But Connor was right about something else: they were family men now, and that was something Ronin couldn’t share.
He had a family now, too, one that was new to him, but it was different. His ‘new’ son was a man. He didn’t want to have to explain Rainy and Cameron, which he’d have to do if he stayed.
He felt jealous of his family. Territorial. He simply did not want to bring them into the club. That reluctance was bitterly strong, and he didn’t fully understand why. No amount of letting the thoughts move through him had brought him to understanding. He only knew that he did not want Rainy here. He wanted to preserve the sanctuary she meant to him. His life with her meant calm. Love. Peace. His life in the club had usually meant fighting. Bloodshed. Death.
Even with the club’s new decision to return to a peaceful life, Ronin felt as though introducing Rainy and Cameron to the Horde would…taint them.
He stared into his empty glass and thought about what that meant. He was loyal. He wanted to be loyal. He loved his brothers. So how could he feel that they would taint his family?
Bart sat next to him. “Shaylee—Jack for me and a refill for Roe.”
Shaylee nodded and picked up the bottles.
Once they both had their drinks, Bart took a long swallow of his and said, “Roe. Talk to Con before you do anything. Let him know what you’re thinking.”
Ronin turned and frowned at Bart, surprised that his thoughts had been read so easily.
“It’s all over your face, brother. Has been for a while. If you’re going, go out right. Retire. But talk to Con first. This club is rocking hard with all the changes, and…” Bart looked down at the amber liquid spinning in his glass as he rocked his hand. “And more changes are coming. Maybe it’s the right time to go. But be sure. And if you go, do it right. Keep your ink. Keep your brothers.”
The clues Ronin had been noticing over the past weeks settled into an equation in his mind. “You’re thinking about it, too,” he said, cocking his head at the former VP.
Bart gave him a sad, enigmatic smile. “I’ll never leave the Horde.” He slapped Ronin on the shoulder and walked away.
As Ronin finished his refilled scotch, he realized that Bart hadn’t quite rejected his statement.
~oOo~
Ronin keyed in the alarm code, and Rainy came down the stairs, wearing a silky, dark blue nightgown. He met her as she neared the bottom, and he wrapped his arms around her, lifting her and setting her on the floor.
She smoothed her hand over his cheek. “How’d it go?”
“We sent him to his rest,” he sighed. “I guess it went like it was supposed to. I’m tired of burying people I care about. God, Rainy. I’m so tired.” Feeling that fatigue like lead in his blood, he dropped his head to her shoulder and let her hold him.
“What can I do?”
Here, in this house, this life, he knew what he wanted, and he didn’t want to lose another second in indecision. “Marry me.”
His heart beat twice before she responded. “That’s what you want? You’re sure?”
He lifted his head and peered into her eyes. “You and Cam are all I am sure about.”
“Then yes. Let’s get married.”
“Soon.”
“As soon as you want. I don’t need a wedding. We can just go down to the courthouse, get a license, and get married—tomorrow, even. If you want. We can start our life right away.”
“I don’t want you to have to work the same day.”
“Well, Peter is off the next two days, so how about the day after that? Cam can be our witness.”
He nodded and laid his head on her shoulder again.
“Come to bed, Roe,” she whispered. “Let me help you be calm.”
~oOo~
She led him upstairs and helped him undress, first sitting him on the bed and kneeling on the floor before him to pull his boots off his feet, then his socks. Lingering there, she massaged each foot, pressing her thumbs into his arches until tension leached from him, and he couldn’t suppress a groan.
He knew she meant to tuck him in, put him to bed, coax him to sleep, but, tired as he was, he wasn’t yet ready to sleep. He was restless. He needed to feel her, be close to her. The calm he needed, he’d find inside her. He needed the connection, that singular, clear moment when heart and body and mind merged inside him and between them. When he felt whole, when they were one.
She moved his legs apart and scooted between them, taking his shirt in her hands and beginning to work the buttons open. He wrapped his hands around her upper arms.
“Rainy.”
“Shhh.” She ignored his hold on her and went on undressing him.
“I want you.”
She pushed his shirt from his shoulders, then leaned in and kissed his chest. “And here I am.” She said it with her lips on his skin, then kissed a line to his nipple, lingering to suck there. Ronin shut his eyes as all of his muscles clenched against the potent charge of her mouth on him. Then she moved downward, running her tongue over his scars.
“I’ll always be here,” she whispered. “Waiting for you.”
Letting go of her arms, he took her face in his hands instead. He tipped her head up and leaned down so he could take her mouth. He kissed her as hard as he could, trying to say something in that way that he wouldn’t have known how to say with words.
Still kissing her, he stood, easing her up from her knees. When she stood before him, he leaned back and slid the straps of her nightgown from her shoulders. She shimmied gently, and the silky material—it might well have been actual silk, for all he knew—undulated down her body and pooled prettily at her feet.
He swept her into his arms and turned to lay her down in the middle of her bed. Her long, beautiful red hair spread out around her over her sumptuous linens, and Ronin was reminded of sunset glowing against white clouds.
Without bothering to take off his jeans, he joined her.
No, he was not yet ready for sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ronin lay at Lorraine’s side, hooking his leg over one of hers, the denim of his jeans rough and dense on her bare skin. The feel of it made her insides clench, and she moaned.
When she reached for his belt buckle where it dug into her side, he caught her hand and pressed it back to the bed. Then he moved more completely over her, his body pressing hers into the comforter, his jeans gently abrading the skin of her belly, her legs, between her legs. She flexed her hips upward, wanting more of that rough sensuality.
He held her down, his hands on her arms, his body over hers, and kissed her. She could do little more than move her tongue with his and taste him, feel him. When she tried to flex again and grind her bare sex against the denim that covered the steely length of his, he grunted and took his mouth from hers.
He stared down at her with restless, stormy eyes, and Lorraine thought for a brief flash of time that he might speak. But no. Instead, he thrust his hips, pushing her into the bed, holding her down, and grinding hard into her. Giving her what she needed and denying her more, all at once.
“Roe,” she gasped and tried to free her hands. But his hands tightened around her wrists in response, and he bent down and kissed her neck. He sucked there, his tongue tasting her, swirling around that one tiny spot, then began, ever so slowly, trailing kisses around the side of her neck. His tongue left a hot, wet trail that cooled in the air as he moved on, along her shoulder to the join of her arm, then back over her collarbone, pausing to hook his teeth around that bone and nip gently. The stubble of his short beard made her skin sing wherever it touched.
All the while, his hips pressed firmly down, keeping his cock, shielded in denim, in hard, maddening contact with her clit. Every time he shifted even slightly, she moaned. She could come just like this, if only he’d give her just a wee bit more.
He paused again to lave the notch between her collarbones, and she writhed under him, trying to get enough contact, enough friction to bring herself over. The hair on his
chest rasped against her nipples, which were so hard they felt like pebbles between them, even to her.
“Roe, please!”
He ignored her and said nothing. But he abandoned the notch at the base of her throat and moved downward, the path taking his hips south, too. She moaned in protest as the pressure of his cock against her core eased and disappeared. Now she could feel his erection against her thigh instead. Still alluring, but not nearly as effective.
What was effective, though, was the feel of his mouth, his tongue, moving toward her needful breasts. Yet holding her hands so firmly down that the comforter swelled up around them, he sucked one hard nipple into his mouth, biting down just enough to make her whimper, then scuffed his chin over her chest and did the same to the other. He took his time, moving back and forth between her breasts, holding her nearly immobile, at his mercy.
Her heart pounded in her ears, keeping time with the rhythmic draw of his mouth on her flesh.
Again she begged, “Roe! God! I need…”
Finally, he raised his head and met her eyes again. Then he slid his body down hers and stood up, away from her, leaving her needy and cold. When her hands were free, she reached out to him, bereft.
“Come back!”
He loomed over her, grabbed her hips and flipped her to her belly. Not expecting it, she cried out, but when he lifted up on her hips again, she understood what he wanted, and she put her knees under, raising her ass into the air. Ready for him to fill her full, she relaxed a little and listened for the sounds of him opening, hopefully discarding, his jeans. Her desperate wait was almost over.
But she didn’t hear his belt or his zipper, or the hoarse whisper of denim moving over skin. Instead, she felt the warmth of his body near hers again, and then the hot, grainy touch of his callused hands on her thighs.
And then, sweet lord, his mouth was on her. He was going down on her from behind. He’d never done so before. No one had ever done this for her before. It felt exactly right and completely different. His whole face was pressed to her core, all of his beard brushing on her tender skin, his lips, his mouth, tongue, teeth, breath on her, exciting her, driving her wild. His nose. His hands gripping her thighs hard enough to leave marks.
The sounds he made! Her silent, enigmatic love, who held himself so deep within, so guarded, whose focus in sex was normally complete and on her, groaned and grunted like an animal, as if he were literally devouring her. She answered every one of his bestial sounds with one of her own, rocking her hips, driving toward him as hard as he would let her.
The long, slow build of his patient foreplay seemed to have lifted her to a new level of consciousness, and Lorraine felt her climax approaching long before it reached her. She felt each joint in her body open and flow with liquid heat. She felt the muscles between her legs flutter and flex, relaxing as if to make way. Her mind divided itself, most of it devoted to the visceral experience of Ronin’s body on hers, the feel of it all, but a part breaking off to notice each individual feeling, each individual emotion. What he was doing to her, what he was bringing her, was the definition of transcendent.
When her release arrived, it did so like a massive, breaking wave, dragging her away in its undertow. Her juices let go, and she screamed into the comforter. He stayed there, his attention still total, and brought her down slowly, easing his force and tempo little by little until she sighed and relaxed.
Then, she heard the sounds of his undressing. While she was still face down, ass up, she felt the heat of him pushing at her drenched core.
“Oh, yes,” she breathed, then keened a long, low moan as he filled her up. “Oh, God.”
She felt him lift one leg and rest his foot on the mattress. “Oh, God,” she said again. For a moment, he was still, taking one hand from a hip and caressing her back, soothing her. Then he grasped her hip again and pounded into her, slamming downward as deep as he could get, as deep as she was, his hips beating her ass with every thrust, his balls slapping against her.
This climax came quickly, almost harshly, and pulled her under once again, so far that she couldn’t catch a breath, and she beat her hands on the mattress as if that would help her.
Then Ronin pulled out, so fast it hurt, and flipped her over, onto her back. Pushing her farther onto the bed, he dropped onto her and was inside her again before she could bring her legs up. But she was free and had him now, so she wrapped her legs and arms around him as he brought her high a third time, still thrusting and slamming madly into her. His head loomed over hers, and his face was red and shiny with sweat, the furrows in his brow deep and tight.
They’d been wild in bed when they were young, and they’d had bouts of athletic sex in their new life. But Ronin had never been truly rough until now. Lorraine had the sudden understanding that he was working something out on her. In her.
And she was glad. The knowledge that he trusted her enough to give her this, his need and vulnerability, was powerfully affirming. And hot as hell itself. She clung to him, moving with him, giving him her body and her love, letting him take it.
Caught as she was in those thoughts, her third orgasm was gentler than the first two. Ronin came right after, though, and his seemed to claw its way through his body. His face went dark, deep red, the veins in his temples and throat stood out starkly, and he groaned as if he were dying a painful death.
When it was over, he let his hot, wet body drop onto hers. She lay there, buried under him, surrounded by the thick down comforter, and stroked his back. After a moment, she felt his shoulders and back go rigid and then begin to shake.
For the second time in all the years she’d known him, and for the second time in a few short weeks, Ronin was crying.
She held him and caressed him and let him have what she could give him.
~oOo~
Ronin slept late into the next morning. Lorraine, who’d spent most of the night watching him sleep fitfully at her side, gave up and got up not long after sunrise. She occupied herself with a swim and a shower, then, seeing that he had finally settled into a calmer rest, went down to the kitchen and began to bake.
Although she was good at both, she preferred cooking to baking. Cooking left room for impulse and inspiration. Once you understood which flavors complemented each other, you could throw whatever you had around into a pot and make something tasty. Baking required rule-following. Going off even a fraction on any ingredient changed the result markedly. Not being especially detail-oriented, Lorraine was a much happier cook.
But on this morning, she felt like baking. Ronin liked breads and pastries. So she made a batch of cinnamon chocolate scones, and a loaf of pineapple coconut bread, and finally a batch of popovers to serve with some of the artisanal preserves she’d picked up the week before at the market.
She’d set everything out on the island to cool, and went up to check on Ronin. Almost ten o’clock, and he was still sleeping. Since he was a lifelong dawn riser, she felt a hint of worry and crossed to the bed to lay her hand on his forehead.
He was cool. Okay. She decided to let him sleep and go outside with her tablet and read, then.
Sitting for the first time that morning, Lorraine realized that last night had made her a little sore. She smiled at the thought and moved to a seat with thicker upholstery.
Ronin seemed to prefer the patio outside the kitchen, but Lorraine liked to sit near the pool. She liked the way the sun, dappled by the tree cover, danced and sparkled over the water, and she liked the way the water changed the sound around it, even when it was still. Since she used a chlorine alternative in the pool, there was no strong chemical smell to overwhelm the fragrances of laurel and eucalyptus that pervaded the hills.
When she heard the door open, she looked up to see Ronin, standing in his jeans, rubbing his head and face.
“Good morning,” she said and set her tablet down next to her empty mug. The window for ‘good morning’ had nearly closed; it was almost noon.
“Hey.”
He s
aid nothing more, and he didn’t move.
“Are you hungry? I did some baking this morning.”
“Smells good.”
She stood up and went to him. “C’mon. The coffee should still be good, too. Let’s get you fed.” She pushed him back through the doorway, then led him to the kitchen. He followed her without resistance.
When she had him set up with a big mug of black coffee, and a plate for his choice of scones or bread or popovers, Lorraine refilled her mug and sat across from him at the island. “Did you get some rest?”
His mouth full of scone, he nodded. “Yeah. Haven’t slept that long in years.”
Calm & Storm (The Night Horde SoCal Book 6) Page 26
