Page 18

18

Ronan

H er lips part ever so slightly in the middle, and I’m a fucking fool for this woman. Damn her and everything she’s done to me since meeting her.

I’ve spent the last two weeks ignoring her, hoping to get her out of my head, but all it’s done is screw me over even more. When she touched me in the bathroom that day, nothing felt more right , and it terrified me. It still brought up the anger and pain of my past, just like it always does, but none of it felt like it was aimed at her. I didn’t want to hurt her in ways she hasn’t already been begging me for.

She pisses me off with this damn secret bullshit, and I’m between spanking the fuck out of her and biting her lip until she bleeds into my mouth while I kiss her.

I feel my nose twitch. “I will not ask again, and you will not fucking lie to me, Calista. Do you understand me?”

When she wets her lips, she shakes her head. “I can’t, please…”

Running my tongue across my teeth, I shake my head. “Who is he? Who are they? Is it the same person that hurt you that night when you came home bruised and disoriented?” I fire off the questions fast, so much so, she’s blinking rapidly as if clearing some haze I’ve put her into.

Her lips stay closed, and as she takes a step back, I laugh with no amount of humor behind it. “Where you going to go, baby girl?”

“Ronan, I can’t tell you.”

“Why?” I demand, advancing toward her. The garage doesn’t offer much space, cluttered with gym equipment, my bike, and random things from the house. There are two narrow walkways, and I’m blocking one of them. She can run if she wants, but I know her legs won’t carry her far right now, and as I did before, I’ll chase her fine-ass down.

She just shakes her head, and I look away from her, running my hand up through my hair in frustration.

“If I tell you, what would you do?” I shift my gaze back to her, flexing my hand into a fist and then releasing it as she starts to box herself in. She does that when she’s scared—finding a way to shrink, to make herself smaller than she already is.

Unlike her, I’m not going to lie to her. I’m not going to keep my violence hidden. “Find and kill them.”

“You can’t just do that, Ronan! This is one reason why I won’t tell you!”

My eyes narrow. “If I told my brother that someone was after you, do you know what he would do?”

“Call the police—”

“Exactly. He would call the police. You know what they would do?” I ask more harshly this time. “Tell me.”

She isn’t afraid of what I will do because she wants that. I’m pretty sure my not-so-innocent step-niece is a glutton for punishment. Dare I say a masochist.

Something is going on and it is both so plainly obvious yet completely hidden beneath layers of her carefully constructed facade. Her eyes flicker with secrets and deceit, and yet I would ignore all those red flags because I fucking want her.

I want her so goddamn bad, it’s pathetic.

“Tell me!” I bark.

“Nothing! They’d do absolutely nothing, okay?!” Her voice equally raises. “Let this go…”

“No, I won’t. I can’t . I’m not good with my words, Cal. How I get my answers is with my fists.” Both her eyes and mouth go wide. My tongue clicks against my teeth and I shake my head in disappointment at her. “Don’t look so surprised.” When I step once more to her, she takes one back. “Do you think I’d hit you like that? After everything I’ve…”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think you’d hurt me, Ronan. I…” Even if she says the words, I’m not certain she even believes them herself.

“I’d never hit you in ways you haven’t been dripping wet for, baby girl.” Her soft gasp would be cute if I wasn’t so pissed. “You know exactly what I’ll do to you to get the answers I want.”

“Stop,” she whimpers and takes several steps back, pressing against the garage door.

“Wrong word,” I croon. “You know, the one you never say to me because you don’t mean for me to stop .” Tilting my head to the side and letting it pop, I ask for the final time. “Who is hurting you? Who is after you, goddamn it!?”

“Why do you care so much?!” She elevates her tone louder than mine.

I bare my teeth in a smile and shake my head. “You aren’t that fucking stupid, Cal.”

“Y—” I cross the distance before she can get her sentence started and wrap my hand around her mouth.

“You can touch me with violence, you have my permission.” The moment the words come from my lips, her palm makes contact with my cheek. It’s awkward, because of our position, but the slight sting does put dots across my vision on that same side.

When I look back at her, I whisper, “Good girl. Again.”

The moment she tries for another slap, I remove my hand from her mouth and grab her wrist. She lifts her knee between my legs, and I throw my hips back, barely missing that painful attack.

“Don’t pop those,” I shake my head and lean into her. “They still need to be in your mouth.”

She grunts and pulls hard on her arm, trying to dispel my grip on her wrist. After a second, she gives up and throws her fist against my chest. It makes me cough slightly , and when she rears back another I catch it with my free hand, then hoist both of her hands up over her head.

Her shirt hikes up above her pierced belly button, and I step into her. “Answer the question.”

“I can’t!” she wails, struggling against my grip, but I’ve got her in a solid hold. I know if I switch to using just one hand, she’d break free, so I let her fight for a while, letting her tire herself out. “You don’t understand, I can’t tell you!”

“Why’s that?” I kick one of her feet out, and then the other before stepping between them.

This domination has me at full attention, but that would be a reward I’m not going to give. Even if all I’ve wanted for the past two weeks was to tie her hands behind her back and cover this entire cabin in both our cum and sweat. I’ve imagined her tits bouncing in my face while she writhes on top of me, screaming out my name while coming all over my cock.

Her silence comes with less and less of a physical fight, and I take the opportunity to shift both her wrists into one of my hands.

“I think you’re enjoying this, Cal. But this isn’t for your pleasure, nor is it for mine. You will tell me, right here, right now, or I will hog tie you and place Big Bertha up your ass.”

She gasps. “H-How do you know about her?”

“Mmm,” I groan. “More worried about why I know about her than me putting it in your ass. Such a slut for pain, huh, baby girl?”

The whimper that falls from her mouth makes my cock twitch. She chews on her bottom lip, but when her eyes meet mine, I can tell she’s on the verge of saying something. So I stay quiet, allowing her the moment.

“I’ll tell you why, if you tell me why I can’t touch you.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head. “This isn’t give and take. I don’t need to give you shit for you to tell me.”

“Please…”

Why does the way she beg make me feel so much lighter? I don’t get why it’s her, of all people, who has this effect on me.

I growl, “I promise you will begin using that word no if I tell you that, baby girl.”

“I won’t… I… I won’t.”

I should want that—want her to stop trying to break through the barrier I’ve painfully built. I would’ve died happy never knowing a touch existed that I didn’t want to scorch and burn. One that wasn’t from a child. Mia. Dylan. Innocence .

“Tell me why you won’t tell me first,” I say, but she shakes her head. I harden my gaze. “Unlike you… I’ve not lied to you. If I say I’m going to do something, I will do it.”

After a few shaky breaths, she closes her eyes. “Because I care about you. I don’t want you to go back to prison because of my baggage.”

I tut. “Don’t care about me, Cal.”

“Too late.”

My grip on her wrists loosens, letting her arms drop to her sides. I don’t step away, keeping the space between us nonexistent. “Correct that mistake, because I promise you will only find heartbreak on the other end of this jagged road.”

Her eyes that are turning red meet mine, and she shakes her head, but doesn’t comment. Instead, she says, “Why can’t I touch you?”

The slowing of my heart makes the air feel suffocating, as if I’m a fish out of water. Dying, helpless, unable to find my way back below the surface.

“You’d detest touch too if you were only ten when people started placing their hands and body parts where they didn’t belong.” I’ve never seen Cal cry before, but as her face morphs into anguish, tears brim her lids, threatening to fall. “When the word ‘no’ fell on deaf ears. When the only people that were supposed to believe you, thought you lied. And the ones that were supposed to protect you, sided with the offender.”

I step back from her, and she shakes her head like I’ve told her something so unbelievable that it couldn’t be true.

Like I’m lying.

I shrug my shoulders, never tearing my gaze away from her. “Care less, Cal. I’m so beyond being fixed like this cabin of yours, and don’t want to be.”

“Eamon…” She’s not listening to me. “Where was—”

“You asked me why I won’t let you touch me, and I answered that question. If you want another, you will tell me who is after you.”

She blinks, and those tears line straight down her cheeks. I’m sure they taste like defeat and so much fucking sympathy.

I chuckle with my own disappointment.

“You care about me…” It isn’t a question, but I hum, just to edge her to continue. “Why can’t I care?”

Now that’s a great question, but I won’t give her the answer. I know what caring about me leads to. Inevitably, I’ll end up back in prison or better, dead. There is a reason I’m staying away from Mia and my so-called family, because one of those is going to happen. There is no happy ending for someone like me. No fairytale where I end up with someone like Calista or really get anything that I want. It’s not in the cards for me, as sad as that is.

“You can’t answer that…” She bravely takes a step in my direction.

“Because I told you if you want me to answer any more of yours, you first have to answer mine. Who is after you, Cal?”

She shakes her head, and I am done with this back and forth. Turning from her, I move to the door, but she darts quickly through the opposite path, knocking into the workbench, scattering tools across the floor and feathers I’ve started to notice showing up here over the course of the last two weeks.

The moment she’s in front of me, I’m expecting her to try and grab onto me, put her hands onto my chest to stop me. Except she doesn’t. Instead she falls to her knees and… begs.

“They… they’re dangerous. I can’t have them hurting you, please, Ronan! Please, please… they… they’ll kill you.”

I tilt my head and bend at the hips to grab her chin. Roughly, I jerk her up to look at me. “Then I die, and I will be free. Who are you to tell me how I choose to go?”