Chapter 21 Shiloh
Twenty-One
Shiloh
We walked in silence back to the car. The air between us buzzed like electrical lines; I could still taste Ronan on my lips.
My heart was pounding as my car came into view.
Because tonight was different. I’d been fighting to keep Ronan at arm’s length and failing at every turn.
He smashed down my walls and, in turn, trusted me enough to tell me about his own brutal childhood.
Each moment spent with him drew us closer together, like the tide that stopped for nothing and no one.
Therefore, sleeping with him is a bad idea.
But when I stripped it all away, all that remained was that I wanted him in every way.
We climbed into my car, and I sat facing forward, my heart clanging madly in my chest.
“Do you want to go home?”
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Do you?”
I shook my head. “There’s a really pretty lookout not far from here. Great views. Want to check it out?”
“Yeah, I do,” Ronan said, not even bothering to hide his intentions; they rumbled through his words, slipping under my skin and raising goose bumps.
Somehow, I managed to drive the car without getting us in an accident, every part of me humming and attuned to Ronan beside me. I pulled onto the overlook that was off the main road and killed the headlights. The valley unrolled a dark carpet of forest under a half-moon and a sky full of stars.
We enjoyed the view for all of ten seconds and then reached for each other, crashing together hard. We kissed in heated, desperate need, our hands greedy. But after the third time I whacked my elbow on the steering wheel, I pulled away.
“Back seat,” I said, hearing my own intention in my voice and not caring. I could have sex with Ronan in a car, I reasoned. That didn’t mean we were serious. It meant we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, that was all. That was allowed.
We climbed out of the front and into the back, where I lay along the bench seat behind the driver’s side, pulling him down with me.
“Wait.” Ronan shook out of his fleece-lined denim jacket and tucked it behind my head like a pillow.
Damn it.
He was too good. Too considerate, while I was trying to keep this meaningless car sex. I gripped his T-shirt and kissed him roughly. He lay over me again, his body wondrously heavy and hard. His hand slid under my shirt, then down, along my left thigh, pushing my skirt up.
“You want to stop, we stop,” he said, his voice tight.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to stop.”
The fire of his kiss nearly undid me. When Ronan had permission, he took it. He was going to take me, and I was more than ready to surrender. To give him whatever he wanted. It wasn’t like me; this loss of control felt wild and reckless and exactly what I wanted.
Ronan thrust my legs apart, his hand sliding along the dampness of my underwear.
I whimpered, my own hands fumbling weakly over his hair, his broad back, down the slope of muscle between his shoulder blades. Then around the front, to the huge bulge in his jeans.
Jesus, he’s going to break me in half.
Ronan kissed me hard, his tongue invading my mouth while two of his fingers slipped past my underwear, sinking inside me. My back arched at the fire that licked up my spine, pressing myself into him. His mouth moved to my throat while his fingers stroked and rubbed in perfect synchronicity.
He continued his way down my body until he knelt awkwardly, half on the seat, half on the floor.
He pulled my panties off and tossed them aside.
In the dimness, his silvery eyes glanced up at me, checking in.
I nodded, breath held, waiting for his touch.
When it came, I cried out, my back bowing, my hands scrabbling to hold on to something.
My entire body tensed, my awareness compressing and flowing to where his mouth met my skin.
I came hard and fast, my cries filling the interior of the Buick.
“You like doing that, don’t you?” I asked, panting.
“I could do that all night.”
“Come here.” He kissed me the same way he’d gone at me—relentless—while my hands grappled with the button and zipper on his jeans. I couldn’t free him fast enough, and when I did, I gasped.
He was…
Magnificent.
I wrapped one hand around the huge, hard length of him. He closed his hand over mine, and we stroked him together—our eyes locked, our bodies rising and falling in a rhythm, our breaths coming in the same hard gasps.
“Shiloh,” he said, eyes dark, voice rough. “I need to be inside you.”
God, the raw simplicity of his want nearly made me come again.
“Condom,” I said. I took the pill religiously and wanted nothing more than to feel Ronan and let him feel all of me, but I took no chances.
He retrieved a condom from his wallet and rolled it down. My heart pounded in my chest, my breath coming short. Ronan hesitated, mistaking my need for nerves or fear.
“I’m not a virgin,” I told him and was glad that I wasn’t. Not only because Ronan was so damn huge but because I needed to remind myself this wasn’t special. It was fucking in the back seat of a car. Nothing romantic or monumental about it.
Right?
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “If it’s too much, you tell me.”
Everything about Ronan Wentz was too much.
He’s going to ruin me. Right here. Right now.
I reached for him. Needed him. Wanted him so badly I could hardly breathe.
Ronan read my face, felt my body waiting beneath him.
He poised himself over me in that tight space, and I reached to guide him inside me.
Slowly, inch by inch, Ronan pressed in, and my eyes fell shut as my mouth opened in a soundless cry.
“Shiloh?”
“Don’t stop,” I breathed. “Oh my God…”
My fingers scratched at his shoulders, struggling to hold on as our hips met, Ronan filling me completely with his hard heaviness. He grunted and drew in tighter, eliciting another cry from me.
“Shiloh, look at me.”
I opened my eyes. All I knew or saw or felt was Ronan. On and over me. Inside me. His mouth brushed mine, our foreheads touching, his gaze locked on me, silently commanding me not to look away.
I obeyed, surrendering to him. My eyes widened as he pulled back, and I whimpered as he pushed back in.
“Oh God, Ronan…”
He held me captive in his gaze, moving slowly in and out of me.
There was just the intensity of him and the pleasure building from where we were joined.
He angled his head, trying to kiss me, our mouths bumping to the rhythm of his thrusting hips.
It was too much, staring into his eyes, but I couldn’t stop and didn’t want to.
He moved faster, his biceps straining to hold him over me on the seat.
And then he hooked his right arm under my left leg.
I cried out as the angle changed, hitting me somewhere deep I’d never known existed.
Ronan watched my reaction, his eyes hooded and dilated.
Then he bent his mouth to mine in a shallow kiss—licking and biting, his hot breath gusting over my lips.
The shards of tingling pleasure coalescing between my legs were growing into a heavy pressure, deeper and more intense. My hands flailed for something to hold on to as his thrusting intensified, my palm smearing the fogged glass of the window.
Like Kate Winslet in Titanic, came the random thought, since my rational mind was breaking apart, leaving logic and reason behind. All that remained was how good this was and how I never wanted to leave this world that was just him and me.
Ronan’s thrusts were merciless, pinning me to the car seat.
I hooked my leg around his waist to lock him to me, to steady my body that was at the mercy of his, while my breasts bounced under my sweater.
A drop of sweat trickled down his cheek and dripped off the blade of his jaw, landing in the hollow of my neck.
The space was hot and cramped, and there was still too much clothing between us.
I wanted to see him naked. I wanted every inch of his body—sweaty and hard—touching mine, because Jesus, if he could do this to me in a car, what could he do in a bed?
That fevered imagining broke apart too as the pressure deep in my core raced toward combustion.
Ronan’s mouth took mine, his thrusts relentless, stoking me to the edge and then over.
I cried out as every nerve ending in my body fired, a beautiful chaos of sensation that ripped through me, pulsing hard between my legs where he was still driving in and out of me.
The tension tapered as the orgasm flowed and ebbed, and I let him have me.
“Take me, Ronan,” I whispered dully, drunk with him and the pleasure that slid through my veins like warm syrup. “Take me however you want.”
His eyes flared, and somehow his hips drove in deeper, harder when I thought he’d given me all I could take. It was raw and almost dirty how I let my legs fall open as far as they could go, giving him everything while kissing him almost serenely, completely relaxed as my core throbbed.
I felt him tense, muscles straining.
“Yes,” I whispered in his ear. “It’s yours. All yours…”
Ronan grunted and shuddered, and then a sound deep in my chest rumbled with his release that I imagined spilled deep in me, condom or not. It was mine, that release. The sounds he made as he came, the sexiest I’d ever heard. Also mine.
The little voice came back, whispering that we belonged to no one.
This was just sex. Casual, messy, back-seat-of-the-car sex.
Yet my arms wrapped around Ronan, holding him close, my hands in the damp softness of his hair as he breathed hard against me.
His chest was pressed to mine, his hardness cushioned by my softness.
My embrace a refuge for him. Every part of him welcome inside me.
Finally, his breathing slowed, and he raised his head from the crook of my neck. His hair was a mess where my hands had been in it, his face drowsy with orgasm.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’m really good. You?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
Something in his tone felt heartbreaking. Like it had been a long time since he’d been able to say that.
He kissed me softly and then gently withdrew from my body.
He disposed of the condom with a Kleenex from the box I kept on the floor of my car while I smoothed down my skirt.
My underwear was lost somewhere. I’ll have to find it at some point, I thought as the real world returned with a vengeance. I didn’t want to go.
Reluctantly, I gave Ronan his jacket back. Reluctantly, he took it.
He climbed out of the back seat. I did the same on my side, and he was already there, helping me out. My legs were wobbly and pleasantly loose. My entire body felt as if I’d slept for ten hours straight.
“Always a gentleman.”
“Not always.”
He kissed me deeply, holding me close, letting me know I wasn’t going to get away with business as usual so easily.
I sagged into his embrace, reveling in the feel of him.
His mouth—God, his mouth—and the strong solidity of him that made me feel so safe.
When Ronan kissed me, I couldn’t imagine anything could hurt me.
“Would you mind driving?” I asked. “I don’t trust my legs to work properly right now.”
He almost grinned. “I’ll drive.”
The journey back to Santa Cruz went by in a night-darkened blur outside my window. I stole glances of Ronan’s profile now and then, his gaze focused on the road in front of him. He had no idea the effect he had just sitting there, his inked forearms too damn sexy as he held the wheel.
He drove to my house and parked in the driveway.
“Wait…how will you get home?”
“I’ll walk,” he said.
I hated that. Hated that he had to try to outlast the nightmares that chased him.
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
In front of the car, he encircled me in his arms but didn’t kiss me. Instead, he studied me by the light of the streetlamp.
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “The shack.”
I arched a brow. “Are you asking or telling?”
“Telling. I want you there.”
And I knew what he was doing. Making sure I wasn’t going to freak out and ghost him again. His eyes were hard, but beneath, his doubt was the same as mine.
It’s better to be the one who leaves.
He was placing his trust in my hands and asking me not to let it fall, not to throw it away. I had to do the same. Be brave.
“I’ll be there.”
The tension in his body loosened. He kissed me again and then waited as I walked up to my front walk.
Our first date.
I waved to him from the porch. He didn’t wave back but nodded his head as I slipped inside. I slumped against the door and let out a shaky breath.
“So that happened.”
Quietly, so as not to wake Bibi, I crept to the hall bathroom—my bathroom—and started the shower.
I stripped down while hot water ran, steam filling the room.
My reflection in the mirror, naked, was the same as yesterday, but I felt different.
More than the night I lost my virginity.
My smile was softer, my eyes lit up. My skin seemed to vibrate under the surface everywhere Ronan had touched me. I didn’t want to wash him off me.
“Silly,” I murmured as I stepped into the shower.
But it didn’t feel silly. It felt like falling.