Untamed (Hearts 3)

“Because I want to make you happy,” I said. “Because you make me happy.”

“How? By fucking you?” Again, he wasn’t even trying to be crude. These were the metrics he was used to in his life. “Killing for you?”

“Because I know sometimes what you’re thinking. Because you know what I’m thinking. Because when you smile at me, I feel like I’ve won something.”

He dropped his head back down against mine, grinding our foreheads together. “I’m no prize, Poppy.”

“You’re my prize,” I said.

“Fuck, you deserve so much more than this. Where’s your fucking pride, lass?” I could feel how he was fighting this. Fighting me. All the strength of a last-ditch effort.

“Who gives a shit about pride?” I asked. “What has pride ever gotten me? You make me feel like a queen. Like anything is possible. After years of being hurt and scared and never ever being able to put what I want first, you are what I get. A man who takes me to the end of the earth to be safe. Who opens up all his wounds to show me his pain. A man who makes me omelets and farl and when he touches me my whole world changes.”

I put my fingers through his hair. Ran them down over his neck and shoulders.

“And I think, Ronan Byrne, you’re only getting started. If you let yourself love me…” I whistled, tears burning in my eyes as I imagined the fierceness he would bring to loving me. I gasped, thinking of the baby I might be carrying. And the way Ronan would love it. “We’d be a force of nature. We’d be untamed.”

Something in my words kicked something over inside of him and his hands left the windowsill to tear and pull at my clothes. His mouth found mine and it was not so much a kiss as it was a storm. “How do you know?” he asked again, still not ready to believe me.

“Because I know.”

He was wild and fierce and I matched him. Desperate for the way I felt when he touched me and when I touched him. He got the zipper on my dress half undone and tore the rest of it off. I stood there in underwear and nothing else, visible to anyone who looked up, and I didn’t care. As long as he was touching me. My fingers got his belt loose, the zipper of his pants, but he knocked my hands away and fell to his knees in front of me.

“You destroy me, Poppy. You fucking ruin me. Who the fuck do you think you are to be so brave? To be so fierce?”

“I am what you’ve made me,” I said, stroking his hair back from his face.

He put his mouth on me through the satin of my underwear. And my hands flew back, my ugly ring smacking against the glass hard enough to break it, but he didn’t move. Could not be distracted. He licked me through the satin, over and over again until I was out of my mind with it.

“What do you want, Poppy?” he whispered against me. I wanted him to love me. To love me like I loved him. And I had to believe I was right, but I couldn’t force him. I couldn’t make him feel something when he wasn’t ready. And maybe…maybe he’d never be ready. That was a risk I knew in my heart was true. That I might be alone in my feelings for him for the rest of my life.

“More,” I said, and he chuckled low in his throat. I could feel a kind of relief roll off of him, because this he could give me. This cost him nothing. He would give me more until there was nothing left of him. He eased my panties over my shoes, leaving them on. He ran his hands slowly up my legs. The outside of my calves. My knees. My thighs. I was panting, unable to catch my breath. My entire world narrowed to his touch on my skin. Nothing mattered outside of this.

I only cared about Ronan. “You’re so pretty,” he whispered, his hands easing from my hips, across my belly to the ache between my legs. His thumbs stroked me, slid me open. Held me open. “So pink, Poppy. You’re so pink and wet.”

He kissed me, and if he was kissing any other part of my body, it would be chaste. Reverent. “Ronan,” I groaned. My hand clutching his hair, pushing him against me.

He resisted, the asshole, just to torment me. “More?”

“Please.”

And he gave it to me. He pushed me against the wall and held me there, his mouth between my legs. He shouldered my thighs out wider and cupped my hips, holding me still. Holding me down. I was wet and he was loud and there was no room for shame or embarrassment. “Fuck,” he kept saying against my flesh. “Fuck, Poppy.”