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“What the hell do you know about anything?”
“I know I’m under your skin.”
Said skin blazed hot and undoubtedly red. Right. This was the expected embarrassment. The humiliation right on cue. The ice cold look on his face melted and what was left was something so much worse. Something horrible.
Pity.
“Don’t,” I spat at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like the rest of them look at me. Like all I am is something to be pitied and whispered about. Something to be used and shuffled around.”
“I’m not—”
I shoved him. My hands against his rock-solid chest, and I shoved him. Hard enough he stepped backwards, and everything ignited in me. Everything. I looked at my hands, surprised they weren’t flames.
He smiled, as if he could see the chemical reaction rippling through my body. And he liked it.
“I’m leaving,” I said. Slightly scared of this. Slightly scared of myself. And him.
“You don’t want to leave,” he said, stepping closer, and the fire in my hands and my chest exploded between my legs. Desire like I’d never felt, like I’d never been allowed to feel fueled by rage and champagne and his Irish accent rippled all the way through me.
“You don’t know a single fucking thing about me,” I snarled.
“I know you don’t want to be pitied. And I know you just got fucked around pretty good up there in front of a thousand people.”
I breathed hard through my nose.
“I think you want to fight,” he said, a breath away from me. If I was another person I’d kiss him. Grab him by the silk lapels of his tux and pull that wicked mouth to mine. But I wasn’t that person, for a million reasons. His eyes assessed me, and the longer I was silent, standing there burning and wretched, the pity came back.
“Or maybe I’m wrong about you,” he said. “You don’t have any fight in you. You are exactly what they made you.” He reached for the door, and I knew he was going to let me go. Whatever test this was, I’d failed. “I’ll make sure you get home.”
I smacked him. I smacked him so hard my hand hurt. It burned and tingled. There was a print of my hand on his skin and that was the first time I’d ever done that, and part of me wanted to be horrified, but deep in my fully rioting soul, I was pleased.
So pleased.
The dark wing of his hair fell down over his eye, and he turned to face me, sweeping it back.
“There you go, Princess,” he said. “That’s what you need.” He smiled at me like he suddenly recognized me as kin. Something long lost. But I felt undone. Incomplete. Something had started, a domino tipping over and setting off a chain reaction. And I needed him to complete it.
Or stop it.
Bursting right out of myself, I grabbed his lapels, pulling us into each other. Our bodies collided and sparked.
And I kissed him.
8
It was that moment between action and reaction. The longest second in the world. Where there are a thousand different outcomes, and the universe was peeling its way through all of them. His lips against mine were open, like he was breathing me in, but he didn’t kiss me.
He was just breathing. In and out. Against me.
I’d been a virgin on my wedding night. Something that seemed important to the senator. He’d touched the blood between my legs when the brief sex of our wedding night was over. He’d touched the blood and rubbed it between his fingers and said, in a satisfied way. “You’re mine.”
I’d been speechless with pain and disappointment, and so I said nothing, which was what he liked best, though I didn’t know it at the time.
Before the senator there’d been a guy I worked with in the library in college. A boy in high school. But nothing prepared me for the senator, and nothing about the senator prepared me for Ronan.
For this feeling right now.
This ache. This need. I wanted him to kiss me.
“Poppy,” he said, his voice a groan of regret. He was about to push me away. To end this.
So, I pulled him closer. Licked at his lips, waiting for him to snap or break. Push me away or kiss me back. Anything. Anything but this pitiful saying of my name.
His hands let go of the door and touched me. Feather-light like he was feeling his way across my back. I expected boldness from him. Wanted confident and sure and rough. I wanted him to be in control, and these careful touches weren’t enough. Weren’t nearly enough.
But I didn’t know how to get more from him. How to incite him to more. How to ask for it.
He lifted his hands from my body, and I could feel him pulling away. “Ronan,” I groaned, clinging to him. Trying to stop the inevitable.
