Chapter 16 - Ronan
The porch light is on when I come up the path, and I know she waited up, which both surprises and warms me.
I shouldn’t be glad she’s awake, though, because I’m in no state to see her.
Tristen’s betas were waiting for us when we reached land—it was an ambush, with real numbers for once instead of the token watch they usually deploy with so many harbors to patrol.
They’re clearly rattled, but they’re also getting more organized.
They’re still losing, though, and they know it, so they came at us in the dark, hitting hard, but unprepared for how hard we’d hit back.
I got every one of my men out. That’s the part that matters.
I put myself between one of my younger recruits and a wolf twice his size, blocked him, and took a set of shifted jaws to the shoulder for it, along with a gash down my ribs from another.
But we hurt them more and left the shore together, gone before they could close the trap.
We won despite the odds, because I was the only one injured, as it should be if I’m the one leading them, while they had multiple casualties.
But even though I’m on dry land now, I can still feel the fight running through my veins.
I shifted and healed the worst of it; the rest will take care of itself overnight.
I could go to the clinic to get it wrapped, but I don’t. My feet take me straight home because the urge to be near her is too fucking hard to ignore.
The whole way back, I could feel my wolf pacing, wanting even more blood despite spilling so much. He’s been like this for weeks—almost too big, close, and hungry, like he’s outgrowing me. The only one who ever makes him feel calm is her, and I’m too worn down tonight to pretend I don’t know it.
I see her through the pane of glass in the door, and she’s off the couch the second I walk inside, the blanket sliding off her knee onto the floor, and whatever she was going to say dies the moment she sees the blood.
“Goddess…Ronan,” she says, and she’s moving toward me before I can brush it off. I know it looks worse than it is now. “Sit down. Sit down.”
“It’s nothing,” I tell her.
“It’s not nothing, you’re bleeding all over our floor.
” She says ‘our floor’ and I don’t think she even picks up on the slip, but I do.
I let her walk me to the kitchen and push me into a chair with more strength than I was expecting.
She comes back with a medical kit and starts working the buttons on my shirt in a way I don’t mind at all, then drops to her knees in front of me, and I have to fight to stop my wolf from wanting to take over and let her work despite the fact I’m enjoying the view.
Getting injured suddenly seems worth it.
“This needs cleaning,” she says. “Hold still.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply dutifully.
She gives me a dirty look, but there’s no bite in it; she looks genuinely concerned, which makes me cringe slightly, because I’m not used to it.
She works the shirt off my shoulder, gasping at what’s underneath.
I almost tell her she should have seen it before I shifted to kickstart the healing, but I don’t.
She cleans the gash along my ribs first, being so careful that I find myself holding my breath because this type of touch feels so different.
Her fingers dance along my skin, and I feel a warming calm begin to settle in my bones.
I glance down at her and look at her face, so full of concentration, but there’s something else, too, a sort of serene magic written across her beautiful features.
My wolf realizes what she’s doing before I catch on—it’s the bond magic at work.
I watch as she finishes with my ribs and moves to the bite injury on my shoulder, which is the worst. She cleans the grit that remained after the shift, and she seems almost frustrated when I don’t flinch as she has to apply more pressure, as though annoyed that I’m not more upset about the situation.
I let her tilt my arm where she needs it, let her press and tape and patch me up.
I’m very aware that I’m doing what I never do, which is sitting still and letting someone take care of me.
“You’re quiet,” she says, not looking up.
“I’m always quiet,” I shrug, and she holds my shoulder more firmly.
“Not like this.” She presses a clean cloth to the shoulder for a moment, sitting back. “They were waiting for you tonight. Weren’t they?”
I don’t ask how she knows. She lives in this house, and she talks to the pack. She’s not stupid.
“An ambush,” I say. “First real one they’ve tried. I got everyone home, though.”
Her hand stills against my chest. “And if you hadn’t? If you hadn’t got everyone home?” She looks up. “Would it have been worth it?”
Any other night, I’d tell her to leave it. Say something just cutting enough to kill the whole conversation. But for some reason, I don’t have it in me tonight. The fight’s drained out of me and left the truth too close to the surface, and I can’t be bothered to hold it down.
“It didn’t happen because I didn’t let it,” I reply. “But no, losing people is never worth it. It happens, though, that’s war.”
“Does it have to be a war?” she asks, but it’s not really a question, and I think she knows it’s not one I’m going to answer.
She looks at me as the silence stretches before lifting her hand from my shoulder and laying it against my jaw, and the warmth follows it as I close my eyes like a fool who has almost forgotten to be on guard.
When I open them, she’s even closer, with her face tipped toward mine and her fingers still on my jaw. The room’s gone quiet around us in a way that has nothing to do with the fact it’s so late, and I can see the desire warring in her eyes.
“Ronan,” she whispers, and we both know she’s full of hesitation.
I should walk away; my wolf is so close to the surface, and she’s very breakable; I have no business reaching for her tonight of all nights.
But I reach for her anyway.
I tangle my hand in her soft hair and bring her mouth to mine.
She comes, not a hint of hesitation, which surprises me, but I’m not going to question it.
She pushes off the floor where she’d been kneeling, and I pull her into my lap.
The kiss isn’t soft or gentle; it’s full of the days spent waiting for more.
“Your shoulder,” she says against my mouth.
“Don’t care,” I mutter.
“You’ll tear it open,” she protests, trying to shift her weight so she’s not leaning on my injury, but I hold her firm.
“Then you’ll just have to do the work,” I laugh, dragging her hips down onto mine, and she gasps when she realizes I’m already hard for her, straining at the front of my jeans. “Let me watch you take what you want for once.”
Her breath shudders, and for a second, I think she’s going to turn and run, but then she stands and reaches down to pull her shirt off over her head, and the sight of her knocks whatever’s left of my sense clean out of me.
My wolf is right there at the surface, no longer interested in the bloodthirst of the evening or the war, only her.
And the word he keeps pressing against the inside of my skull. Mine.
I get my hands on her and drag a thumb across her nipple.
She arches into it, and I lean in and take the other in my mouth, sucking until she whimpers and her hips jerk against me.
She straddles me, and I feel her core against my jeans, chasing the friction, and I let her ruin us both like that for a while, my mouth moving from one breast to the other, her hands fisted in my hair, until she’s shaking in my arms.
I could probably come just like this, with the weight of her on my lap and the pressure against my cock, but I’m going to make sure I’m buried deep inside her.
I move to her throat, my hand wrapping gently but firmly against her flickering pulse and holding her there.
“You’re mine,” I say against her skin, low.
She rocks down harder in answer, and I feel pure lightning shoot down my spine.
“Off,” she says, pulling at my waistband. “We need these off.”
I lift her up onto the island, strip what’s left off her, and kick off my jeans. She reaches for me, and I catch her wrist and ease her back instead, spreading her open on the edge of the island.
“Slowly,” I tell her, even though slow might be the death of me. “Let me get you ready first. You’re still not ready for everything I can give you.”
She starts to argue until I slide two fingers through her folds, and she seems to forget the words as her head tips back.
She’s soaked, slick, and almost ready, and the noise she makes when I push into her is filthy enough to make my cock jerk, and I have to grip the end to slow my own burn.
I work her open slowly, curling my fingers up into the spot that makes her hips buck, dragging my thumb over her clit in tight circles until her thighs are shaking on either side of me and she begins to ride my hand without even realizing what she’s doing. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“There she is,” I murmur. “Take it all, Selene.”
She’s close already. I can feel it in the way her tight channel flutters around my fingers and the way her whole body’s gone tight. I ease off just before she tips over the edge, because I’m a selfish bastard and I want her coming on my cock instead.
“R-Ronan…please.” My name is pulled from her lips, and I grin as she begs. “Please…I need…”
“I know what you need,” I tell her, pulling my fingers out and hauling her against me. She wraps her legs around my hips, but then pauses, pushing me back down into the chair and straddling me again.
“You’re supposed to be careful,” she says, looking right at me. “Remember.”
She sinks down onto me one agonizing inch at a time, and I groan as I grip her hips to guide her down.
She’s so tight and wet, so hot around me that my vision goes white at the edges, and I grip the chair hard enough to crack it to stop myself from driving up into her before she’s ready.
She braces her hands on my shoulders, being careful of my injury even now, and works herself down slowly until she’s taken all of me, until I’m buried to the hilt, and she buries her head against my neck.
“Selene.” Her name comes out raw. “Look at me.”
She does. And she holds my eyes as she starts to move, tentatively at first with a slow roll of her hips that drags me almost all the way out of her and takes me back in deep, and there’s nothing guarded in her face.
None of the careful calculation she usually wears.
This is all us, and the genuineness of the moment hits me hard.
She builds the pace agonizingly slowly, and I feel every inch of her innocence, which only makes it sexier.
Eventually, she finds a rhythm that I respond to as I flex my own hips, forcing my cock deeper.
She shudders in my arms but maintains the pace, chasing her own pleasure as though she has every right to wring it from my own body.
And I span her hips with my hands, guiding her deeper, giving her more and more, watching her the whole time and knowing I’ll never tire of seeing her come apart like this.
I reach my hand between us and find her clit, and she cries out as I run firm circles on the swollen bundle of nerves and grinds down harder, riding my fingers and my cock at once until I feel her channel tighten impossibly around me.
“That’s it,” I growl against her throat. “Let me feel you. Come on my cock.”
And she does. She breaks apart on top of me with my name in her mouth, clenching around me so hard it punches the air clean out of my chest, and that’s all it takes.
I follow her over the edge, gripping her hips, spilling into her with a growl as my canines burn with the desire to mark her, but I hold back. Just.
I pull her against me hard because I don’t trust myself to look at her yet. My wolf is so close to the surface. I know that’s all she’d see in my eyes. She doesn’t protest; she curls into me, her heart slamming against mine, and for a long while, neither of us says a word.
Surprisingly, she presses a kiss to the bandage on my shoulder, soft, like she’s sorry for whatever put it there. “You should’ve gone to the clinic,” she murmurs.
“Came home instead.” The word home is out before I think about it, and I feel her go still against me when she hears it. Home. I’ve never once called this place that out loud.
And that’s when I feel it.
She’s gone soft and heavy against my chest, her breathing has evened out, and as she settles, I feel it move through me—it’s her magic, threading into me. It feels warm and locked in tight. It worked. The whole reason I took her, the reason I started this, is mine now, and I feel stronger already.
I should be triumphant. I should be lying here planning the crossing, the meeting I’m going to call tomorrow, and the three alphas I can finally put down now that I have what I came for.
Instead, that’s not what I’m thinking. I’m too consumed by her warmth, the feeling of her still wrapped around my cock, the sweet smell of her hair, and the softness of her skin. And that scares me more than the new, powerful surge of magic running through my veins.
My wolf is smug and sated. Ours, he says, like it’s already settled.
It isn’t settled. Nothing about this is settled, because I haven’t let myself want anything this badly, with this little say in keeping it, since I was a boy.
I tighten my arms around her and don’t let go, telling myself it doesn’t matter and it’s only for tonight.