Had I read the NC-17-rated document that had been oh-so-casually handed to me en route to the airport?
I wasn’t sure “read” was the correct verb. Or tense. More accurately, something had happened to me just by looking through the seemingly innocuous papers. I was a passive recipient of its terms, all of which had pretty much bowled me over like pins.
Said contract was still stuffed in my oversized purse, where it had been since my first read-through had turned my face hotter than an oven.
Seven orgasms per week. I still couldn’t believe he had put that in writing. It was more shocking than the millions of dollars that were promised after just six months of marriage, even if, as he had demonstrated in my apartment, he was more than capable of fulfilling that particular term.
And apparently, the three pages of sex acts that followed it.
“Ari?”
I looked up, conscious of the fact that all of those thoughts had been playing across my face, and I’d done nothing to hide them. Ronan was still watching me while chewing his bottom lip.
God, he looked good. Better than I remembered. No video chat in the world could render the edges of his jaw sharp enough or present his eyes with the same magnetic spark they always seemed to have. His hair was tamed back again with gel, and I longed to shove my fingers into those curls, soften them up, and watch them spring to life.
It wasn’t fair. How could someone be this attractive… and this confusing?
Slowly, Ronan leaned in and brushed a gentle kiss on my cheek. “You’re stupidly beautiful when you’re flustered, do you know that?”
I jerked back. “I—we need to?—”
“Talk, yeah. I figured. But first, let’s go inside. There’s something I want to show you, and it’s not my so-called ‘home’ in the financial district. Come on.”
He got out of the car, then reached in to guide me out too. “Mac, do you mind grabbing her bags?”
The big man grunted. Clearly, he wasn’t meant to be deployed in that particular manner, but he didn’t argue as Ronan led me up the steps of a little house with blue siding and trim white shutters.
The street was beautiful in a way that didn’t exist in Seattle. For one, we didn’t have buildings this old. A nameplate next to the lacquered black door informed me it was built in 1832, and several of the other buildings, sided with both brick and brightly painted wood, bore similar, if unreadable, brass plaques. The sidewalks were shaded by the maple and chestnut foliage, and the brick underfoot was worn by time.
I looked around, already charmed by the place’s history. It wasn’t four hundred BCE, but I’d take it over tech monoculture any day of the week.
“If you recall from the terms of the contract,” Ronan said as he fiddled with the lock, “I have two homes. One is the public space, known to shareholders, acquaintances, and family members. I only go there when I have to. It’s for business associates. Board members. Family.”
I turned back to him. “So even your family doesn’t know where you actually live?”
“One of them does now, sweetheart. That would be you.”
I watched as he pushed aside some overgrown ivy to reveal a security panel camouflaged into the doorframe. He pressed afew buttons, then pressed his thumb to the panel. Multiple locks clicked open.
“That’s… intense,” I said.
Ronan didn’t argue. “It is. But once you’re inside…” He pushed the door open. “It’s home.”
I followed him into the house. Mac set my luggage just inside the door before tipping his head at Ronan and stepping back out.
Then it was just us.
And I couldn’t speak at all.
Whatever I’d been expecting from Ronan Black’s home, it wasn’t this.
Even from her honeymoon, Megan had sent me everything she could find about Ronan and his family. There were pictures of him in a pristine penthouse, the kind that was all glass and angles, devoid of color, and mostly consisted of cavernous spaces designed to show wealth and nothing else.
This was the polar opposite.
It was a small space. Cramped even. The foyer—if you could even call it that—was roughly the size of a postage stamp, but a glimpse through into a living room and beyond that a small kitchen, told me it had the same ramshackle charm of the rest of the house, with the battered wood floors, slightly crooked windows, and scuffed millwork that bespoke a different time.
That, however, wasn’t what stole my voice.
