clothes.
I could probably crack his skull with one of the expensive modern-art-looking decorations littered around the room. I could do a lot of things.
And yet what I wanted to do most of all was just stay.
But I knew I couldn’t. I shifted slowly, inching his arm off me.
He stirred, murmured something under his breath, and my heart stopped, but he didn’t wake.
Carefully as I could, I slid out from under him and sat on the edge of the bed.
For a moment, I just stared at him. His hair was a little mussed, the streaks of silver a little more noticeable.
There were lines at the corners of his eyes, his mouth—signs of age, of wear.
Things that should’ve made him look weaker, but didn’t.
They made him look like a protector.
Someone who knew how to weather the storm.
I shoved the thought away, pulling on my clothes as fast as I could without making noise. By the time I slipped out the door, my chest felt tight, my throat raw.
The late afternoon sun blinded me the second I stepped out of the hotel. And as I walked down the street, I still felt him everywhere—his hand around my neck, the weight of his body pressing me down, his cock filling me up.
I told myself I was going back to my apartment to regroup. To get my head straight. To remember the plan. To remind myself of who I was.
But all I could think was that I already missed it.
The walk back to my place felt longer than usual. Every step dragged. My legs moved on instinct, but my head was somewhere else—back in that bed, in those sheets, with him.
By the time I made it up the cracked stairwell to my apartment, I was shaking. I shut the door behind me, leaned against it, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. My place smelled like old wood and dust, not linen and cologne. The silence was heavy, not soothing.
I couldn’t get him or what we’d done out of my head.
I didn’t know it could feel like that—sex.
Before Wes, sex had been nothing more than a task, sometimes a punishment—always a performance. It was something I’d been made to do, and I’d done it well enough to survive. I knew how to fake moans, how to arch my back just right, how to choke down the bile after.
It was always about them. Never about me.
But last night… it hadn’t been like that.
Wes hadn’t treated me like just a hole to use.
He’d looked at me like I was something precious, like he’d tear the world apart if it dared lay a hand on me.
And when he touched me, it hadn’t just been about getting off.
It had been about undoing me, stripping me down, making me feel.
And God, I’d felt.
I hadn’t even known my body had the ability to feel good like that, that it could unravel in someone’s hands instead of just endure them.
And the emotions… It was everything, too much, things I didn’t have names for.
It was safety tangled up with fear. It was longing tangled with shame.
Trust wrapped around a man I shouldn’t trust.
I sat down hard on the edge of my bed, running both hands through my hair until it hurt.
I hated him for it.
Hated him for showing me that side of myself, hated myself more for wanting it again.
Because the truth was, Wes had touched something in me no one else ever had, and now that I knew what it felt like…
I wouldn’t be able to forget it. And every time I would have to be under someone else, take someone else, I would remember.
And that made him more dangerous than any weapon I’d ever faced.
I fell back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, the cracks in the plaster swimming as my chest rose and fell too fast. My body still ached in all the ways he’d left it aching, but it wasn’t pain that had me restless. It was the memory of wanting.
I wasn’t supposed to want.
That was the lesson drilled into me from the start. Desire wasn’t mine to have. My body didn’t belong to me—it belonged to Elias, to his plans, to whatever sick demonstration of control he decided to make out of me.
My stomach knotted, acid creeping up the back of my throat. I hated him. God, I hated him. His voice lived under my skin, the weight of his rules held me down, and the smile he wore when he broke me haunted my nights.
I could still remember the first time he proved to me just how powerless I was—not that I could ever forget.
There was a room full of men, the air thick with the stench of sweat and smoke.
My wrists were chafed raw from the ropes.
And Elias had watched as I learned that no matter how hard I fought, no one was coming to save me.
I swallowed hard, vomit crawling up my throat as I forced the memory back into the dark where it belonged. But it never really stayed there. It leaked out at the edges, in the way my hands shook, in the way I couldn’t stand being touched unless I could convince myself it was on my terms.
And yet last night—last night was different.
Wes hadn’t broken me. He hadn’t forced me, abused me.
He’d lifted me up and made me fly, then held me like I mattered.
That was what I couldn’t stand. That was what I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Elias had spent years teaching me that I was nothing. Just flesh, just obedience, just another pawn.
And Wes, with one night, had undone it.
Fuck.
I pressed my fists into my eyes again, furious at the sting building there. I couldn’t let myself feel things too deeply.
It didn’t hurt as much when I was numb. It didn’t eat me alive.
My skin felt too tight, and every nerve was buzzing with leftover static from Wes’s hands, his mouth, his voice.
I shoved myself off the bed, pacing the length of my apartment. Back and forth. Back and forth. My reflection in the window caught me mid-stride: wild-eyed and flushed like I’d been running.
Pathetic.
I grabbed a glass from the counter, filled it with water, then hurled it at the sink. It shattered into shards, spraying across the metal and onto the floor. A fine slice opened on the side of my palm when I went to sweep the pieces together, and I hissed through my teeth.
The sting grounded me. It was sharp, quick, and honest.
I stared at the bead of blood welling up, bright crimson against the white of my skin, and something inside me twisted. I pressed my thumb into it harder, dragging the ache out just to feel it, just to remind myself what was real.
Pain was simple. Pain didn’t lie. Pain was comfortable.
I hated that Wes hadn’t given me that.
No—worse. He’d given me something I hadn’t known I was missing. Something Elias had taken from me so long ago I’d stopped believing it existed.
Pleasure. Safety. Choice.
Freedom.
My breath stuttered, and my throat burned. I dug my nails into the cut to try to chase it all away, to shove the confusion back into something I could control.
But even with the ache throbbing in my palm, I still saw him—Wes leaning over me, voice low, telling me I was good.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to break every glass in the damn kitchen until there was nothing left but shards. Until the memory of his touch stopped haunting me. Until Elias’s shadow didn’t feel so heavy on my back.
But nothing I did—not even my blood, my pain—was enough to silence it.
I stared at the smear of red across my palm until it dried sticky and dark. My chest felt like it was caving in. My head throbbed. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt Wes’s weight pinning me down—not like a cage, but like… safety. Like belonging.
And that was poison.
I couldn’t afford it, couldn’t let it root in me. I knew what happened to boys who believed in things like safety. Elias had proven that a long, long time ago.
My phone sat facedown on the counter. I grabbed it, thumb hovering over the screen before I finally swiped it open. One number. Always the same. I didn’t need to think. Just do.
The call connected after a single ring.
“Ronan,” Elias’s voice purred, smooth and rich like oil poured over fire. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
My throat tightened, choking me from the inside. I pressed my hand harder over the sting in my palm until it pulsed. “Give me someone,” I rasped.
A pause. “Give you someone?”
“A target. Doesn’t matter who.” My voice broke, and I hated it, so I forced the words out sharper. “I need to work.”
Silence stretched on the line. I could picture Elias now, smiling that infuriating, knowing smile.
“You sound unsettled, Ro,” he drawled. “Did something happen?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Just give me a name, please,” I snapped, my voice raw.