Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
I unbutton his suit jacket and slide my hands inside, over his broad chest. I peel it back off his shoulders and then go to work on the buttons of his undershirt. Once I’ve got that off too, I grab his hands and guide him backwards to the bed. He follows and sits down, and I kneel before him to remove his shoes and socks.
My palms slide up his trouser clad legs, soaking in the full power of his strained muscles before I reach his belt. I unbuckle him and tug down his zipper. He’s wearing black briefs beneath, swollen from the outline of his hardened cock. My instinctive urge is to touch him. To please him. But first, I want to explore everywhere he’s never let me venture before.
He lifts his hips and helps me with the business of removing his pants. Then I stand before him and remove my own. I’ve done this hundreds of times at the club. For an audience of other men. It meant nothing then. But it means everything now.
Ronan watches closely as if he might miss something should he even blink. He’s seen me naked plenty over the last two years, but he still looks at me like it’s the first time. Like I’m not dirty or wrong or broken the way I often think I am.
His tendons are strained from how badly he wants me. How much he’s struggling to maintain his self-control. So I don’t make a long production of it. Tonight’s not about putting on a show for him. Tonight’s about learning the landscape of his body. Connecting with him in a way that’s more intimate than any other. Knowing his skin. The story only his body can tell me.
My fingers burn with the need to have those things.
I crawl onto the bed and move around behind him. His back is rigid, and I have to withhold the sharp intake of breath when I understand why. Upon seeing the large tattoo carved into his flesh, my stomach churns with dread. For Ronan.
The words are distorted, but I can still make them out. The codes of his militant cult. They are engraved onto his skin as a permanent reminder of the horrors they never want him to forget. The stretched lines make it apparent they were done many, many years ago. When he was only a child, and not even close to done growing yet.
My eyes sting from unshed tears, but I don’t let them fall, and I don’t make a sound. I told Ronan he could trust me, and now I understand his fear. His fear that I couldn’t handle seeing these things without losing my shit.
That thought alone propels me to touch his shoulders. They are warm and muscular beneath my palms, a testament to the many hours he spends boxing with Lachlan.
This man is a fortress in his own right.
Immovable. Unstoppable. Formidable.
He is the very thing they created him to be. A killer. A machine. But he’s also a protector. A man who can be as human as any other. I’ve seen his true nature. And I’ve never felt safer than when I was in his arms. So these people- the ones who hurt him- they didn’t win. Ronan might not know it, but I do.
“Is this okay?” My fingertips move over him in a gentle cadence, massaging him lightly. A full body shudder moves through him, and his voice is a rough whisper when he replies.
“Aye.”
“Have you ever had a massage before?” I ask.
“No.”
My eyes rove over the skin on his back, riddled with scars and a lifetime of more pain than any one person should ever have to bear. It looks like he was whipped, stabbed, burned, and shot at… among other terrors my mind probably couldn’t even conjure. These wounds tell the story his lips can’t. And even if I don’t know all of the details, I’m glimpsing a piece of Ronan that I doubt very many ever have. It isn’t something I take lightly.
My fingers crawl up the nape of his neck and dissolve the tension from his muscles there and into his hairline. Ronan’s only response is a small grunt of approval, but it plays like the sweetest melody I’ve ever heard. I massage his scalp and press a gentle kiss to his shoulder.
“I’m messing up your perfect hair,” I say.
“I don’t care,” is his reply.
When I move lower, I notice a deep scar on the side of his head. My stomach flips when I trace over the raised flesh behind his ear.
“What’s this one from?” I whisper.
“Another lad tried to cut it off,” he answers. “And then I killed him.”
I nod even though he can’t see me, because I’m afraid if I speak my voice will betray me.
So for a while, I just touch him. Coaxing the stress from his body and watching the magic of Ronan melting into me. He’s enjoying this. He trusts me. And I know without a shadow of a doubt now that I’ll never be able to let him go.