Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RONANNEVERSAWit coming. Muriel’s apartment door barely opened before two hands planted on his chest and shoved him back.
“You son of a bitch!” Muriel yelled at him.
“I guess I had that coming...” he murmured. But she didn’t even know about his mother—about how big a bitch the woman had been.
“Yes, you did!” Muriel said, her voice shaking with anger. Then her green eyes widened with surprise as she stared at him. “You admit that you do?”
What did she know? That he’d talked to Arte? He wouldn’t put it past the little bastard to have approached her and directly asked for money. No. He probably wouldn’t be that direct. He’d be sneaky and underhanded. Like Simon had said, Arte was a con artist.
“What exactly are we talking about?” he asked.
She pushed him again. But she wasn’t strong enough to hold him back. He stepped inside the apartment and kicked the door closed behind them.
“What?” she asked. “Are you afraid that someone might overhear us? Are you afraid of making a scene?”
He laughed. “I don’t care what people think.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “You don’t want the bar association thinking you did anything wrong.”
“I didn’t,” he said.
But he was beginning to believe that he had. Even if it was unknowingly.
“I talked to Allison McCann,” she said.
“That bitch!” Outrage coursed through him. “She gave you a bill?”
Muriel laughed. “No. She thought I was going to hire her, though.” And she laughed again until a snort slipped out. Then she tensed.
And he laughed.
“She is a bitch,” Muriel said. “But she’s a bitch who’s loyal to Street Legal. She wouldn’t tell me who ordered the smear campaign.”
His stomach churned with the guilt swirling through it. “I did.”
“I know,” she said. “Edward told me.”
“Who’s Edward?”
“The bitch’s bitch.”
He laughed as he realized she was referring to Allison’s assistant.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Why did you have to smear me in the press, too?” Hurt darkened her green eyes. “Wasn’t it enough to beat me in court? You won. Why did you have to win that badly?”
Tears streamed from her eyes, but she squeezed them shut. Then she turned away from him as if she was embarrassed that she was crying.
He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. Her tears were killing him. But he knew he couldn’t take back what was already done. He owed her something, though.
Maybe it was because she turned away that he was able to tell her the truth. Not about talking to Arte.
He wasn’t ready yet to admit how wrong he’d been. But he could explain why he’d been wrong.
“I did it for my dad,” he said.
She turned back then, her brow furrowed in obvious confusion. “What? That makes no sense...”
“I take every divorce case for my dad,” he said. “Because he should have divorced my mom. But he could never bring himself to do it—no matter how badly she treated him, how many times she cheated on him.”
“Ronan...” She touched him, just her fingers on his arm.
But his skin tingled with the contact and he shivered in reaction. Or maybe he was just suddenly very cold as he relived some of those moments from his past.
“They fought all the time,” he said.
“That must have been horrible,” she remarked, her voice soft with sympathy.
He wasn’t looking for sympathy. He just wanted her to understand. “It was...so bad that I ran away. That’s how I met Simon and Stone and Trevor.”
“On the streets...”
She must have heard the story. Allison McCann had put out several press releases touting the rags-to-riches story of the lawyers of Street Legal.
“So all the stories about you and your partners were true?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“It must have been rough.”
He chuckled, but with a bitterness he’d never been able to leave entirely behind him. “Living on the streets was safer and easier than living at home.”
“Are your parents still together?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. My father and I don’t talk about it anymore.” But they talked once a week—about the weather, sports, the practice...anything but his parents’ marriage. That was the arrangement he’d made with his father—once he’d contacted him again. “And I want nothing to do with my mother.”
“I am not your mother,” Muriel said. “I didn’t cheat on Arte.”
“I know that now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
But he knew an apology was not enough to make up for what he’d done to her. He wasn’t sure what it would take for her to forgive him. Moreover, he wasn’t sure what it would take for him to forgive himself.
* * *
Muriel watched Ronan turn away from her and head for the door. He was just going to walk away?
“Coward!” she called after him.
He stopped and glanced back at her over one of his broad shoulders. “What?”
“You’re running away again, just like you did when you were a teenager,” she said.
His lips curved into a slight grin and amusement glinted in his dark eyes. “You think I’m running from you?”
“Maybe...”
Or he was running away from what he’d done.
Or from what he’d admitted to her about his past.
“I didn’t think you wanted me to stay,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that,” she said.
“You’re a passionate woman.” His dark eyes gleamed with passion of his own.
And Muriel’s heart began to pound fast and furiously. Even as angry as she was with him, she had missed him. Badly. Her body ached with an emptiness only he had been able to fill.
He stepped closer to her. “You’re the most passionate woman I’ve ever known.”
“Is that a nice way of calling me a slut again?” she asked as she tried desperately to hang on to her anger. It was safer to be mad at Ronan than to be mad about him.
He chuckled. “I never called you a slut.”
“Liar.”
“I just let other people call you that,” he said, and his handsome face twisted into a grimace of regret. “I’m sorry about that.”
“You believe me now?” she asked.
He opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come. He wasn’t any more sure of her than she was of him.
But did it matter right now?
She wanted him too much to care about the past. Neither of them could change that. It had already happened.
She wasn’t worried about it happening again. She wasn’t married now. She probably wouldn’t get married again. Obviously, she couldn’t trust her judgment.
And because she couldn’t trust her judgment, she wasn’t ever going to risk her heart again. So she was safe having sex with Ronan—because sex was all it would ever be.
She also wanted a little revenge, though, for all the terrible things he’d had McCann Public Relations spread around about her.
“Muriel,” he began.
But she pressed her fingers to his lips to stop him. “Shh...” she said. “Don’t say anything you don’t one hundred percent believe.”
He closed his mouth.
And regret tugged at her. But after what he’d told her about his mother, she shouldn’t have been surprised that he would find it hard to believe her—especially when so many people, people she’d thought were her friends—had testified against her.
He touched her chin, tipping it up. She hadn’t even realized she’d bowed her head.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured again.
She shrugged. “I don’t believe you one hundred percent, either.”
After Arte and those people she’d thought were her friends had betrayed her, she couldn’t trust anyone, least of all the divorce lawyer who’d represented her ex.
He flinched but said, “I understand.”
“But tonight, it doesn’t matter what’s truth or fiction,” she said. “Tonight, nothing matters but pleasure...”
“I’ll give you pleasure,” he promised as he lowered his head and brushed his mouth across hers. His lips clung, nibbled, and his breath panted out between them.
It had been too long since he’d kissed her. It had only been days but it felt like years. Long years.
And she knew in this he spoke the truth. He would give her pleasure. But that wasn’t all she wanted tonight. She stepped back, away from his kiss.
He opened his eyes and stared down at her, his jaw tense, as if he was worried she had changed her mind. So she reached for his hand and tugged him along with her toward her open bedroom door.
And he chuckled. “So you’re going to take me up on my offer?”
She wouldn’t have been able to refuse. “I have one of my own,” she told him as she dropped her hand and walked over to her closet. “Let me show you a really good time.”
“Did Bette design something new for you?” he asked, and he almost sounded like a kid asking if Santa Claus had delivered presents.
“Bette’s always designing something new,” Muriel said—with surprise that her friend could think of so many things to do with bows. “I guess she’s been particularly inspired lately.” Thanks to his friend.
“Lucky for me,” he murmured.
“Not tonight,” she said. “Lingerie isn’t what I have in mind.” She pulled out the sashes of a couple of bathrobes and grabbed a couple of scarves. “This is what I had in mind...”
His dark eyes narrowed, and his grin slid slightly away from his handsome face. “What do you want to do with those?”
“Tie you up, of course...”
He laughed, but it wasn’t with amusement now. “And what? Take pictures of me lying there naked and helpless to sell to some tabloid? Or will you just leave me here?”
If he was naked and helpless, she doubted she would be able to leave him.
She shook her head. “I want to tie you up so that you can’t touch me. Only I can touch you. Only I can please you.”
He stepped closer to her and pulled the makeshift bindings from her hand. “This is about control,” he said. “And you know it.”
Heat rushed to her face as she remembered how smart he was. Of course he would know that she wanted to be in control and she wanted to take his.
That was going to be her revenge for what he’d done to her—to drive him out of his mind. But maybe she didn’t need to tie him up in order to do that.
He’d driven her out of her mind every time they’d had sex, and he had never once restrained her.
But she tugged on the ties he held now and murmured, “Ronan, please...” as she stared up at him through fluttering lashes.
He chuckled and murmured back, “No...” He bunched the ties into a ball, which he threw out into the hallway. Then he kicked the door closed, as if he didn’t trust her not to try to use them on him.
“You really don’t want me to tie you up,” she said.
“I really want to touch you,” he told her. And then he proceeded to do just that as he reached for her shirt and lifted it over her head. After he tossed it aside, her hair swirled back down around her bare shoulders.
She had skipped the bra entirely tonight. “Sorry—no Bette’s Beguiling Bows...”
His hands were already cupping her breasts. “I don’t mind. If I’d known you were braless...”
“What?” she asked.
He leaned down and brushed his lips across one nipple. Then he replied, “I would have done this sooner.” And he licked the other one.
She shivered as pleasure coursed through her. She wanted him so badly.
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t tie me up?” he asked as he moved his hands to the waistband of her yoga pants. After pushing down the knit material, he stroked his fingers over her bare ass. She’d skipped the underwear, too, tonight. “I can give you much more pleasure when I can touch you.”
But when he touched her she lost control—and she was losing it now.
Her legs trembled, her pulse raced. She was one more lick or stroke away from an orgasm already. That was how quickly and powerfully he affected her.
And she wanted to do the same to him.
So she reached for him. He must have come to her right from work or court because he wore a suit and tie again. She loosened the tie first and pulled it free from the collar of his crisp white shirt. As she pulled the expensive blue silk through her hands, she stared up at him.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he warned her, but there was a chuckle in his voice and a glint in his dark eyes. He pulled the tie from her hands and tossed it aside. He definitely did not trust her yet.
So she went to work on his buttons, revealing all the sexy, hair-dusted muscles of his impressive chest. Then she pushed the shirt and his dark gray jacket from his broad shoulders and reached for his belt. He pulled that from her hands, too, though, and undid his own button and zipper before kicking off his pants, boxers and shoes.
Then he was as gloriously naked as she was. And she went wild for him, touching and kissing him everywhere. She stroked her hands over his ass and down his hard thighs as she dropped to her knees in front of him. Then she closed her lips around his cock and sucked him deep into her throat.
He groaned. And she could feel him shaking.
She hadn’t needed to tie him up. She could make him lose control without any ropes or bindings.
But he didn’t lose it entirely. He pulled her away before she could make him come. Then he lifted and tossed her down onto her bed. She bounced slightly up from the mattress and met his chest as his body covered hers.
They were a tangle of arms and legs, but their mouths met and mated, kissing each other deeply. His tongue stroked over hers as his fingers slid inside her. He moved his fingers in and out of her until she arched up and whimpered at the orgasm shuddering through her.
But it was nothing compared to the pleasure she knew he could give her. He pulled back—only to don a condom—and then the head of his cock eased inside her. He lifted her legs to his shoulders, so he sank even deeper into her.
He filled her and then some.
She reached between them and tried to stroke him. But he caught her hand and held her back.
“This is why I needed to tie you up,” she mused.
“Then it would have been over already,” he said. “And you would have missed all this fun.”
She wasn’t sure if it was fun or torture. He teased the tension back into her body, teased her to the edge of an orgasm before he pulled out.
She clutched his butt and pushed him back inside her. Then she used her hands to guide his hips.
But he moved again and took her with him as he rolled onto his back. And suddenly she was astride him.
He’d given her the control she’d wanted. And she used it to tease him like he’d teased her, sliding up until his cock nearly came out, then settling back down hard. Up and down...
He groaned and thrashed on the mattress before his hands clutched her hips. He didn’t need to guide her.
Muriel knew the rhythm. With him, she could dance. Together they moved as one until she tensed. Her inner muscles convulsed, her body shuddered, and she screamed his name as an orgasm gripped her.
He was with her, his hands biting into her hips as his body tensed. He shuddered and came, too.
Muriel eased off and dropped onto the mattress on her back, boneless and exhausted. She had needed that. She’d needed him. Completed satiated, she closed her eyes.
But he was already getting out of the bed. She figured he was just cleaning up. But it wasn’t the bathroom door she heard opening and closing. It was the front door as he left.
Just as she’d accused him earlier, he was running away. From her? Or from what he felt when they were together?
Muriel wanted to run from those feelings, too. But she wasn’t sure she had any muscles left—she was so loose and relaxed—except for the mad pounding of her heart. She was afraid that she was falling for Ronan.
It didn’t matter what she felt, though, because Ronan wasn’t ever going to let himself feel anything but fear for a relationship. She was going to wind up just like all those other women he’d dated, dumped and left wanting more.
But she realized now, that because of his past, he wasn’t capable of giving any more.