“Ronan.” Her voice had protest inside of it.
“Until I say enough.”
She shook her head and I slipped my finger between her legs, pressing my fingers against her clit the way she liked. Soft and then harder. And then harder still. She bucked against me. I fucked her through three orgasms, the third I had my thumb in her asshole and she was begging me to stop and to keep going at the same time.
“Ronan,” she sobbed. The muscles of her back were twitching under her skin as I ran my hands down her spine. “Please. Please come.”
This surrender was so delicious, more so because it was the only surrender I would get from her. And…perhaps the only surrender I actually wanted. “I love the way you beg me to come inside of you,” I told her.
“Yes,” she moaned. “Fill me up.”
I was already stroking myself through the slippery mess we’d made between her legs. Hard thrusts that shoved her body against the bed. I liked that too. She’d been used and satisfied. She was mine to use and satisfy.
Surrender and trust.
The orgasm I’d been fighting off was undeniable now and whatever I wanted…whatever the animal in me craved, my years of restraint were too ingrained. I couldn’t make the mistake of what happened on the plane again. Surrender and trust were not mine for the giving. I pulled out of her body, stroking myself until I came in creamy white jets all over that bow.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ronan
My apartment, like most of the old buildings in Brooklyn, had roof access. When I was young, fresh from Northern Ireland and missing what was familiar, I used to come up here to smoke and look at the stars.
Only there weren’t stars in New York City. Too many lights, too much smog. So all I had was smoking.
I miss smoking.
I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t touching Poppy. Perhaps now was a good time to teach Raj a lesson about taking Poppy places she had no business going. But, my heart wasn’t in it. I knew how persuasive Poppy could be, the way she blinked those big eyes and stuck out her chin and made stone-cold killers into lap dogs.
Fuck. I couldn’t say no to her, how could I expect Raj to?
Niamh tried to make this roof something grand. There were chairs and a table. Plants. A lot of fucking plants. She said, every once in a while, after a little too much whiskey that she missed the green of home. That no park no matter how big in the middle of a city could replace the verdant lushness of Ireland.
It was rich coming from her, who’d preached about the dangers of missing anything. Of nostalgia and attachment.
But I’d taken those words on my tongue like communion. And I’d done it, hadn’t I? For years. I didn’t miss Ireland. I didn’t miss my conscience. My soul. I didn’t miss kindness. Or decency.
But now, ten minutes after touching her, I missed Poppy.
Missed her.
I missed the give of her flesh under my body. The softness of her skin. I missed her voice.
She was a flight of stairs beneath me, naked in a bed I’d left her in and I missed her like she was miles away. Missed her like I hadn’t seen her in years.
I braced my hands against the waist-high wall between me and a four-hundred-foot drop to the ground.
“Fuck!” I said and then I shouted it.
Clearly, fucking her had been a mistake. And I could pat myself on the back all I liked because I managed not to come inside of her like some randy git, but fucking Poppy would always be a mistake. But right now, night settling over the city, I didn’t know if I could stop.
There was the clank of the door opening and I pulled myself together. There was so much to do, so much to untangle to get Poppy out of this web. Work would straighten me out, like.
It always did.
“Raj,” I said. “We need—”
I turned to find Poppy coming out the door onto the roof. At the look on my face she paused for a second in the doorway. Uncertain. I’d spanked her, fucked her until she wept, and now she was unsure.
“Raj told me where you were.”
The moon was out behind her. Brilliant and yellow from the smog of the city. Suddenly and without warning I ached to have her anywhere but here. This dirty violent city that didn’t care for how soft she was.
How sweet.
“Do you want me to leave?”
No. God no. Please don’t leave.
“Do what you like.”
She stepped onto the roof, the door clanged shut behind her.
“It’s nice up here,” she said. “Did you do this?”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Who did?”
“Niamh.”
She was wearing a pair of jeans and a purple shirt. She looked lovely. Young and innocent and lovely. I turned away, my hands in fists, trying to get a grip on all things I’d let go of since meeting her.