by Sybil Bartel
Staring at me as if I were the only woman in the entire world, he didn’t so much as blink.
My breath short, my nerves rattled, I wanted to selfishly throw myself at him just so he would put his strong arms around me.
Instead, anxiety pushed attitude out of my mouth. “Do any of you bodyguards ever knock?”
Stopping a few feet from me, he said nothing.
This was the Ronan I had known.
Austere, unrelenting, heartless if you did not know him.
He was a boy who was never a boy all those years ago, because not even at sixteen when he was holding down a job and bringing home money to help his single mother was he allowed to be a child. He was already a man back then. And that Ronan had grown into the warrior who’d become a Marine, but the fundamental parts of him had not changed.
His demeanor cool and aloof, he was controlled, dominant, and so very intense that sometimes I had to look away from him just so my heart didn’t shatter.
I was as familiar with that sixteen-year-old Ronan as I was with the man in front of me now.
But he was also very different. Not even his thick, dark eyelashes that framed his magnificent eyes could soften the sharp features that had become his impossibly rugged, handsome face.
Just like all those years ago, he still made me feel both weak with need to be near him and in awe of his presence. But now, the man that was Ronan elicited a new feeling. Heated blood and frenzied nerves swirled so low in my belly, I wanted to part my legs for him. I wanted to bring him close in ways that we’d never shared. I wanted it so bad, I ached for it like I was sick.
Forcing my heart rate to slow, feigning an indifference I had never felt around him, I apologized. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
His gaze gripping my soul, his eyes holding me captive, he didn’t respond.
Blushing, I felt seventeen again. “May I start over?” Today, yesterday, a decade ago?
Barely a breath of movement, he tipped his chin.
Traitorous hope surged, and heat bloomed across my cheeks. “Hi.”
He stepped forward.
The gasp slipped through my parted lips as he closed the space between us and filled it with ocean breezes and soapy musk.
He looked down at me with his heavenly eyes, and his thick, soft black hair fell over his forehead.
I didn’t think.
I reached up and brushed the silky strands back. But then I couldn’t stop myself. My hand curled into his hair, and a plea whispered from my heart. “Ronan, please.”
Swift, dominant, he gripped my wrist. “Stop.”
Frozen in his commanding grip, I didn’t move. Fearful a single breath would shatter our precarious closeness, I didn’t even breathe.
Low, resonant, his voice curled around my aching need. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”
I did. I was asking for everything. I was asking for this angry, complex, beautiful man to hold me accountable. I wanted all of his rage, passion and hurt. I wanted his emotions. I wanted to take them and absorb it and then finally, selfishly, I wanted him to forgive me.
Standing on an edge as sure as I stood twenty stories above the deep ocean below us, I opened my mouth and pleaded. “Hurt me like I hurt you.”
Before either of us had drawn our next breaths, my wrist was pinned behind my back and he was gripping my hair at my nape, using his hold to force my head back.
Hovering a fraction above my mouth, he asked the last thing I was expecting, but the one thing I should’ve been prepared for. “How should I betray you, Sanaa?”
From his punishing grip on my hair, from the way his words stabbed my heart, my eyes welled. “I don’t know.” His hard body leaning into mine, there was no room for lies, but even now I couldn’t speak the truth. I couldn’t tell him an eye for an eye. I couldn’t tell him to use another woman in front of me. I couldn’t give him permission to do to me what I had done to him.
Pressing my wrist into my lower back, pushing my body into his, his hard length grew against my abdomen as if he desired me, but then his words spit hateful anger. “Should I fuck one of your cousins? Someone who works for you? Should I bring a woman in off the street and touch her naked body in front of you?”
The knife twisted in my chest. “I-I didn’t sleep with Vance.”
“Did he see this body naked? Did you let him covet what was mine? Do you think it’s any less of a betrayal because he didn’t take your virginity before I walked in?”
Hurt dripped down my face. “I—”
“You think fucking another woman in front of you will even the score? I should betray my own heart to appease your guilt?”
The knife drove all the way in, and I shattered just like I did ten years ago. “Ronan, please, I didn’t know.”
“I was going to make you my wife.” His grip tightened. “You knew that.” Fury turned his eyes the color of the angry ocean outside. “I was going to give you everything I had.”
“Please,” I wept.
“Please what, Sanaa?”
Oh, sweet mercy. “Don’t call me that.” He never called me by my given name, not like this. Not when he was touching me, even if it was in anger. Not when it was just the two of us. I was his Songbird. I had always been his Songbird.
“What should I call you?” Deathly quiet, darkly ominous, he didn’t ask the question, he dared me to answer it.
No way to turn back, and no way to move forward, I did the only thing I could.
“Songbird,” I whispered.
INSTANTLY RELEASING HER, I STEPPED back.
Songbird.
She didn’t deserve for me to call her that. My Songbird didn’t lie to me. My Songbird didn’t let my twin put his hands on her. My Songbird didn’t play games.
Ignoring the bullshit in my head, I cut all emotion from my tone. “When were you going to tell me it’s Abernathy?”
“I…” Dropping her gaze, swiping at her tears, she didn’t pretend to be surprised. “Vance said you didn’t need to know.”
Locking down everything, I didn’t react. “Because?”
She reached up to smooth her hair. It was a gesture I’d seen her do a thousand times. She wasn’t vain. She didn’t know her own beauty, and she never used to worry over her dress or makeup. But her hair she’d always been cognizant of. Except halfway through the gesture of her hand grasping her own locks, she stopped and pulled her arms in instead.
Then she spoke how she used to speak to me—with thoughts spilling rapid-fire out of her mouth as she bled her accented words together.
“I don’t even know anymore. This is all crazy. That sick man is out there somewhere, wanting to blow us all up, and it’s my fault. Everything is my fault. Every single thing that’s happened is because of my actions, because of what I did. I was foolish and didn’t understand what I wanted back then, what I already had. Except now that I do, now that I desperately want what I can’t have anymore, it’s too late. I don’t know how to fix any of this. I can’t make you love me again. I can’t undo the past.” She gripped her arms tighter, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “You killed a man because of me. I can’t fix that.”
My muscles stilled, but the realization hit with the force of a blast wave.
This wasn’t about what I’d done.
This wasn’t about her mistake.
This was about what I hadn’t done.
I hated my brother. I hated his selfish arrogance and competitiveness. He wasn’t a brother. He was an adversary who wanted everything I’d ever had. He took the girl I lost my virginity to. He fucked the girlfriend I had before Sanaa, and he’d allowed Sanaa to think he was me. My clothes, my grades, my Songbird, my fucking T-shirt that night, anything he’d ever wanted, he took.
Sanaa was the straw that made me snap, but Vance wasn’t the problem.
I was.
I’d given him every opportunity to fuck me over, and I’d never said a goddamn word. That night ten years ago was the culmination. I�
��d walked away from my own damn actions.
It was beyond time to take responsibility.
“You didn’t make me do anything.” She’d brought joy to my life. I didn’t think about a future for myself before her. I was too damn busy trying to get through school and work as many hours as I could to bring in money to help Ma with the bills while Vance fucked off and chased girls. “My punch was the one that killed him. I have no regrets for hitting him. His death wasn’t intentional, but given the same situation again, I would still hit him for what he said.”
Recoiling as if I’d struck her, she stepped back. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Because then you’d have to admit I’m a murderer? Guess what, I am. Would you’ve rather been passed around Trinity Media Group and raped by men twice your age?”
“Don’t do this.” She shook her head as if she was horrified. “I knew who you were when you enlisted. I knew that man. He was honorable, and I wanted to be with him. I never stopped wanting to be with that man. But you aren’t acting like him now. Not even close. That man, my Ronan, he wouldn’t have condoned murder, accidental or not.”
She had no idea who I was. “Then you didn’t know me as well as you thought you did.” I was exactly him.
“I…” Her hand moved to her throat, and she stopped herself.
“Say it,” I ordered. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me I’m an affront to your morals. Tell me I deserve to pay for taking that man’s life.” Because that’s what this had become—I was a murderer and she was a megastar.
“You’re scaring me,” she whispered.
“Then be fucking glad you didn’t know me when I was active duty.” I was a Marine. I defended people who couldn’t defend themselves. I protected her. I protected my country. I protected every brother I served with.
“Stop this.” She shuddered. “You don’t swear.”
“Don’t I?”
She stared.
I glared.
Then something snapped.
One second I was three feet away.
The next, my mouth was crashing over hers and my hand was fisted in her hair.
Driving my tongue into her heat, my mind fucking caved, and I gave up on restraint. Dominating her with my body, I took every word of every song she’d ever sung and forced them down my throat.
Every goddamn lyric about love—I took. Every song about passion—I swallowed. I assaulted her mouth and told myself I had the right. They were mine. I owned this woman.
She was mine.
I showed her to the world.
I gave them the only goddamn thing I’d ever cared about, and now I wanted it back.
Fuck, I wanted it back.
But she needed to understand.
Sweeping through her seductive mouth, letting her hands roam all over me, I kissed her one more time before biting her full lip and gripping her wrists. Dragging her hands from my hair, I shoved her arms down and stepped back.
Putting another foot of distance between us, I left her wet taste on my lips.
Then I gambled.
“On your knees.” I said it exactly as I meant it. As an order.
She blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Uncertainty bleeding into defiance, her eyebrows drew together. “Is this some kind of punishment? I know I told you to hurt me, but you just kissed me. Now you’re going to what? Make me pay for what I did all those years ago?”
I held her dark-eyed gaze, but I didn’t respond.
Misreading every single thing about me, her hands went to her hips. “That was ten years ago.”
Ten years, three months and fourteen days. I knew exactly how long it was, but I still didn’t speak. She’d heard me. She knew what I wanted. Now she had a choice.
Nervous, her eyes darted from my mouth to my shoulders, to my gun, then back to my gaze. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
I took back one of the steps I put between us.
She flinched, but she didn’t retreat.
I closed in on her and held perfectly still.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her accent in full bloom.
Careful not to touch her, I circled behind her and let my breath fall on her nape.
Goose bumps raced across her bare shoulders, and she went from crossing her arms to hugging herself. “I asked you a question.”
Leaning close enough to smell the desire on her skin, I lowered my voice. “Are you going to get on your knees, Sanaa?”
Her back went stiff, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Then her gaze cut to the door, and I thought she would bolt.
Before I could ask myself if I would stop her, she morphed into the woman who sold out fifty-thousand-seat arenas in one hour. Squaring her shoulders, turning to face me, she met my eyes in challenge. “Tell me why.”
“You said you knew who I was when I enlisted. You said you wanted to be with that man. You say you know what you want now.” Leaning closer, I brought my mouth to her ear. “But you don’t.” Pressing my lips to her flesh, I breathed her in. “You have no idea.”
She shivered.
Abruptly, I retreated. Then I dropped all seduction from my tone and barked out my next words as if they were a military order. “If you want to find out, get on your knees.”
For one heartbeat, the air stood thick between us.
Then her arms fell to her sides, and like a fallen angel, she hung her head and gracefully dropped to her knees.
My cock pulsed. “Hello, Songbird.”
“HELLO, SONGBIRD.”
My heart leapt, my soul sang and hope spread like an ocean breeze.
Every broken part of me mended.
Then, like a prestissimo tempo, it all came crashing down around me in broken rubble, and ten years became an obstacle I couldn’t hurdle.
“You left me,” I accused as every part of my teenage self that had yearned for this moment screamed at me to stop. “You made me like this—a woman who drops to her knees.” Submissive and fearful and unfinished. “Then you left me when you promised you wouldn’t.” He’d promised he would always come home to me. No matter what. He’d promised when he’d enlisted that he would never leave me.
The chiseled planes of his cheekbones suddenly more austere, his voice went so quiet it shook me to my core. “I made you like this.”
It wasn’t a question.
Answering would only feed the chasm between us as I sank myself deeper into this abyss that began and ended with the man in front of me, but I couldn’t stop myself. The part of me that was still that needy, desperate, hungry girl who wanted to cower, but wanted to feed the axis of her universe in the only way she knew how, she answered. “Yes.”
Because Ronan Conlon was my soul.
Everything I was revolved around the impression he’d left on my heart. “You made me submissive.” All those years ago, he’d turned me into who I was, then he didn’t so much as return a single text or phone call to let me know if he was still alive.
The tightly controlled expression he fed the world locked down, and his eyes left me. “Get up.”
My heart, my stomach, they sank as my breath crashed against fear.
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
Every touch he’d given me when I’d been too young to understand caressed my soul in a cruel replay of understanding. His hand on my shoulder. A softly worded command in my ear.
Sit, stand, eat, sleep.
A brush of rough fingers across my cheek. His firm grip on my nape. Fingers skimming across my stomach. All of it possessive, all meant to show dominance, and every touch leaving me breathless for more because that was his purpose.
But he’d never given me more.
Only promises.
So here I knelt, my bruised shins on hotel carpet, my feet bare, my soul splayed. With my head down and my hands on my thighs, I waited.
And waited.
The air didn’t shift. It became alive.<
br />
As sure as the hushed anticipation of a full audience when the lights went out before I sang the first note, this room, my nerves, they crackled with that same heavy, eager, weighted expectation because he was doing something he didn’t do before.
He was staying.
Not walking out, not dismissing me, he didn’t turn his back. The black leather of his heavy boots buffed to a perfect shine, he stood there.
And that’s when it hit me.
This, more than any smile that had ever graced his beautiful face, was his seduction.
Ronan Conlon was more dominant silent than any man I knew who barked orders, and that spoke to places deep within me that I had yet to understand.
My heart rate erratic, a need I had no lyrics for burning low in my belly, I continued to wait. Just like I waited for him to make me his all those years ago, I waited now. But this time, I was patient.
Quiet, like the softest of raindrops on a hot summer evening, he finally graced me with his voice.
“Your clothes in your suitcase, Sanaa, who put them there?”
Hearing my proper name pass his lips made fear twist in my stomach. Before I could answer, he asked another question.
“Who chose the dress you’re wearing right now?”
Defensiveness slid in. “My wardrobe is taken care of by my management team.”
Ignoring my response, he asked another question. “Who arranged the flight here?”
I opened my mouth, but he kept going.
“Who got you to the airport? Who arranged this hotel? Who picked out the shampoo in your bathroom? The cut of your hair? The scent on your skin?”
Rash and sudden, the ego that comes from fame gripped me, and anger propelled me to my feet. “How dare you.”
The heat of his palm flattened on my chest as his thumb swept across the bruise on my collarbone. “Who told you that you needed to learn how to fight? Did he promise it would reduce stress? Give you control? Make you feel better?”
Humiliation coated my existence. Vance had said exactly all of those things and more. “You have no right to insult me when I made a name for myself.”
