Ronan
Desperation sounds a lot like faith when you’re out of time.
The warehouse is a cathedral of unfinished art.
Paint-splattered concrete floors stretch into shadows, every inch covered with drips, splatters, and footprints from artists who once worked here.
Half-finished murals cover the walls—a woman’s face with only one eye completed, a geometric pattern that stops mid-design, words in languages I don’t recognize trailing off into nothing.
Broken windows line the upper walls, and through them, neon light bleeds in from the Wynwood streets beyond.
The light catches on paint cans stacked in corners, on scaffolding that’s been here so long it’s rusted into place, on drop cloths that might have been white once but are now Jackson Pollock nightmares.
Beauty and destruction tangled together.
Just like us.
Iris walks to the center of the space, boots echoing on concrete. She still smells like engine oil. I still smell like smoke and burnt rubber and the particular scent of a race that ended in fire.
She turns to face me.
The neon light through the windows paints her in shifting colors—blue across her cheekbone, pink in her hair, green along her jaw. The half-finished murals watch us from the walls, silent witnesses.
“Sebastián thought racing was art,” she says quietly. Her voice echoes in the empty space. “He thought if he made it beautiful enough, it wouldn’t be murder.”
I step closer. “What do you think?”
She meets my eyes. “I think creation and destruction are the same thing. I think Sebastián understood that better than he wanted to admit.”
Another step.
Close enough now that I can see her pulse beating in her throat, see the way her breathing has changed.
“Is that what this is?“ I ask. “Violence?”
“Yes.”
“And creation?”
Her eyes darken. “Maybe.”
I close the distance between us.
My hands find her waist, pulling her against me hard enough that she gasps. She’s all smooth skin and soft curves, not hard and cold, despite surviving in a world that wanted her dead or compliant.
She chose neither. The circuit will play by her rules.
Her hands come up to my chest, fingers spreading across my shirt, feeling my heartbeat. It’s racing. Still racing. Might never stop.
She notices the trembling in my chest.
“Does it bother you? What happened tonight?”
“No,” I say. “It bothers me that I’ve just accepted who I am.”
Something shifts in her expression—recognition, maybe. Understanding. The acknowledgment that we’re both broken in the same way, that we’ve both crossed lines we can’t uncross.
Her lips find mine. Her mouth is demanding, hungry, tasting like mint and a berry gloss. Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I respond with one hand fisting her ponytail.
We stumble backward until her back hits a wall—one of the unfinished murals, the woman’s face watching us with her one completed eye. Paint flakes off under the impact. Iris doesn’t seem to notice or care.
I break the kiss long enough to look at her. Light from the window shifts across her face. Her lips are swollen. Her eyes are wild. She looks like something feral, something that was never meant to be tamed.
“Here?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Here,” she confirms. “Now.”
My hands find the hem of her shirt, pulling it up and over her head. She’s wearing a black sports bra underneath. I trace the line of her collarbone, feeling her shiver under my touch.
She works at my shirt, fingers fumbling with buttons until she gives up and pulls it over my head. Her hands spread across my chest, exploring scars she’s seen before but never asked about. I don’t offer explanations. She doesn’t want them.
I unhook her bra, let it fall to the paint-splattered floor. My mouth finds her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. She arches into me, head falling back against the mural, breath coming faster.
“Ronan,” she says, my name in her mouth is a prayer, a curse, and a demand all at once.
I work at her jeans, popping the button, pulling the zipper down. She kicks off her boots—steel-toed, the kind you wear when you’re rebuilding engines and don’t want crushed toes. Her jeans follow, pooling around her ankles before she steps out of them.
She’s wearing black underwear. Simple. Functional. Devastatingly beautiful against her skin.
I drop to my knees on the paint-splattered concrete.
The floor is cold and hard and covered in years of dried paint, but I don’t care. I hook my fingers in the waistband of her underwear and pull them down slowly, watching her face as I do. Her eyes are locked on mine, dark and intense, daring me to look away.
I don’t.
I lean forward, pressing a kiss to her hip bone, then lower. She gasps, and her hands tangle in my hair, not pulling, just holding on.
I take my time.
This isn’t about getting off quickly. This is about control. About making her forget everything except this moment.
My mouth finds her slick, swollen clit, and she gasps, hips bucking hard against my face.
I dig my fingers into the soft flesh of her thighs, pinning her trembling body against the wall as I devour her—teasing with slow, deliberate strokes of my tongue before sucking hard, then flicking relentlessly against her most sensitive spot until she’s dripping wet.
“Fuck,” she moans, her nails scraping my scalp as she grips my hair tight enough to hurt. “Ronan, fuck—I’m gonna come—”
I can feel her getting close. The way her thighs shake, the way her breathing goes ragged, the way she stops trying to stay quiet and just lets herself feel. The neon light shifts across her skin, painting her in colors that pulse in time with her heartbeat.
When she comes, it’s with my name on her lips and her body shaking against the unfinished mural.
I stand slowly, watching her come back to herself. Her eyes are glazed, her chest heaving, her hair wild around her face. She looks wrecked.
I run my thumb across my bottom lip, then along my jaw.
“I’ll be tasting you in my beard all night.”
The corner of her mouth lifts into a lazy smile and her icy eyes look up at me.
She’s fucking beautiful.
“Your turn,” she says, voice rough.
She grabs me, turns, and pushes me backward until I’m the one against the wall—a different mural, geometric patterns that stop mid-design like the artist gave up or died or just walked away. Her hands work at my belt, my zipper, efficient and sure.
My jeans hit the floor. My boxers follow.
She drops to her knees in one fluid motion, her eyes never leaving mine. When her mouth closes around me, I slam my fist against the wall, a raw sound tearing from my throat. Her tongue traces patterns that blur my vision, each deliberate movement sending electricity through my veins.
She takes me deeper, and I feel myself hit the back of her throat. The vibration of her moan travels through me like an engine’s roar. My fingers twist into her hair, desperate for control as she works me with devastating precision, her nails marking half-moons into my thighs.
“Iris—I can’t wait any longer.”
My body jerks forward involuntarily as she circles the sensitive tip with her tongue, tasting what I can’t hold back. When she lifts her gaze to mine and rises to her feet, her lips glisten in the low light.
“So impatient, Mr. Vale.” She giggles.
Then she’s climbing me like a fucking tree, legs wrapping around my waist, arms around my neck. I grip her hips, holding her steady, and she sinks down onto me in one smooth motion.
We both freeze.
The sensation is overwhelming—heat and pressure and connection, our bodies fitting together like they were designed for exactly this. The light pulses through the broken windows. The half-finished murals watch us. The paint-splattered floor bears witness.
“Move,” she whispers against my mouth.
I pull almost all the way out, then thrust back in hard enough that she gasps. Her nails dig into my shoulders. I do it again. And again. Finding a rhythm that’s part violence, part worship, part something neither of us has words for.
She meets me thrust for thrust, rolling her hips, taking what she needs. This isn’t gentle. This isn’t making love. This is two people trying to find peace and healing in each other.
“Harder,” she demands, and I comply.
The wall shakes with each impact. More paint flakes off, drifting down around us. I can feel her getting close again—the way her inner muscles tighten, the way her breathing goes ragged.
“Look at me,” I say.
Her eyes snap open, meeting mine.
“I want to see you,” I tell her. “When you come, I need to see everything.”
She nods, unable to speak, and I adjust my angle, hitting that spot inside her that makes her see stars. Her mouth falls open. Her eyes go wide. Her whole body tenses.
“Ronan,” she gasps. “Ronan, I’m—”
She breaks.
I watch it happen—the way her eyes lose focus, the way her mouth forms my name, the way her body shakes in my arms. It’s the most honest I’ve ever seen her, stripped of all the armor and calculation and control.
It’s enough to send me over the edge.
I bury myself deep and let go, my own orgasm ripping through me like a race crash—violent, consuming, and impossible to stop. I press my face into her neck, breathing her in, feeling her heartbeat against my chest.
For a moment, we just hold each other.
Two broken people in an abandoned warehouse, surrounded by unfinished art, the neon lights, and the ghosts of everyone we’ve killed to get here.
Then reality returns.
Iris unwraps her legs from my waist, sliding down until her feet touch the paint-splattered floor. I pull out carefully, trying not to get more aroused at the thought of the sticky mess between her thighs.
We dress in silence.
She pulls on her underwear, jeans, sports bra, and shirt. Each piece of clothing is armor going back on, protection against a world that would destroy her if it could.
I do the same—boxers, jeans, shirt. Becoming Ronan Vale again, the man who never loses.
When we’re both dressed, Iris leans against the wall. Not the one we just fucked against, but a different one, giving us both space to breathe.
“Five more races,” she says quietly.
I nod.
“Five more bodies.”
“I know.”
She looks at me, really looks at me, and I see the question she won’t ask: Is this worth it? Are we worth it? Can we survive the inevitable?
I don’t have answers.
“I should go,” I say.
She nods. “Yeah.”
But neither of us moves.
“Sebastián was wrong,” I say finally. “Racing isn’t art.”
Iris tilts her head. “No?”
“No.”
I step closer, close enough to see the flecks of silver in her blue eyes.
“This is art. You and me. The way we destroy each other and call it something else.”
Her breath catches. For a moment, I think she might say something real, something true, something that would change everything.
I turn to leave, boots echoing on paint-splattered concrete. Behind me, Iris stays against the wall, watching me go. I can feel her eyes on my back.
At the door, I pause when she calls my name.
“Ronan.”
I look back.
She’s silhouetted against the neon light, surrounded by the intricate works. She looks like something that should be painted on these walls—beautiful and dangerous, impossible to look away from.
“Be careful,” she says. “The next races won’t be like tonight. They’re going to come for you.”
“I’m prepared.”
Her mouth curves—but not in a smile.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Then I walk out into the Wynwood night, leaving her behind in the warehouse full of ghosts and paint and the echo of what we just did.
I drive toward my apartment on the edge of the city, where the neon dies, and the real Miami begins—the Miami of strip malls and chain restaurants and people who’ve never heard of Cupid’s Run.
The adrenaline has finally faded, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and a hollow ache in my chest that I recognize but refuse to name.
Behind me, the warehouse grows smaller in my rearview mirror—that church of unfinished art where Iris and I tried to create something from the wreckage of what we are.