by Sybil Bartel
“You were always mine, but I didn’t fight for you like I should have.” Holding the back of her thighs, I lowered her to my cock and pushed an inch in to her tight heat. “I’m never…” I drove in another inch. “… Ever.” I thrust deeper. “Going to let that happen again.” I sunk to the hilt and bottomed out against her. “I own you, and you own me, Songbird.”
“Ronan.”
I slammed my mouth over hers and dropped us to the bed. Driving my tongue into her heat and my cock into her cunt, I showed her that I was sure. So goddamn sure, there wasn’t an inch of space, or ounce of uncertainty between us.
Pulling back from her mouth, but not her tight heat, I leveraged myself above her and ground my hips. “What are you supposed to tell me?” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. One I made her promise earlier.
Her gorgeous eyes hooded, her body bending to my will, her tight cunt already spasming around me, she didn’t hesitate. “I love you, Ronan Conlon.”
I gave her the words back. “I love you more, Songbird.”
Then I fucked my angel and showed her how she was mine.
STANDING JUST OFFSTAGE WITH A fucking lanyard around my neck and no goddamn gun, I wanted to kill every motherfucker screaming her name.
But I especially wanted to kill her manager, her agent and her useless head of security. This whole damn shitshow backstage was a blink away from complete chaos, and I had no idea how she’d been doing this for ten years.
Two minutes ago she was in her dressing room, both of her assistants talking at her, her manager repeatedly telling her to make the show her best, and her agent, drunk off his ass, was telling the manager to shut up because his queen would perform her ass off.
Then there was the parade of wardrobe people, dancers and band members who went in out of her dressing room like it was ground zero with no regard for her privacy, safety or personal space.
And my Songbird?
She smiled through the whole damn thing as she sipped some honey-lemon tea concoction and did her makeup.
Her agent was right about one thing.
She was a queen.
A goddamn patient, rockstar, gorgeous queen.
But she sure as hell wasn’t his.
She was mine.
And she was quietly standing next to me, nerves of steel, calmly holding my hand and awaiting her cue.
I didn’t know if I should tell her I was going to fuck her, marry her, or run away with her.
I was leaning toward all three when a guy in a headset carrying a laptop who looked like he was fucking twelve came up behind us and grinned at her. “Thirty seconds, babe. You know the drill.”
She smiled politely. “Thank you, Wynn.”
Of course she called him by name. She knew everybody’s name. All two hundred of them.
I leaned to her ear. “Do you remember what I did to you on the plane?”
She shivered, and the corner of her mouth tipped up. “Yes.”
“I’m going to do that to you the entire flight home,” I promised.
She opened her sweet mouth to respond, but the lights in the stadium went out, and the crowd went fucking insane. Chanting her name, yelling, screaming—the vibrations rocked the floor.
Then the lighting engineers lit the stage with deep red and purple spotlights, highlighting the band, and the crowd screamed louder.
Wynn leaned between us and yelled over the noise. “Fifteen seconds.”
I cupped her face. “You’re fucking beautiful, and I’m proud of you.”
The band played the first notes of one of her most popular songs, and the noise from the crowd compounded.
Grinning from ear to ear, Wynn handed her a microphone and nodded.
Excitement in her eyes, my Songbird looked at me and mouthed, I love you.
“I own you.” I squeezed her hand.
Then the microphone was to her lips, and she was strutting on stage in a sheer white dress and sky-high heels, singing the first line of her song and fucking killing it.
A hand landed on my shoulder, but I didn’t take my eyes off her. I couldn’t.
“Told you she was a queen,” her agent said, loud enough for me to hear.
I spared the prick a single glance and fucking glared at him. “She’s my queen.”
He laughed, then drank from his flask.
I watched my Songbird sing her heart out.
A SHADOW FELL OVER ME a second before the tip of his finger skimmed from hip bone to hip bone.
Gooseflesh rippled across my heated skin, and my nipples tightened to hard points. “Please don’t stop,” I begged.
His voice, dark and seductive and hotter than the sun whispered across my skin. “Did I give you permission to go topless?” His breath touching my neck, his mouth hovered just above my ear.
“No,” I answered, deliciously aware of what my defiance would mean when he was in this kind of mood.
Swift and firm, his rough hand covered my throat. “Are you asking to be punished, Songbird?”
I sucked in a sharp breath as wetness surged between my legs, coating the bikini bottom I suddenly wished I wasn’t wearing. An impossible ache pulsed in my core, and my hips had a mind of their own, grinding futilely into the padded lounger of the deck.
Needy, I purposely provoked him further. “I’m just getting sun.”
“On your back,” he quietly stated. “Naked.”
A shiver wracked my body because I knew that tone of voice. I knew it, and I loved it. “Only topless.”
“Only.” He leaned closer. “How hard do you want to be fucked?”
It was a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway. “Deliciously hard.”
He pulled the string on one side of my hip. “Is that right?”
“Is the anchor down?” I asked, practically breathless from just the feel of the side of the bikini tugging on my hip, then letting go.
“Do you care?” He swirled one finger over the top of my thigh where my bikini had just been.
I couldn’t see past his tanned, flexed biceps and unbelievable six-pack as he held himself just above me in nothing more than his swim trunks. Crystal-clear aqua waters shimmered under the bright sunlight all around us, but impossibly gorgeous amber-green eyes were staring down at me with possession, and I knew he was right.
I didn’t care. “Kiss me.”
He raised one eyebrow. Playful, but also mouth-wateringly dominant. “Where should I kiss you, Songbird?”
“Wherever you want.”
He pushed himself up in one fluid movement and pulled the sunglasses down that had been on top of his head. A hint of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Wrong answer.”
“Wait!” I sat up. “Where are you going?”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Bridge.”
Heat flushed my cheeks. “I remember the last time you were there.”
Wicked and sinful, he smiled. “As do I.” He disappeared starboard.
Scrambling to tie the side of my bright yellow bikini that he’d undone, I then quickly tied my top back into place and stood. I wanted to have the nerve to follow him naked, but there were some things, even months later, I couldn’t let go of, and one of them was the worry in the back of my mind that paparazzi would find us.
We’d left London and gone off the grid, as Ronan put it. Or as much as someone like me possibly could. We came back to Miami and we got on the Songbird, and Ronan had cast off. We went to the Bahamas, and he stuck to the smallest marinas that could fit us whenever we needed to resupply or gas up, but then we just cruised. We swam in the ocean. He fished. We snorkeled, he taught me to captain the fifty-two-foot beauty, and we made love all the time.
I’d never been happier.
But I didn’t trust walking on the boat naked even when we were off the coast of lightly populated Abaco Island and no other boats were in sight. I knew how far a telephoto lens could reach, and I didn’t want to share my new life with the public.
I wan
ted our days to last forever and our nights under the stars to never end. But Vance had called Ronan multiple times in the past couple weeks, and he’d even left me two messages to call him. Ronan had taken a leave from work, and while he didn’t need to work for money, I had more than enough for both of us, he insisted that he wasn’t going to be my kept man.
The thought made my lips tip up. If anyone was kept, it was me. Still smiling, I followed the sleek, gleaming white decks and walked to the bridge.
His beautifully sculpted wide shoulders on full display, he sat in the captain’s chair, checking equipment I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around. Radar or sonar or weather instruments or auto pilot, I didn’t know. It was a fancy display panel that may as well have been in a foreign language. All I knew how to do was speed up, slow down, steer and cut the engines.
I ran a hand along his back. “You forgot something.”
“Did I?” he asked absently, reading something on the largest display screen.
I moved in front of him. “Yes.”
His aviators covering his eyes, I couldn’t see where he was looking.
I didn’t care. I reached behind me and pulled the string tied behind my back. My bikini fell away from the sides of my breasts. “You definitely forgot something.”
Pushing his sunglasses up on his head, he focused his intense gaze on me. Then my serious Ronan came out. “Not for one second do I forget about you.”
Warmth flooded my chest at the same time as the deep-seated insecurity that I could lose him at any moment surfaced. An insecurity he had been reassuring me about since the first night I was on his boat. “I didn’t mean—”
His finger landed on my lips. “I know what you teasingly said in jest, but I also know the meaning behind the particular words you used.”
I looked away. “I’m sorry I keep putting you through this.”
“Through what? A normal reaction to an understandable fear that I’ll walk away from you like I walked away from you before?”
I swallowed. “That was my fault.”
“And it wasn’t mine?” he demanded.
I couldn’t look at him when I shook my head.
He grasped my chin hard and brought my eyes back to his. “It was both of our faults, but I can’t make you understand my commitment to you now when you won’t accept a ring and take my name.”
The same argument, the only argument we’d had since we’d been back together, came out in full, brilliant sunlight.
I wanted to cry. “I don’t know how to make you understand.” Not because I didn’t love him with every breath of my being. Not because I didn’t desperately want to marry him. Not because I didn’t see a future with him, but because I only saw a future if he was in it. And the only time I ever saw my mother that focused on something, it was alcohol and it destroyed her. I knew Ronan would never, ever destroy me. But this fear, I didn’t have a reason or rationale or even words for it. All I knew was that sometimes, it felt like I loved him too much.
“Make me understand what? That you’re afraid?”
Holding his arms, looking into his eyes, I knew I couldn’t hold this in any longer and let it drift between us until it became insurmountable.
“Terrified,” I whispered in admission.
“Of what specifically?”
The words were out before I could censor them. “Who am I without my love for you?”
Then it hit me as surely as my thoughts became words. Everything I had done, everything I became, everything I was—it was because I had met a boy. A dark-haired, deeply guarded, mysterious boy with even more mysterious eyes who gave me a nickname that became my identity.
I was in his image.
For a single, breathless heartbeat, the humid ocean air hung between us.
Then that boy, who’d grown into an unbelievably unwavering compassionate man, he gave me words back that touched my very soul.
“Fourteen years ago, you were given to me for reasons I cannot begin to fathom nor reconcile. I don’t deserve you, but I’m far too selfish to let you go. Not now, not ever again. You are my reason. You’re the air in my lungs. You are my gift.” His stare holding mine, his voice quieted to a deep reverence. “If you’re lost without your love for me, then I’m nothing without mine for you.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks. “Ronan.”
His thumb brushed over my lips. “Don’t fight what you don’t have to. I’m not going to hurt you, Songbird. Not because it would be hurting myself, but because you are my reason.”
Inhaling past my fears, past my doubts, I cupped his cheek and gave him that last piece of my heart. “Okay.”
Like he always did when I cried, he didn’t wipe my tears. He spread them across my cheeks and swept the salt across my lips. “You’re beautiful.”
I laughed once in embarrassment. “Because I’m crying?”
“Because you’re crying for me,” he corrected.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I own you,” he quietly returned.
Yes, he did. “Thoroughly and completely.” I smiled.
His expression remained serious. “We have to head back.”
I reached to tie my bikini back up. “Why?”
His hand over mine, he stopped me. “I didn’t tell you to get dressed.”
Tendrils of desire raced across my heated skin and flew toward the sudden heavy emptiness between my legs. “Oh.”
His eyes on mine, his fingers trailed up my spine, and he grasped the tied string around my neck. “I’m going to fuck you, and I’m going to swim with you one more time and make love to you in the ocean. Then I’m taking you back to Miami Beach.”
My mouth watered, and my hands went to the large bulge in his swim trunks. “Why?”
“Why am I going to fuck you?”
He was so hard, always so hard for me. I wanted him in my mouth as desperately as I wanted him inside my body. “No, I know why you’re going to make love to me.” I stroked him through his shorts.
“Because?” he demanded, lifting my chin and bringing my eyes back to his.
“Because you own me.” Aching for his mouth on mine, I wet my lips. “Because you take care of me. Because you make me feel good.” I squeezed him hard. “Because you love me,” I whispered.
“More than anything.” His mouth crashed over mine, and he thrust his tongue in how I knew he could thrust his body into mine, and I whimpered for more.
My arms went around his neck, and I kissed him back with all the passion in my heart he evoked in me, but it wasn’t enough.
I needed to be connected to him in the most intimate of ways, and I needed it now.
“Please,” I begged. “I need you inside me.
His hands already at my hips, the ties on the sides of my bikini bottom released and the nothing scrap of fabric fell to the deck.
I pulled his hard length free of his shorts, and he grasped my waist.
Lifting me up, he rasped out a single demand. “Legs around me.”
I did as he said, and in the next instant, the head of his huge, hard erection was pushing at my soaked entrance. I wanted him to slam into me. I wanted his hands so tight on my waist that it would leave marks as he pulled me down while he drove himself up. I wanted his teeth on my neck, biting me how he did when he lost control. I wanted him to be hard and merciless as he took me for himself.
But my Ronan, my beautiful, controlled Ronan, did none of those things this time.
Achingly slow, gripping a tight handful of my hair, he unhurriedly filled me with crushing restraint.
When his hard length met the deepest depth of my core, he stilled.
I exhaled in the blissful second of relief the connection gave me before punishing desire ripped through me. But in the next second, he didn’t start to move in and out of me like I expected him to.
Going perfectly still, he gripped my hair with both hands and held me captive in his embrace as he stayed seated deep inside me. “We need to go to b
ack to Miami because a storm is coming.”
Hot, bright sun all around us, it didn’t look like there was storm coming, but I knew how deceptive the weather could be in the Caribbean. “Okay.”
His expression turned unreadable, but he pulsed deep inside me. “We can’t stay on the boat forever.”
My hands feathered across his hard biceps, and my hips ached to move with him inside me, but I needed to know where he was going with this. “Okay,” I said slower, not wanting to leave this boat, but knowing logically he was right.
“There’s an oceanfront house in Golden Beach I want us to look at.”
I swallowed. No more boat. A house. Roots. A place to raise children.
Panic and hope and joy and fear all swirled together. A house was a life. The boat was a dream. I feared one and craved the other.
“I love you, Sanaa Narine.” His hold tightened. “Take my ring.” He inhaled deep. “Marry me.”
Tears welled, my core pulsed, and all at once, my fears dissipated.
I smiled, wide.
There was only one answer. “Yes.”
My always serious, always fierce, unwaveringly alpha man smiled brilliantly. Then he crushed his mouth over mine and he was moving. Thrusting deep into me, holding me close, he touched my soul, and he touched a place inside me no one ever had.
Before I could draw a full breath, my body was doing what it always did around him, and I was falling, falling, falling.
“Sing for me, Songbird,” he demanded, his lips on mine. “Come.”
Oceans parting, stars falling, heavens aligning, I didn’t have words great enough for the soul-deep love in my heart or for the orgasm that seized my body.
My legs shaking, my back bowing, the force of my release lifting me off him as I shook, I cried out. “Ronan!” Oh my God. Oh my God.
Standing to his full height, still driving into me, his angle changed. My back hit the dash, and a second orgasm came at me like a tidal wave, then I was screaming.
It hurt, it felt too good, it was too intense, it wasn’t enough.
“Ronan,” I sobbed.
