Just to make sure Grub got on his way quickly, I’d called Lila Winchester’s assistant, a man who knew ten different ways to kill a person with a spoon, and arranged for him to collect Grub and deposit him—aka, throw him from the car—somewhere on the highway at least twenty miles away from here.
When I walked back into the house, Ronnie was not in the living room.
Or the kitchen.
Or the bedroom.
Fuck.
I hurried downstairs. If she wasn’t in the gym, I didn’t know what I was going to—
Soft grunts rose up the stairwell. Breathless grunts. Grunts of exertion.
What the fuck?
“Ronnie?” I called, charging down the last few steps and into the gym.
My feet tripped at what I saw.
Ronnie stood in the middle of the workout area, her back to me, the tonfa in one hand, one of my sais in the other.
I stood motionless, watching her move the weapons. Fluid if somewhat lacking in form, she swung them with an aggression I couldn’t help but admire, even as it tightened the knot of guilt making itself at home in my gut.
It took me longer than it should to realize she was watching a YouTube video on her cell as she moved.
Teaching herself how to fight.
How to defend herself.
Fuck, I hated myself right there and then.
“Ronnie?” I said again.
She startled, whipped around to face me, the tonfa extended out in a defensive position.
A ragged breath burst from her as her stare locked on my face. “You scared the shit out of me, Pratt,” she complained and reached for her phone to pause the video. “Is the grub gone?”
I chuckled at her question. “The grub is gone.”
I crossed to where she stood, smoothing my palms over her hips to tug her closer to my body. “We’re good now.”
I wanted to believe that. Unfortunately, I knew the reality of the situation. Still, if I could make Ronnie believe it…
She didn’t.
“Bullshit,” she said, wriggling out of my arms and stepping backward. “Don’t treat me like I’m dumb, Lucas. After all these years of you lying to me about who you are, I’ve become quite attached to your truth. Don’t fuck that up now by spinning shit.”
That knot in my gut twisted at her blunt order. Truth. Okay. Truth it was. I loved her too much to spin shit to her.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her expression set. “Trinity, yes?”
“Yes.”
“How? I thought you said they all thought you were dead.”
I let out a sigh and dragged my fingers through my hair. “Rufie—a sociopath of the highest order—is the new leader of Trinity.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t move.
With another breath, I crossed to the nearest weight bench and dropped onto it, elbows on my knees, hands hanging between my legs. “Two weeks ago, he stepped up behind Loco—the leader who’d told the rest of the gang I was dead—and slit his throat. The Trinity members who opposed him faced two choices—swallow his shit and live, or not.”
Ronnie’s eyes widened a little.
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “According to Grub, more than half of those loyal to Loco elected the latter option. Their endings weren’t pretty. Unfortunately, one of those members revealed I was still alive during his last conversation with Rufie. The second the fucker learned I wasn’t dead, he made it his mission to find me.”
“Well, fuck, eh?” Ronnie murmured.
I chuckled, the sound dry and empty. “Fuck, eh,” I echoed.
Grub—a blubbering mess of a turd by the end of our talk—wasn’t sure how my exact location came to be known to Rufie, but he thought it had something to do with Detective Dewey.
Which meant once again, I was in the crosshairs of my old sadistic gang and authorities more corrupt than fucking sin.
I didn’t want to tell Ronnie that. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to. I’d take care of the situation myself. End it.
She’d tear me a new one when I got back, but at least she’d be safe.
“What about the information on Trinity and Dewey and Kitchner?” she asked. “The stuff you sent to that person both you and Doctor Winchester know? What happened to that?”
Fuck. I should have remembered Ronnie had a mind like a steel trap.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Grub didn’t, either.”
She scowled at me.
I understood her agitation.
Whoever the crooked authorities were, they’d made certain the information I’d collected on Dewey and Kitchner and Trinity’s more legal—using that term lightly—enterprises, had not gone public. As soon as I could, I’d need to contact Lila and let her know. It was highly unlikely our mutual acquaintance was shady or in Trinity’s pocket, but nor was he a fighter. If he was hurt—or killed—because of me, I was going to be very angry. And my anger would be a pale imitation of what Lila would feel.
Heaven help anyone who hurt or threatened her ex-husband.
“So what you’re telling me,” Ronnie said, tone ambiguous, “is there’s a target on your back and potentially lots of people aiming for it?”
“That about sums it up.”
“And some of them know where you are?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve threatened to…what? Hurt anyone who comes after you again?”
I wobbled my head in a non-committal way. I might be telling Ronnie the truth, but she didn’t need to know exactly what I’d threatened to do to Rufie and anyone he sent after me. I loved her too much for her to know just how vicious I could be.
Still gripping the tonfa and sai, she crossed her arms over her breasts—breasts I would much rather be burying my face into at that moment in time—and fixed me with a direct stare. “I take it hurt is an understatement?”
“You could say that.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t move. Just studied me, her expression unreadable. And then she let out a shaky sigh, shook her head, and threw up her hands. “I liked you so much better when I thought you were just a prick of a next door neighbor, Lucas Pratt.”
My gut clenched. My chest tightened. My mouth turned to dust. “What are you saying, Ronnie? That you…you don’t…don’t want to be with me anymore?”
Jesus, the question was like razor wire tearing through me.
The look she gave me was steady. “Lucas, after everything that’s happened to me in the last few days, I would be insane to say I still want to be with you.”
I swallowed. Fuck, my world, my reason for existing…it was coming to an end. It was—
“Good thing,” Ronnie said, tossing aside the two Okinawan fighting weapons, “I am.”
My heart stopped. For a fraction of a second. Long enough for the world to grow completely devoid of sound as I watched her hook her fingers under the hem of the shirt she wore, pull it up over her head, and drop it to the ground.
And then sound rushed back at me.
The sound of her breath as she crossed to where I sat on the weight bench, the sound of my heart slamming against my chest as she straddled my lap, of her bra clasp clicking as she released it with deft fingers.
The sound of my raw groan as her breasts tumbled free of their lace prison, of her sigh, of my moan as I closed my lips around her right nipple and suckled its hard form deep into my mouth.
“Oh yeah,” she whispered, burying her fingers in my hair.
I sucked harder on her nipple, raising one hand to knead the heavy swell of her breast as I pawed at her ass.
She rolled her hips, grinding her sweet, hot pussy against my trapped dick.
For a moment, I thought I was about to pass out from pleasure—the punishing pressure of her sex on my erection detonated wave after wave of concentrated rapture through me—and then she tightened her fist in my hair to painful levels and yanked her breast free of my mouth.
I stared up at her, brea
th choppy, body on fire with a lust I’d never extinguish.
She lowered her face down to mine. “If you even think about bailing on me for my own safety, Lucas fucking Pratt, I will hunt you down and fuck you until you can’t move. And then do it over and over again. Do you understand?”
I nodded and groaned as she caught my bottom lip with her teeth.
With a growl, I grabbed her hips and shoved myself to my feet, taking her with me.
She wrapped her legs around me, her hands in my hair, her ankles locked behind my back.
I made my way to the stairs. I could tell Ronnie was hot for wild, raw fucking, but I wanted to give her more.
I needed to give her more.
I fucking cherished her, loved her more than I think she could ever comprehend. And, yes, I was thinking she’d be better off without me. I was thinking I’d fucked up her life.
I was thinking those things…
But I was also thinking how she tamed the anger in me, how she made me feel human. I was also thinking how I couldn’t fucking function without her…
And most of all, at that very moment, I was thinking how much I wanted to worship her.
“Hold on,” I murmured, tightening my arms around her waist.
I climbed the stairs to the living room.
I didn’t stop.
Without slowing my pace or adjusting her weight in my arms, I carried her up to our bedroom.
There is a time for animalistic sex on the coffee table, a time for carnal fucking on the sofa, and then there is a time for reverence and tender passion.
A time and a place.
That time was now. The place was my bed. Our bed.
I lowered her onto the mattress, butt first, and kissed her as I pressed her flat to her back. She moaned into the kiss, dragging her heel over my lower back before hooking her leg around mine.
I took my time exploring her lips, nipping at them occasionally, gently nuzzling them after doing so.
She sighed and moaned, soft hitching noises of pleasure. My cock pulsed at each sound.
As before, I hungered to bury myself in her sweet pussy, but would deny that need until I made her come first.
Smoothing one hand up the length of her side, I teased the curve of her breast with my thumb.
She arched beneath me, her lips on mine demanding more.
I moved my palm back to her hip and lower, cupped her ass for a giddy second as I moved my mouth to her throat.
“Lucas…” Her moan flooded my groin with hot lust.
I moved my other hand to hers, threading our fingers together as I nipped and sucked on the sensitive spot below her ear.
“Oh yeah.” She pushed her hips up to mine. “I like that.”
I tormented the side of her neck with my teeth and tongue, holding her hand in mine, our groins pressed together, separated only by our clothes.
I would rid Ronnie of the sweatpants she wore soon. But first…
Lifting my head, I gazed down into her pleasure-fogged eyes. “You are not allowed to move, Ronnie. I am going make you come by sucking on your amazing tits and you are not allowed to move or touch me while I’m doing so. Understand?”
Contrary disobedience flashed over her face for a split second and then she nodded.
My dick throbbed.
I shifted my weight, rested on my elbows, my lower body nestled between her parted thighs. “Put your hands above your head, babe.”
She did as I instructed, her breath quickening.
“Don’t move them from there.”
She watched me, lips parted.
I smoothed my palms up and down the length of her arms, and then once again skimmed my thumbs against the side swell of her breasts.
Her hands curled into fists as she arched her spine, pushing her chest upward. “Please, Lucas.”
I lowered my head, nibbling on her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder, and back to her throat.
She moaned again, the sound turning shaky when I moved my mouth to her left nipple.
I touched the tip of my tongue to its hardened tip, a gentle caress I followed with an equally gentle stream of exhaled air.
Once more, she arched her back, her eyes fluttering closed. “Lucas…” she repeated. “Please.”
I lost myself to the perfection of her breasts, first one and then the other, and then back to the first, never sucking completely on her nipple, just teasing and tasting and flicking with my tongue.
I knew her orgasm threatened to crash through her when her body began to tremble. She fought with herself, opening and closing her fists above her head.
My dick grew harder at the sight of her fraying control, her struggle. I continued to run my hands over her ribcage, arms, throat, and breasts. I was in pain, not just from my trapped boner, but from strangling my own desire to take her there and then.
Exquisite, tormented pain.
When her hips began to thrust up to mine in increasingly erratic speed, I knew she was on the edge of eruption.
Only then did I close one hand over her breast, framing her nipple with two fingers, and drew her other nipple deeply passed my lips and teeth.
I sucked on it with ravenous hunger even as I massaged it with my tongue.
“Oh God.” She bucked beneath me, clawing at my shoulders.
I sucked harder, my own lust threatening to undo my resolve to drown her in tender passion.
“Lucas…” She panted my name over and over as I continued to suck, shuddering as she came, gouging at my back with her nails.
Finally, the trembles left her, and her hands slid from my shoulders to the bed.
“Oh boy,” she murmured. “Oh man, that was good.”
Unable to stop my smile, I levered back onto my knees and watched her attempt to recoup from her orgasm.
Ronnie, post-climax, is the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Chest heaving, she looked up at me through her eyelashes, a smile curling her lips. “Wow.”
“Wow,” I echoed, shifting one of her legs until I no longer kneeled between them.
“I’ve told you before how incredibly talented you are, right?”
I chuckled at her husky question. “You have.”
She nodded, her eyes closing, one hand tangling in her bangs. “Good. I’d hate for you not to know that.”
“I’d hate for you to think we’re finished,” I said, hooking my fingers beneath the elastic waistband of her sweatpants. I tugged them down over hips.
“Oh God, yeah…” she whispered, wriggling on the bed enough for me to remove them completely from her body.
A soft gasp escaped her, an arousing mix of anticipation and delight.
Risking loss of control, I removed my own clothes and spent a lifetime exploring her beautiful, naked body with my mouth and hands. I touched her with delicate fingers and caresses. Explored the sensitive dips of her elbows, the backs of her knees, the angles of her hipbones.
I bathed her pussy over and over with my tongue; I laved her clit time and again, bringing her to that incredible edge more than once.
When she begged me to be inside her, I made her come with my tongue, and as she was riding the crest of her climax, I slid up her body and sank my entire length into her, embedding myself to the balls in her tight, wet heat.
“Oh God,” she cried out, arching into my thrust.
I rolled my hips, moving inside her. Thank fucking God she was on the pill, because I couldn’t have handled the feel of a condom separating us.
“Yes,” she moaned. “Oh yes. Yes.”
Pleasure filled her voice, her face.
If I died right then, I would die happy.
I watched her reach the pinnacle of pleasure once again, felt her sex contract around my cock over and over, every nerve ending thrumming with my own pleasure. And then that pleasure erupted and I, too, was coming, my seed pumping into Ronnie, wad after wad, my thrusts wild and powerful, my heart racing, my gaze on her face
.
And as she opened her eyes and moaned my name again, as she wrapped her legs around my hips and squeezed my dick with her pussy, I knew what I had to do.
She’d hate me. For the rest of her life. But as long as it was a long life, one free of danger and violence, I could accept that hate. Better she hate me and be alive, than love me and be dead. Or worse.
And believe me, where Trinity was concerned, there were worse things than death.
Yeah, she’d hate me for what I had to do.
I could live with that. But I couldn’t live a moment longer with the thought she was in danger.
Chapter 4
I waited until she was asleep before climbing out of bed.
I moved slowly, so as not to disturb her.
Thankfully, Ronnie is a deep sleeper.
I once broke into her bedroom when she was seventeen and I was a week off my eighteenth birthday, to make sure she’d gotten home okay after going to her prom with a complete dick of a guy. She had no clue I was there in her room, even when I tripped over the mountain of school textbooks and paperbacks piled high beneath her window.
Reaching for my cell on the nightstand now, I watched Ronnie sigh in her sleep and roll onto her side.
Good.
Turning my attention to my phone, I tapped out a message for Lila Winchester as I crossed the room to the walk-in wardrobe.
“I need Francis and Fluffy at my place ASAP.”
Lila’s reply came a few seconds later. “Done. Why? Are you planning to be stupid?”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I pulled on a pair of jeans, boots, and a T-shirt and grabbed my leather bike jacket.
Ronnie didn’t stir when I exited the room. I stole a few seconds to watch her sleep. To burn her image into my brain. To commit everything she was to my soul.
In my back pocket, my cell vibrated with an incoming message.
Throat tight, I turned away from the sight of Ronnie naked and sound asleep, yanked my phone out, and read the text from Lila.
“Francis and Fluffy on the way. Whatever you’re doing, rethink it.”
“Can’t,” I texted back. “She’s only going to get hurt if I stay.”
I returned my phone to my pocket and hurried down the stairs to the gym. It took me a few moments to shove two hunting knives, a Glock, a Berretta, and a set of brass knuckles into a duffle bag. I contemplated the collection and then added a handful of cable-ties, a short length of heavyweight chain, and a butterfly knife.
The Good Girl In My Bed (Dangerous Desire Book 2) Page 4
