Page 12 of Dual Surrender

“Please eat, Ronan.” I gave him my best obedience voice. “Rich and Sam are coming over at eight.”

“Whose idea was that?” Ronan finally picked up his fork and used the side to flake off a piece of the salmon I’d cooked for him. My shoulders relaxed when he finally started to eat.

“Rich called and asked if we were up for a little get-together, I told him yes. I think Sam needs out of the house and, like I said, I didn’t expect this talk.”

“Are they okay?”

I waited until Ronan ate more of his dinner before answering, “They’re fine. It’s just with the holidays coming, Sam gets a little sad over things being so tense with his brother.”

“I find it so hard to believe that after this many years, his brother is still so judgmental about Rich.” Ronan swallowed a bite of food and reached for the wine I’d poured.

“People have opinions.” I thought about Colton and his opinions of my relationship with Ronan, and how that reflected on how he thought about Ronan as a person. And Colton was only a friend. I couldn’t imagine how tense things would be between us if we were brothers.

“Opinions are like assholes,” Ronan said.

I exhaled loudly. “I know you’re in charge, but can you please eat?”

Ronan pursed his lips and looked at me, his expression almost blank and hard for me to make sense of.

“You eat,” he said, voice calm. He crooked a finger at me and I pushed back my chair, walking around to the other side of the table toward him. He pointed at the ground and I lowered myself to my knees.

This was where everything felt right, felt best. As soon as my knees hit the floor, the tension unwound itself from my spine.

The first time Ronan put me in a cage, which seemed now like ages ago, he’d asked me how it made me feel and I’d answered quickly with the first word that had come to mind, the first feeling in my chest when he’d asked.

Cherished.

In that, and all things, Ronan made me feel cherished.

Being at his feet made me feel cherished. It made me feel elevated.

Ronan leaned across the table and grabbed my plate, setting it on the ground in front of me.

“Eat,” he said again, tangling his fingers through my hair when I looked down at my salmon. “Tell me about your day.”

“Finished up the designs for the Marshall building,” I murmured, picking apart a cold piece of fish.

“The one downtown?”

I listened to Ronan’s fork scrape across his plate.

“Yeah. There were some issues with some of the interior walls, but they’re sorted now.”

“That’s good.”

“It’s work.” I shoved a larger than socially polite bite of fish into my mouth, chewed and swallowed, then rested my head on Ronan’s thigh while he finished eating. “Tell me about your day.”

“It was slow. Just my normal rounds, and then I spent a lot of time thinking about this list.”

“Ronan.”

“I know.” He tightened his fingers in my hair. “Later.”

I wrapped my arms around his calf and situated myself between his legs. He made room for me while he finished eating.

“Is it only Rich and Sam tonight?” he asked, pushing his plate away.

I held up mine and he stacked them both on the table. I could practically feel him mentally reaching for the list, but he respected my desire to wait.