Chapter 11 Ronan
RONAN
Ican still taste her on my lips by the time I get up to my bedroom, rock-hard and aching for something I absolutely should not have. I slam the door behind me, leaning against it as I fumble with the front of my pants, my cock out and in my hand in a matter of seconds.
I kissed her.
I shouldn’t have fucking kissed her.
“Christ,” I hiss between my teeth, stroking feverishly as the thought of her mouth against mine pushes me to the edge almost immediately.
I’ve never had a hair-trigger when it comes to my orgasm, but something about Leila makes me feel as if I’m going to lose control as soon as I touch myself. As soon as I think about her.
She felt so fucking good against me. Her mouth felt perfect, soft and warm, her body felt like it was made for my hands. I wanted her right there, wanted to drag her jeans down her hips, and wrap her perfect fucking legs around my waist, sink my cock into her and—
“Fuck!” I curse aloud as my cock starts to spurt without warning, my orgasm hitting me uncontrollably. I cover my cockhead with my hand, my stomach muscles clenching as I groan with the sheer pleasure that throbs through me, the release making me dizzy from the force of it.
I don’t think I’ve ever come as hard as I do just from the thought of her. I can’t begin to imagine what it would feel like to actually have her. To come inside of her.
Just the thought has me half-hard again before I’ve even cleaned up.
I go to the shower, lingering in there long enough that I hope she’s gone to bed by the time I come out. I’m too restless to sleep, so I go downstairs instead, thankfully without running into Leila as I retreat to my office.
I’m still sitting there at two in the morning, staring at financial reports I'm not actually reading, trying to forget the way Leila’s mouth felt when I kissed her. The soft sound she made when I pulled her closer. The way her hand trembled against my chest.
Fuck.
I drain the whiskey in my glass and pour another.
This is exactly what I can't let happen.
Leila isn't some woman I picked up in a bar, or someone who understands the rules of a casual encounter with a man like me.
She's under my protection, dependent on me for her mother's care, trapped in my house with nowhere to go.
The power dynamic alone makes any involvement between us unconscionable.
There’s no way that she wouldn’t feel as if she needed to do whatever I asked in order to keep the money flowing for her mother’s care.
No way that, if I slept with her, she’d feel like she could say no at any point without endangering that.
I want her badly, but the thought that she might fuck me just to keep that money from damming up makes me go soft instantly.
I rejected her offer of a deal: her virginity for my help. I offered it freely instead. I can’t have her thinking that’s changed at all. And the situation makes it so that, no matter how clearly I might tell her that she’s free to say no, I can’t trust that she’d believe me.
And there’s the fact that, only two weeks ago, I buried my wife.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, dropping the file in my hands onto my desk. I didn’t love Siobhan. I didn’t desire her. But all the same, two weeks ago I was married, and now I’m kissing a woman fifteen years younger than me and under my protection in my library.
That’s not the kind of man I want to be.
I should be focusing on Rocco. On getting vengeance for Siobhan and making sure that what happened to Leila doesn’t happen to anyone else. That should be my focus, not how hard Leila makes my cock every time she walks into a room.
But I can’t stop thinking about the way she whispered that she liked what I did to Neil. About the way she said she wanted me to corrupt her.
My cock strains against my zipper, and I groan, closing my eyes at the insistent throb that becomes painful at the memory of Leila’s sweet voice whispering those words.
Five minutes later, I’ve come for a second time, and I still can’t get my erection to entirely go away. I pour myself another drink and stare at the paperwork on my desk, willing it to cool my apparently boundless libido.
I take another sip of whiskey and force myself to focus on the numbers in front of me.
Revenue from the docks, protection payments from local businesses, the take from our various enterprises.
It’s all filtered through Annie's intricate web of shell companies and offshore accounts, cleaned and legitimized before it ever touches our books. She’s a genius with it, and I don’t know how she manages it all so thoroughly.
I wouldn’t know how to handle it all. Math was never my strong suit.
My phone buzzes, and I see a text from Finn. Package delivered. No complications.
The "package" is my warning to Rocco De Luca. Neil’s severed head on dry ice, on his doorstep. A warning that I know he’ll take as an escalation rather than a reason to stand down.
But I don’t care. I’m going to kill him, and I want him afraid when I do.
I want him to wonder what, exactly, I have planned for him.
Regardless of how I felt about Siobhan, he killed her.
That can’t go unpunished. And he killed our child with her, a loss that I do mourn.
That I try desperately not to think about, because it makes me feel insane.
It makes me want to burn the entire De Luca empire to the ground, not just leave it for someone else to take over after Rocco is dead.
He killed my child. My heir. A child that I wanted, regardless of how things stood between Siobhan and me. That child was the entire reason I ever touched her at all.
Guilt floods me again, cooling my arousal at last. I shouldn’t be sitting here wanting someone else while my wife and unborn child are barely cold in the ground.
And if I let myself complicate things with Leila, I’ll be once again at fault if something happens to her that I could have prevented by controlling how I feel.
By paying attention to what matters instead of what I want.
At six in the morning, I’m still awake, now sipping coffee instead of whiskey, although I’m considering adding some. There’s a knock at my office door, and after a moment, Annie steps in.
"You look like shit," she says by way of greeting, settling into the chair across from my desk.
“Thanks,” I say dryly, and I see her eyes flick to the whiskey bottle that I forgot to put back on the sideboard.
“Have you been at it all night?” She peers at me. “Ronan, what did you do?”
I say nothing, and she frowns at me. “Is it Leila?”
When I still say nothing, she shakes her head. “Did you touch her? Kiss her?”
“How did you know?” I ask sarcastically, and she rolls her eyes.
"Because I know that look. It's the same look you had when you were sixteen and convinced you were going to hell for touching Mary O'Brien's breast at the church social.”
I groan. "That's different."
“Sure it is.” Annie’s accent thickens, the way it does when she’s annoyed.
“Just like it was different when you were broody and angry all the time because Papa made you marry Siobhan. You’ve got a way of torturing yourself over women, Ronan.
And I can see it happening again. Except she’s not one of us. ”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You’re usually nicer than this.”
“Sure. I’m a real pushover. Your late wife showed me that. But I’m also your sister. And I don’t want to see you getting hurt. I don’t want you blaming yourself if she gets hurt, either. I get why you brought her home, but she’s a lost puppy. You can’t get close to her. It’s not smart, Ronan.”
“I know.” I run my hand through my hair. “Why do you think I’m doing spreadsheets?”
"So what's your plan? Lock yourself in your office and drink yourself to death? Pretend you don't want her until she goes home?"
“My plan,” I bite out, “is to try to keep my distance and kill Rocco De Luca so that she can leave. That’s as good as I’ve got.”
The thought of her leaving, I realize, makes my chest ache.
Annie visits often, but I hadn’t realized how lonely this mansion was until Leila was here.
I’ve gotten used to having her there at dinner, to crossing paths with her during the day, enjoying her company.
The inappropriate desire I have for her aside, I like her being here.
The thought of being alone again makes me feel hollow.
A thread of alarm ripples through me, but I’m too tired to give it the attention it deserves.
“Well, that’s something of a plan,” Annie concedes. “She needs to go home, Ronan. Sooner rather than later.”
“I know.” I run a hand over my face. “Trust me, I know.”
—
For the rest of the day, I make a conscious effort to reestablish boundaries. I take lunch in my office. I try to focus on work. I don’t even give myself a chance to cross paths with Leila until dinnertime.
It's cowardly, and I know it. But I can't trust myself around her right now, can't trust that I won't cross more lines, or that any conversation about it will devolve into something I can’t handle. I need space, and maybe that will be good for her, too.
I’ve let myself get too close to her. Shared too much of myself and encouraged her to share about herself as well. There’s no need for us to be friends. No need for anything other than for me to keep up my end of our deal, and for her to do the same.
I spend the morning reviewing security reports and planning our next move against De Luca's operation. I talk to Finn. I focus on my job, my responsibilities, and not on things I can’t control and shouldn’t concern myself with.
But by evening, the isolation is killing me. I've managed to avoid her all day, conducting all my business from behind closed doors. But when seven o'clock comes around—the time we've been sharing dinner for the past week—I find myself staring at my office door like it's a prison cell.