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He muttered something against my ear, low and guttural, his own animal coming out. His hand squeezed between my body and the mattress, finding my open legs. My burning wet flesh.
“Fuck, Poppy.” He groaned, like he was amazed by me. As much as I was amazed by him. “You feel so fucking good.” He found my clit and performed his magic. Between his fingers and the mattress. The press of his body. The smell of his breath. The beautiful reality of him.
Of us.
And it was terrifying how much I felt.
“Fuck you,” I said.
The sweet sound of his laughter in my ear sent me spinning into orgasm the way his feigned cruelty never could.
CHAPTER TEN
Poppy
He rolled my limp body, still twitching with orgasm aftershocks, into his arms. The silence was loaded and thorny. The game was over, and we couldn’t get it back. We’d been pushed into new territory, and I waited with every breath for him to get up and leave.
But he didn’t.
“What happened?” I asked, running my finger across a scar just south of his left nipple.
“Ran into a knife.”
“Just ran into it?” I asked with a startled laugh.
He shrugged. “A fight at a pub. I didn’t see the knife.”
“These?” I asked, putting my hand over a constellation of scars on his forearm.
“Hot oil,” he said. “Da tossed it at me.” He lifted his arm to show me how he’d blocked his face.
“This one?’ I asked, tracing a thin line just above his pants, low on his abdomen.
“Appendix.”
“You are human.”
“Did I tell you I wasn’t?”
Oh God. I kissed him. Hard. Too hard, maybe, but I didn’t know what to do with this pain. This longing. He met my ferocity with his own. I pulled back to breathe and he kissed my neck, his hand snaking down my body to between my legs, and I knew how this would spin out. Me on my back with him between my legs making me come until I cried, and Ronan holding himself so distant, he might as well already be gone.
Again.
“We’re doing this my way,” I said and started easing down the bed while he was still half on top of me.
“Poppy,” he breathed.
“Fight me, and you can leave,” I said, looking at him. He stared at me, his lips parted, his face still. Surrender was not in his nature, but I really had to insist.
Finally, he rolled onto his side and I rolled onto mine. I wanted this bed to have walls and a ceiling. I wanted it to wrap around us, cocoon us. I kissed my way down his chest, across every scar and ridge of muscle. I felt the fluttering of his heartbeat against my tongue. The rise and fall of his belly as he sucked in air. I ran my hands down his sides, and he flinched.
I looked up, scared I’d hurt him.
“Ticklish,” he said. “Tell anyone and I’ll kill you.”
He smiled at me and I smiled back as I eased his pants down, his cock springing free into my hand.
“Has anyone ever told you, you have a really pretty cock?”
“No, Poppy. That’s not a thing people say.”
“I say it. You have a beautiful cock, Ronan Byrne.” I leaned forward, licking the tip. Slipping my mouth around the head.
“A chuisle,” he breathed, his hands sliding into my hair to hold onto my head. I hummed in my throat, liking the way his voice broke.
Listening to the cues of his heartbeat, his breathing, I gave my whole body over to his. My mouth and my hands. Every groan and deeply uttered curse. The clench of his fingers in my hair. The curl of his body as he fucked in and out of my mouth. I felt all of it so deeply in my own body. When he came. His cock against my tongue grew impossibly hard and he jerked back, trying to come anywhere but inside of me, but I held on.
I would have this, at least.
At least, I would have this.
“Poppy,” he said. Just that. My name. I heard his surrender. His regret. I wished we could have one without the other between us. That his pleasure could be pure. But Ronan was Ronan, and I could not change him.
“Shhh,” I said. “Just . . . shhh.”
I pushed myself up to face him, smiling because he was disheveled and clearly exhausted against the sheets. I lay down next to him and used my fingers to brush aside his hair. That he didn’t shrug away indicated how tired he was. His eyelids dropped and then opened wide. “Hey,” I whispered. “How about you take a nap.”
“Someone’s got to be awake.”
“I can be awake. You sleep, and I’ll look out for you.”
“You need to dye your hair.”
“I can do both. I am an excellent multitasker.”
Suddenly the cat leaped on the bed, looking at us as if she very much disapproved of our actions. “Jaysus!” Ronan muttered. “Where the hell did the cat come from?”
