Chapter 7 #2
“You’re ticklish,” she said with wonder, finding that endearing.
Ronan’s eyes glowed with an inner fire that lit her up inside.
“I’ll have you know I’m a champion tickler,” she warned.
He caught her wrists and pressed her palms against his chest. “I’ve ways to torture, too. Tread carefully, or you’ll discover what they are.”
“Oh, I hope so,” she breathed, reaching for him again but using more pressure, her fingers sliding into the neatly trimmed hair.
His dry laugh was both amused and resigned.
He was so physically superior to any other man she’d known previously. The lankiness of men her age had seasoned into broader shoulders and thicker, heavier muscles. But more than the obvious—and delicious—physical maturity was the sheer animal attraction he radiated. It intoxicated her, made her a creature of wants and needs without rational thought.
Still cupping her jaw in one hand, he outlined the curves of her lips with his thumb before pressing between them. She caught him between her teeth, stroked the tip with her tongue, then suckled firmly and rhythmically.
“It won’t be now,” he murmured, his eyes on her in the filthiest of stares, “but soon, I’m going to fuck this sassy mouth and slick your lips with my cum.”
His coarseness intensified her desire, and she whimpered, suddenly thirsty and so hot that perspiration misted her skin. She nipped him, and he yanked his hand back with a muttered curse. Beyond aroused, she couldn’t stop herself from pushing his shirt off his shoulders, restraining his arms with it, and rubbing her body against his.
“ Dieu , give me strength,” he groaned.
She caught his lower lip between her teeth, her hands busy pulling his shirt the rest of the way off. He caught her up and took her mouth, the kiss so ferocious she was bent backward over his arm, yielding and pliant in his embrace. He grabbed her butt and squeezed, pulling her into the hardened steel of his cock.
Hands in the mass of his hair, Ireland held on and drank him in, the taste and feel of his lust overriding any possibility of shame or inhibition. She felt free in the most dangerous way, no expectations, no rules. Just raw need and the man who encouraged it.
“Fuck me,” she muttered into his mouth, “before I lose my mind.”
He softened the kiss, nibbling and licking. “You won’t regret this?”
“Not even a little. Although you might. I’m a little wild about you if you haven’t noticed.”
Straightening, Ronan lifted her feet from the floor and walked toward the dais. She wrapped her legs around him, debated her next move, then gave in to the instinct to press her wet pussy against the flexing ridges of his abs. He stopped mid-stride, capturing the length of her hair around his forearm. He pulled gently, snaring her attention.
“You’re more than a little wild, cher . You’re feral and merciless.”
“You like it,” she gasped, thrusting against the silky line of hair leading down to his penis, marking him with her scent. More, she liked it. She’d never been so brazen.
“You have no fucking idea.” He lunged toward the bed, taking the short steps in a rush.
They shifted together as they fell, her Krav Maga training and his quick twist enabling them to land on their sides. Their bodies came together in a tangle of passionate need. She clutched at him, her fingers caressing the hard muscles bracketing his spine. Her legs twined with his, her lips open to the skilled stroking of his tongue. When she reached frenziedly to open his slacks, Ronan pushed up onto his knees to give her more room to work, still hunched over her in the searing wild kiss, his hands wandering all over her body as if to learn every inch of her by touch.
Ireland moaned in protest as he pulled away, but he only reached down to yank his fly open so roughly the material ripped. The sudden loud tearing was a shock to her senses… and like a match to tinder. A violent tremor wracked her body, her lust instantly at a fevered pitch. She reached for his cock, feeling the velvety soft tip as it strained above the waistband of his boxer briefs. She growled when he rolled away from her to reach for the nightstand drawer.
She followed, wrapping herself around his flexing back like a vine. Her lips slid over the sharp talons of ink covering his shoulder and the length of his arm, her hands traveling down his sides and grabbing his devilishly fine ass. He was hard there, too, leanly muscular from head to toe.
“ Merde ,” he growled, “you’re a menace!”
She almost laughed, but her lips and fingers had run over scars, some faint, others thick and uneven. Pulling back to look, she gave him space to rise onto his knees instead. Ronan held a condom wrapper between his teeth as he shoved his ripped trousers and boxer briefs to his thighs, his cock straining high and hard against his lower belly, the broad head wet with excitement.
A shiver moved through her at his size, startling even though she’d fantasized that he would be extravagantly perfect everywhere. He deftly rolled the condom on without looking, his gaze on her. His chest had a fine sheen of sweat, and his breathing was fast and rough.
Ronan Boudreaux was like a thoroughbred stallion, and she couldn’t wait to ride him. “Hurry up already and give me that big, beautiful cock!”
Laughing softly, he folded over her and pressed his damp forehead to hers. “You’re robbing me of the preliminaries.”
“Tease.” She tilted her head back to lick his lips, her hands pulling at him to lower his strong, solid body to her but unable to move him. “Sadist.”
He cupped the back of her knee and widened the spread of her legs, sinking his hips between them. She squeezed his butt, hurrying him, moaning when he took himself in hand and rubbed the crest of his penis between the slick folds of her pussy.
More. More! Thrusting her hips up, she took the first inch with a breathless cry.
He groaned as his entire body went taut as a bow. “Grab the headboard,” he ordered, his voice so gruff it took her a second to understand him. “ Asteur! ”
She’d barely managed to press her palms flat against the lacquered mahogany before he thrust deep and hard, possessing her to the hilt. Her cry was thready, her fevered body absorbing the shock of entry, her pussy so wet it gave no resistance. Stretched tight around the thick, unrelenting hardness of his penis, she panted beneath him, eyes wide and unseeing. She was so close to orgasm it was a screaming tension inside her.
“Oh my god,” she gasped, her hips moving in involuntary tiny circles, her body seeking the relief she needed so desperately. She’d never been with anyone so well-endowed, and the feeling of utter fullness was like a drug in her veins, sliding through her in heated pulses of delight that echoed in the rhythmic squeezing of her pussy around his cock.
“Stop moving,” he said hoarsely, his lips moving against her throat. He held his weight aloft with one hand planted on the bed while the other pinned her hips down. “Give me... a second.”
“Ronan…” His name came out slurred, her senses overloaded with the scent and feel of him. The crisp hair on his chest abraded her stiff, aching nipples in the most delicious way, and she couldn’t stop moving, too restless to be still. “Please.”
He circled his hips, and they moaned in unison.
“ Bon dieu , you’re tight as a fist.” He rubbed his cheek against hers. A stream of Cajun French poured from him, and she grasped enough to understand that he praised her. Tu es magnifique… exquis… merveilleux .
Wrapping her legs around his hips, she spurred him with her heels, finally taking in their reflection in the mirror above. She saw the scars she’d felt and touched them again, Ronan quivering as her fingertips learned their shape and texture. His ruined slacks were bunched beneath his magnificent ass, the cheeks clenching and releasing as his body urged him to move. That he fought the need to thrust made no sense to her lust-addled mind, and then that became clear, too.
“Let go,” she coaxed, pressing kisses to his temple. “I’m your tigress. I can take you.”
“Ireland…” The sound of her name in his richly decadent voice affected her powerfully.
And then he moved, withdrawing from her in a heated glide. His following thrust was as smooth as his charm but shattered her. She began trembling and couldn’t stop.
Ronan hummed, slid a hand beneath her hip, and lifted her. His subsequent withdrawal was as easy as the first, but his surging drive was hard and fast. Her back bowed as pleasure sizzled through her, her orgasm hovering on the precipice.
“Not just wild,” he noted with hoarse, strained amusement. “You like a hard ride.”
She watched, dazed, in the mirror above them as his entire body flexed on his next forceful thrust. The stroking of that big cock was sublime. The sight of him still partially dressed excited her further. It became a struggle to hold on to him, her arms and legs refusing to cooperate. “It’s y-you,” she told him, her voice breaking. “I’ve never been this hot for it before.”
He kissed her, a lavishly erotic plundering of her mouth that revealed how close to the edge he was. Shifting again, he gripped her by the nape and adjusted the angle of her hips.
Then he started to fuck with all the power of his muscular body.
Her abrupt climax was so violent she seized with it, her body straining into his hold. Her pussy tightened on his driving cock, then pulsed around him in greedy ripples. His feral growl increased her pleasure, the orgasm rolling through her in waves. And he didn’t stop.
Possessed by his utter domination of her body, she could only cry out as he nailed her into the bed, his hips swiveling as he thrust, displaying an athletic carnal skill that pushed her too swiftly to the edge again.
“Ronan… wait…” she gasped, overwhelmed.
But he just changed his angle and tempo, finding a spot inside her that set her off like an explosion. She screamed as the orgasm burst through her, the sensation multiplying as he growled with triumph and targeted that sensitive place with his hammering drives, stroking it over and over with the heavy crest of his thick erection. He watched her, his gorgeous face flushed and glistening, eyes dark and hot with lust, learning what worked for her by gauging her responses.
It felt like hysteria. A frenzied madness. Sweat poured from them both, their bodies sliding fluidly against each other. The flex of his muscles against her, the knowledge that he was using every bit of his strength to rut into her with savage need, was the most carnal experience of her life, and watching him fuck her seared into her memory.
She was too hoarse to cry out when the next climax hit her if the previous one ever ended at all. She trembled with the surfeit of sensation, her fingernails scraping across his skin. Ronan tensed, his gaze losing focus. Then he tossed his head back and roared, the sound of his pleasure so raw and feral her pussy tightened possessively around him. His climax was as violent as hers had been, his hips pounding his cock into her as he emptied, his neck straining against the power of his release.
His teeth ground audibly as the orgasm tore through him, but gradually, his desperate cadence began to falter, then slow. The rigid tension of his body relaxed, and he moaned her name, wrapping his arms around her before he fell panting onto his back with her tucked against his side. His chest lifted and fell beneath her cheek as he gasped for breath, his big body quivering.
They lay like that for long minutes, her arm slung around his waist and his around her shoulders. He moved away only once to toss the condom in the bedside wastebasket, and the effort clearly cost him. Then he tugged her close again. The tremors felt like aftershocks, both of them twitching until Ireland laughed.
“You know… it could be argued that it was always going to be the fuck of the century because of the delayed gratification, and now that we’ve wrecked ourselves, it’ll never be that good again.”
Ronan turned to her and pressed a kiss into her tousled hair. “Are you making that argument?”
“I’m just saying.” Her fingertips circled his nipple, and she smiled as it hardened. “We’ll have to do it again to prove them wrong.”
“That’s a given, cher .” His head fell heavily into the pillow.
“Why wait?”
Raking a hand through his lion’s mane, Ronan laughed breathlessly. Then his gaze met hers in the mirror above them. She gave him a come-hither look.
Growling, he rolled over her again, and she broke into laughter, holding him off with both palms on his chest. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”
He snarled into the crook of her neck, and she tickled him, forcing him back until she straddled him.
“I’m going to need a minute,” she told him. “And lunch. I’m starving. You should feed me.”
Ronan sat up, and they were face to face, with her arms and legs wrapped around him. His smile made her feel a little tipsy. “Okay.”
She pressed a quick kiss to the tip of his nose and stretched toward the bedside phone. “You’re too easy, you know that. I can’t believe you can go again already.”
His hand caressed the length of her back, and she felt his lips against her skin when he replied, “It’s you.”
Closing her eyes, she enjoyed a secret smile. Yeah, it’s you.
Sharing a corner of the suite’s dining room table with Ronan, Ireland watched him pop a slice of the sushi roll she’d ordered into his mouth and smiled when his brows lifted in obvious enjoyment.
She gestured at him with her chopsticks. “See? Told you.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I believed you.”
Sitting cross-legged in the dining chair, she took in the sight of him. He wore only well-loved jeans, the top button undone because he’d pulled them on after the doorbell had rung. Before that, he’d been sprawled half on top of her, alternating between lush kisses and worshipful attention to her breasts. Her nipples were sweetly sore from his gentle suckling and teasing tugs of his teeth.
Ronan made her feel like a goddess. Like she could do anything, be anything. Solve anything.
“My dad takes his sushi very seriously.” She took a quick drink of iced green tea. “He insisted on a sushi restaurant here at the hotel, then talked his favorite local sushi chef into making the move here. And now Chef Sato has a host of awards to his credit and has global recognition thanks to the many guests who’ve discovered him. My dad has an unbelievable gift for finding talent and amplifying it.”
Nodding, Ronan continued to eat with an unusually closed expression. He had an appetite, which she chalked up to how hard he’d worked in bed. She’d hoped, dreamed, and fantasized that the wildness she sensed in him would be fully revealed during sex, and she was so, so glad to have been right.
She sighed. “I know you don’t agree with how my family kept me in the dark about this whole situation, but once you get to know them, you’ll see how great they are.” She flashed him a bright smile and teased, “They raised me, and you like me, so they can’t be all bad.”
He reached over and took her hand, lifting it to his lips. “I adore you.”
“I need you to know that I will help you fix this mess. I’m really good at what I do, and what I don’t know I can learn. I’ll be a helpful partner, I promise.”
His nostrils flared, and he set his chopsticks down. “You’re talking about Vidal.”
“Of course, silly. What else? As far as I know, we don’t have any other messes.” She frowned. “Do we?”
“No, we do not. A bit of a locational problem for now, but that’s easy to resolve. Why would you want to ‘fix’ Vidal? You participated because it’s expected of you.”
“Well…it’s always been there,” she hedged.
Ronan shifted in his seat to face her. He was so incredibly beautiful sitting there in just his jeans. So open and accessible in exactly the way she’d yearned for him to be. Yet there was still so much to learn. She wanted to ask him about his scars and the meaning of his tattoo sleeve. The tribal design was a tornado of dangerously sharp objects spiraling down from the ubiquitous talons on his shoulder like layers of hell: razor blades, concertina wire, flames, and knife tips—all rendered in deep liquid black.
“You’re a woman of high passions, and that’s the most passionless defense you could make.” His jaw tightened. “You want to save it for your father, not for you.”
“What does it matter, really?” Leaning forward, she set her hand on his knee. “We’ll get to work together. And I can’t wait to see you in action. I expect it’ll make me horny.”
But he didn’t smile as she expected him to. Or tease her as he so often did.
“Or do you have people who take over from here?” she asked. “Will you not be involved?”
“No, I’ll personally be the one to dismantle it and sell off the parts.”
Ireland blinked at him. “That can’t be the only solution. There has to be a way to save it.”
“I don’t want to save it, and neither do you.”
Confused, she shook her head. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” he insisted. “That’s been obvious to me for some time.”
“What are you talking about? We never even discussed Vidal.”
Impossibly, his expression became even more closed. His growing remoteness stung.
She pushed back from the table and stood. “So, you don’t want to go to the trouble of fixing it. Well, I do.”
He caught her hand and held it as he stood, too. “Your father owes me a large debt, Ireland. This is how he pays.”
“I’ll pay you! And if I don’t have enough, my brother is Gideon Cross, and he’ll pay you.”
“Money won’t buy your father out of this.”
Ireland looked at his implacable, austerely gorgeous face, and her heart sank. “Explain, please.”
“You need to ask him.”
She tugged her hand free. “Ask someone who hasn’t told me anything thus far? Ask that guy? Why won’t you tell me?”
Ronan set his palms down on the tabletop. “Because it’s his story to tell.”
“Bullshit. That’s bullshit. So, you don’t care at all what I want? Or what I think about all of this?”
“I already know what you think of it, Ireland, and you’re relieved, even if you don’t want to admit it. You’ve fulfilled all of their expectations. Your conscience is clear. I’m buying you out—take the money and do what you want. You’re free.”
Shaking her head, she backed away from him. The end of Vidal would devastate her father. She was still haunted by finding him crying at his desk, struggling alone with this massive problem. Christopher couldn’t know, or he would’ve attended today’s meeting.
“Ireland.” Ronan moved to follow her.
“No. Don’t.” Pointing a finger at him, she ordered, “Stay right there. You waited until I knew your name to fuck me, but your agenda was okay to keep hidden? Was screwing me part of your revenge? Are you going to throw that in my father’s face?”
Anger tightened his mouth. “You fucked me believing I’d take the hit for your father’s colossal mismanagement. Are you having regrets now? Was saving Vidal a condition to having sex with you?”
She pressed a hand between her breasts, massaging the sudden pain that pierced her. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“It doesn’t feel good when someone you care about insults your character, does it?”
The door to the second bedroom flew open, and Jules ran headlong into the room. Skidding to a halt, he looked at Ireland, then his brother, eyes widening as he took in their appearances.
He whistled. “You’d best get dressed, beau-frère . I’ve been keeping her daddy waiting around on you, but then he got tired of her not answering his calls and looked up where she is on some app he’s got. He was marching toward the hotel when I saw him last. I had to sprint through that madness out there to get here first.”
Ireland was already darting for her shoes.
“Wait a damned minute, cher ,” Ronan snapped. “We’re not done talking.”
She slung her duffel over her shoulder. “I heard what you had to say.”
“ Maudit , you’re too old to run when your daddy doesn’t like your choices!”
Thrusting her arm through the handles of her Birkin, she skirted Jules with a nod of greeting and farewell and hurried toward the door with shoes in hand. “He’s not the one I’m running from, asshat.”
She sensed Ronan lunging for her without seeing it. When his hand caught her biceps, she shifted to the side, tucked her elbow close, and spun, sending him stumbling back with a palm strike to the abdomen. Then she was out the door.
The ding of the service elevator set her running down the hall in the opposite direction, toward the guest elevators she’d ridden up in. She heard Ronan’s door open as she turned the corner and braced herself to hear him shout her name. Instead, she heard her father.
“McCaffrey! Is my daughter in there?”
Ireland stabbed at the elevator button, then dug into her purse for her phone. She texted her mom.
I’m buying you out.
Then she texted her dad as she stepped into the elevator.
Hey, I’m at the offices. When you get back, let’s work out our battle plan.