Page 48 of The Thinnest Air

Ronan scoops me into his arms again, sliding my legs up his sides and teasing like he’s going to carry me back to his bedroom again.

I beat on his chest, but I can’t stop grinning. “Stop. You know I have to go.”

“Maybe one day you won’t have to.” He lets me go, and I slide down his body until my feet hit the floor, which feels hard and cold, like reality.

“Maybe,” I say.

Reaching for his face, I run my fingers through his dark hair and drink him in. Even the dark shadows can’t hide his virility or the captivating way he looks at me.

I like him.

So much.

But I don’t love him. I mean, I could, but I won’t allow myself to.

My life is already complicated enough.

Ronan is my cheap thrill.

My dirty little secret.

He makes me feel alive.

He’s the place I flock to when I’m out of my gilded cage.

With him, I am free.

We make it to the front door, and I step into my boots. He’s still kissing me, his mouth arched at the ends each time, and not just in a single-bachelor-who-just-got-laid kind of way but in a genuine I’m-falling-hard-for-this-girl kind of way.

“When can I see you again?” he asks.

“I don’t know. It’s our week with the kids.” I glance at the clock on his fireplace mantel. I should’ve left a half hour ago. We’re supposed to get Calder and Isabeau from Erica’s by six before heading to Salt Lake City for a weekend of family-oriented fun.

Zoos. Theme parks. Kid-friendly restaurants with screaming babies and exasperated parents chasing after their overly tired offspring, so desperate to enjoy just one dinner out that they’ll subject the rest of the world to the fruits of their failed parenting labors.

I’d much rather stay here. With Ronan.

“I’ll call you next week,” I say, my hand on the doorknob. My gaze lands on his bare chest, and I’m taken back to the image of his body over mine, his arms creating a safe harbor, a refuge of sorts for my dirtiest fantasies.

Ronan, my clean-cut all-American boy, likes his sex dirty, but he’s not selfish about it. He may put me in handcuffs, but he doesn’t come until I do. He also likes to fuck me in public, knowing the best secret hiding spots and promising me we’ll never get caught, that no one will ever find us.

He’s my biggest thrill and my biggest weakness.

And there’s not a damn thing I can do to keep myself from coming back.

Slipping out the front door, I trek to my car, which is parked a couple of blocks away, along the side of a gravel road the locals rarely venture down because there’s nothing pretty to see, no landscape installations, no retaining walls built of eight-ton boulders, no luxury lodges. Only the closer I get, the more I see something strange on my back windshield.

Picking up the pace, I realize someone has drawn a single word into the dusty glass.

WHORE.

My heart races as my eyes dart around, but I’m surrounded with nothingness. Trees. Chirping crickets. A dusky sky.

Someone followed me out here.

Someone saw me go into Ronan’s house.

Someone knows about us.