Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

“Spread your legs,” he said, and I did it. Knowing exactly how wide he wanted, I gave it to him. That unfettered look between my legs. My soaking-wet panties. My slick thighs. My pink skin, usually hidden, completely revealed to him like this.

“No one has kissed this beautiful spot on your body?”

Speechless, I shook my head.

Without another word, he put his open mouth to me, breathing me in through the cotton. His tongue pressed against me, and I pushed up on my tiptoes, still sensitive from my orgasm. But that was why he had his hands on my waist. To keep me where he wanted me.

“Move your panties,” he said against me.

“Ronan.” I was raw. Shaking. There would be no other orgasm.

“Move them, Poppy.”

And I did. I pushed my underwear aside, and he put his mouth back on me. Against me. He sucked me into his mouth. He tongued me and slipped his hands up to cup my breasts. What did I know about what my body could do? Nothing, apparently.

Because the next orgasm was picking me up in its fist, and I screamed, clutching his head, grinding myself against him. It was like some kind of door had been kicked open, and there was something new for me. Something I never expected.

Being touched like this was a revelation. Like suddenly being worshiped, when all my life I’d only been forsaken.

“Sorry,” I breathed and let go of his head. He chuckled against my skin, licking my slick thighs like he wanted to taste everything. He pulled my underwear back over my body, covering me like it mattered at all. He kissed my belly. And then stood up.

His cock brushed against my belly, and I arched toward him, pressing myself against him. But his hands returned to my waist and pushed me back against the wall. His bent head rested against mine.

So long he stood there. Just breathing.

I reached for his face, but at the brush of my fingers he stepped away. The moment over.

“What else did you tell Eden Morelli?”

Blinking, I only gaped at him. My pleasure-soaked brain unable to catch up to what he was saying.

“Poppy!” he snapped, the sharp disapproval in his tone went to work on my instincts, and I reached down and grabbed my sweatshirt. Putting it over my shaking and sweaty body. “What else did you tell her?”

“I didn’t . . . nothing. Nothing important.”

“You are not the judge of what’s important.”

“Ronan, can we—” I stepped off the wall, and he stepped back. A reversal of our positions just a few minutes ago. “We talked about you. I asked how Caroline would have met you.”

“And what did she say?”

“That Caroline was in the UK for oil drilling.”

He pushed his hair back on his head, and it fell forward over his eyes. “Did you tell her anything about you?”

‘No.”

“Good. Keep—”

“Actually . . .”

“Fuck.”

“She said the senator always seemed like a good guy and I . . . might have implied that he wasn’t.”

He nodded, his hair brushing the side of his face. “How much did you pay her?”

I licked my lips, searching for some kind of plausible lie.

“Poppy?”

“My sister paid her,” I said. “That’s . . . how I got in touch with Eden. My sister knows her.”

I waited to see if he would buy my lie, and after a long minute he nodded. “All right. Can you promise me you won’t be seeing Eden Morelli again?”

“Are you really trying to keep me safe?” I asked.

“Well.” He was going to make a joke; I could hear it in his tone. “You don’t make it easy—”

“Ronan.”

He sighed and stepped back towards me like he was a magnet. My entire body was metal shavings I was drawn so hard to him.

“Why do you stay here?” he asked, brushing a damp hair off my forehead.

“In New York?”

“This house. Don’t you have any place else to go?”

I thought of the condo in Cabo. The house in the south of France. I’d never been to either of them, but I knew about them.

“This is my home,” I said. Like he would care that I’d done all these renovations. That I’d built a shower and helped tile the kitchen. That I’d put some blood and sweat and more tears than I’d ever thought possible into this place and didn’t that somehow make it mine?

My home had always been in Bishop’s Landing. I didn’t know a life off this hilltop.

“It’s a shit home,” he said.

“How would you know?” I asked. I didn’t know if I was brave or stupid. “Have you ever had a home?”

His eyes glittered, and his silence wasn’t an answer. This game we’d played tonight left me with a thousand more questions about him, while I kept stripping off pieces of myself to hand him.

“I just want a home,” I whispered, sounding pathetic to my own ears.