Chapter 24 #2
He pauses. “I had this idea that I could at least try to make her happy. Try to… please her.” He looks away from me as he says that last, and I can envision what kind of ‘pleasing’ he’s talking about.
I feel a burn of jealousy through my veins at the thought of him touching someone else, of him fucking another woman.
I know it’s stupid, that there’s no place in our relationship for that, but I hate the thought of it.
“She hated my touch,” he continues, his jaw tight and his hands closing into fists against his knees.
“I thought maybe she just didn’t like sex, so I stopped coming to see her unless I absolutely had to in order to try to get her pregnant.
We always had separate bedrooms. We couldn’t even pretend to like each other unless we were in public, and even then, things were… cold.”
As much as hearing this makes me feel green with jealousy, there’s another part of me that feels horribly sad. “No one should be in a marriage like that,” I whisper. “That’s not fair to anyone.”
“It’s how things are,” Ronan grits out. “I accepted it, and so did she. But it felt like it was driving me mad, sometimes. I couldn’t stand her, and she made it clear she felt the same, going out of her way to antagonize me.
Everyone expected me to satisfy my… needs elsewhere, but I felt wrong being unfaithful, even as bad as our marriage was. ”
That startles me. If there ever was a case for infidelity, I’d say that would be it, but it tells me what kind of man Ronan is that he stayed faithful. “That was… good of you,” I manage, but he keeps speaking, almost as if he hasn’t heard me.
“I resigned myself to life that way. I tried to avoid her when I could, to keep the peace. I went to her bed only when I had to. I kept myself busy and tried not to think about what I wanted. And because I ignored her… because I wasn’t paying attention, and I was relieved when she started spending less and less time at home… ”
He breaks off, burying his face in his hands for a moment. I want to reach out to reassure him, but I can’t make myself move. I don’t think he wants my comfort right now, no matter how badly I want to give it.
“Rocco murdered her,” Ronan says finally, rubbing his hands over his face and dropping them to his knees.
“What?” I gasp, trying to follow the threads of this story. “What… how?”
“She was having an affair. I thought she was just avoiding me, spending more time at the residence that I’d given her to put space between us, and I was happy about it. I didn’t even think about her having another man there.”
“She was sleeping with Rocco?” I stare at him, and Ronan shakes his head quickly.
“No. No. Just a man she’d met, I guess. But because she wanted to keep it a secret—needed to keep it a secret, because of the consequences her sleeping with another man could have if she were to accidentally get pregnant, she had minimal security with her.
Just the few that she trusted implicitly to keep her secrets.
And as a result, Rocco’s men were able to get to her. ”
Pieces start to fall into place, then. Ronan’s worries about security, how quickly he came home when he thought I might be threatened, how over-protective he can feel sometimes. I bite my lip. “Ronan—”
“It was my fault.” Ronan looks at me, and I can see the pain in his eyes.
“If I’d been paying attention, if I hadn’t been so fucking relieved to have my wife out of my sight and some goddamn peace in the house, I’d have realized she wasn’t keeping the security detail she should have.
Hell, I might have caught the affair and kept her home to prevent it from happening again.
I would have seen something, and she’d be alive. ”
I feel sick, realizing how guilty he feels, the weight that he’s been carrying that I had no idea about. “Ronan, it’s not your—”
“Don’t say it.” He shakes his head. “It is. I neglected my wife, and she died because of it.”
"That's why you were at the warehouse that night. Why were you after Rocco?"
He nods. "I've been hunting him ever since. And when I found you there, when I saw what he was planning to do to you..." He finally looks at me, and there's such pain in his eyes that it takes my breath away. "I couldn't let another woman die because of me. I couldn't live with that again."
“So you rescued me.”
He nods. “I couldn’t leave you there, knowing I could save you. I just… couldn’t. Even if it meant pissing Rocco off even more. I had no idea why you were there, but I couldn’t walk away.”
It hits me, then, what else that meant. “He got away because you saved me, didn’t he? You could have killed him that night, but…”
Ronan nods, his jaw clenched.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head. “I made a choice. And I don’t regret it. But—”
He looks at my stomach, and I know what he’s thinking—some of it, anyway.“She was pregnant,” he says after a moment, so quietly that I’m not sure if I heard him correctly. “The coroner said she was pregnant. I thought at first, with the affair… but it was mine.”
His voice cracks then, and he goes completely silent. That silence feels almost crushing, and I want to say something, but I have no idea what. I can understand why he didn’t tell me this before, and why he’s telling me now.
“This wasn’t your fault, Ronan.” I shake my head, stepping closer to him.
“You were in a bad marriage. A marriage you didn’t even want.
You were handling it the best way you knew how.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly the right way, but you weren’t responsible for her dying.
She chose to send away her security, she chose to—”
“Stop.” Ronan’s voice is flat and hard. “I neglected her. That’s all there is to it.”
“Ronan—” Before I can stop myself, I reach out to touch his face, my hand brushing against his cheek.
It’s as if my touch makes something snap in him. He jolts to his feet, spinning to face me, and his hands close around my arms, holding me in place. “If Rocco finds out you’re pregnant—”
“He won’t.” My voice is shaky. “There’s no reason for him to, as long as you can trust everyone here.”
“I think I can. But, fuck—” His jaw clenches, and he looks down at me, anger and fear and heat swirling together in his eyes, and I feel my pulse flutter in my throat as he pulls me against him. “Leila—”
“Ronan,” I whisper his name, and I’ve forgotten that it’s cold out. I can’t feel it. All I can feel is the molten heat sliding through my veins at the way he’s looking at me, the hunger in his eyes all tangled up with the fear, I realize, of losing me.
I don’t know if he knows it. I can’t imagine he’d ever admit it. And I doubt it changes anything.
But he’s terrified of something happening to me.
“Ronan,” I whisper his name again, shifting closer into him, my chin tipping up. And that one movement, the press of my body against his, seems to shatter all of his defenses.
In a flash, he turns me, pinning me up against a bare tree in the garden, the wide trunk hiding us from a view of the house. I feel the scratch of the bark grabbing at the wool of my coat, and then his mouth crashes down onto mine, and every thought in my head flees.
His mouth is hot and hard and desperate, pressed against mine almost painfully, his hands dropping from my arms to my waist as he devours me.
I can’t feel him through all the layers of our clothes, but his mouth is enough to drive me wild.
His tongue presses against the seam of my lips, thrusting in, tangling as I gasp and kiss him back, my blood molten as he kisses me like a starved man.
I moan against his lips, and he makes a noise low in his throat, one hand fisting in the fabric of my skirt as he pushes it up my thighs.
I hear him make a frustrated sound as he realizes I have tights on beneath it, and I have one moment of clarity as his fingers wrap in the sheer nylon before he rips them open, and a jolt of pure lust runs through me.
I want to beg him not to stop, but he hasn’t stopped kissing me long enough for me to speak. He tugs my panties to one side, two long fingers sliding easily into my drenched entrance as I feel his other hand go to his belt.
“Leila—Christ,” he hisses as I feel the hot, swollen head of his cock press against me, and then with one swift thrust of his hips, he’s inside of me.
I cry out, my sound of pleasure echoing in the barren garden as he thrusts again, hard.
He feels incredible, long and hot and thick, his bare skin sliding against mine only where we’re joined.
There’s something fiercely erotic about it, our layers of clothing covering us everywhere else except for in that one place, where his flesh meets mine as he drives himself into me again and again.
It’s hard and frantic, and I’m on the verge of coming even before his thumb finds my clit, rolling against it as he grabs my chin with his other hand, hard. “Come for me before I come inside of you, Leila,” he growls. “It’s not going to take long.”
His mouth covers mine again, his tongue sliding inside with the same ferocity as his cock between my thighs, and I can feel myself hovering on the edge of a climax, the sensation of him pounding into me driving me mad with pleasure.
“Fucking come for me,” he pleads, kissing me again, hard. “Fuck, I’m going to—”
The sound of his voice, begging for my pleasure along with his, sends me over the edge.
My hand flies up, curling around the back of his neck, my nails digging into his flesh as the orgasm washes over me.
I hear him groan, feel him throb inside of me as he surges against me, pinning me to the tree as one hand clutches at my waist, the other still stroking my clit.
I feel his hips rock against mine, the hot rush of him filling me as he moans my name against my lips, the two of us shuddering together.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I feel overwhelmed by what just happened, and I don’t want him to stop touching me. I don’t want him to let me go.
I realize, as I feel the warmth of his breath against my neck, his body still linked with mine, that I’m no longer sure if I want this to end.