Chapter 25 Shiloh #2
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 sank 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, pulling 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, 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. “Take everything off.”
Then I lay back and watched him strip down to nothing. He tugged my panties off and tossed them aside and ground his hips down. Mine rose to meet them, straining, the urgency tightening in me like a knot, needing and wanting him so badly I could hardly think.
He reached for the nightstand drawer.
“Don’t,” I said, pulling him back.
“You sure?”
“I’m on the pill. And have a clean bill of health. You?”
He nodded. “Had a workup before I left Wisconsin.” His gaze deepened. “And there’s been no one but you.”
“Same,” I said. “I want to feel you inside me. And I want you to feel me.” I hardly recognized the woman saying these things. But this was the first time I’d been in his place, the first time in his bed, the first time we’d been naked together. “I want all of you.”
His brows furrowed; his expression looked almost pained as he kissed me.
The entire vibe in the room changed. Downshifted from something raw and heated to slow and intense.
Ronan positioned himself over me, blanketed me with his body, so perfectly heavy.
Perfectly masculine in every way. He kissed me deeply, thoroughly, his hands holding my face, and he settled deeper into the V of my body.
“Oh God,” I moaned, arching into that first perfect thrust. Ronan was so big, so heavy and hard, touching places inside me. The feel of him without anything in the way made me dizzy.
“Shiloh, fuck…” He bent to kiss me, still holding my face. “You feel so good. Christ, so good…”
His hips rolled, undulating like a wave, slow and deep.
Our skin, naked and sweat-slicked, touched in a hundred places.
I felt myself begin to unravel. The slate gray of Ronan’s eyes and the beauty of his face became one reality while the heavy ache he stoked where we were joined became another.
Every touch, every thrust drew me tighter, the ache becoming sharper, glassier, and stronger than anything I’d felt before.
He kissed me until kissing became impossible, and then it was just his eyes on mine and our bodies moving somewhere below, automatically rising and falling, my hips lifting as his came down.
The beauty of the night—the butterflies and the lights, the food and the dancing, and now this…him. Ronan was right there, giving himself to me.
All I could do was let go, the last of my reservations and protections crashing down as the orgasm swelled up. I pulled him tight to me, wrapped my arms and legs around him, our bodies moving like one entity, the two of us burning in one fever.
I cried out as I came, unraveled completely, delirious and lost in the best way.
Ronan came hard moments later. I clutched him to me, my core throbbing, my body humming everywhere.
A few more erratic thrusts and he collapsed on top of me, his face in the crook of my neck, his body shuddering with the last of his orgasm. His hard chest pressed against my breasts, his heartbeat pounding with mine.
I wanted him to stay there forever.
“Too heavy,” he murmured and rolled away, only far enough that we still lay tangled in each other.
He slept, and I kept my vigil over him until my eyes drooped, then I slept too.
And there were no nightmares.