Page 101 of Ruthless Savior
He looks at my stomach, and I know what he’s thinking—some of it, anyway.“She was pregnant,” he says after a moment, so quietly that I’m not sure if I heard him correctly. “The coroner said she was pregnant. I thought at first, with the affair… but it was mine.”
His voice cracks then, and he goes completely silent. That silence feels almost crushing, and I want to say something, butI have no idea what. I can understand why he didn’t tell me this before, and why he’s telling me now.
“This wasn’t your fault, Ronan.” I shake my head, stepping closer to him. “You were in a bad marriage. A marriage you didn’t even want. You were handling it the best way you knew how. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the right way, but you weren’t responsible for herdying. She chose to send away her security, she chose to?—”
“Stop.” Ronan’s voice is flat and hard. “I neglected her. That’s all there is to it.”
“Ronan—” Before I can stop myself, I reach out to touch his face, my hand brushing against his cheek.
It’s as if my touch makes something snap in him. He jolts to his feet, spinning to face me, and his hands close around my arms, holding me in place. “If Rocco finds out you’re pregnant?—”
“He won’t.” My voice is shaky. “There’s no reason for him to, as long as you can trust everyone here.”
“I think I can. But, fuck—” His jaw clenches, and he looks down at me, anger and fear and heat swirling together in his eyes, and I feel my pulse flutter in my throat as he pulls me against him. “Leila?—”
“Ronan,” I whisper his name, and I’ve forgotten that it’s cold out. I can’t feel it. All I can feel is the molten heat sliding through my veins at the way he’s looking at me, the hunger in his eyes all tangled up with the fear, I realize, of losingme.
I don’t know if he knows it. I can’t imagine he’d ever admit it. And I doubt it changes anything.
But he’s terrified of something happening to me.
“Ronan,” I whisper his name again, shifting closer into him, my chin tipping up. And that one movement, the press of my body against his, seems to shatter all of his defenses.
In a flash, he turns me, pinning me up against a bare tree in the garden, the wide trunk hiding us from a view of the house. Ifeel the scratch of the bark grabbing at the wool of my coat, and then his mouth crashes down onto mine, and every thought in my head flees.
His mouth is hot and hard and desperate, pressed against mine almost painfully, his hands dropping from my arms to my waist as he devours me. I can’t feel him through all the layers of our clothes, but his mouth is enough to drive me wild. His tongue presses against the seam of my lips, thrusting in, tangling as I gasp and kiss him back, my blood molten as he kisses me like a starved man.
I moan against his lips, and he makes a noise low in his throat, one hand fisting in the fabric of my skirt as he pushes it up my thighs. I hear him make a frustrated sound as he realizes I have tights on beneath it, and I have one moment of clarity as his fingers wrap in the sheer nylon before he rips them open, and a jolt of pure lust runs through me.
I want to beg him not to stop, but he hasn’t stopped kissing me long enough for me to speak. He tugs my panties to one side, two long fingers sliding easily into my drenched entrance as I feel his other hand go to his belt.
“Leila—Christ,” he hisses as I feel the hot, swollen head of his cock press against me, and then with one swift thrust of his hips, he’s inside of me.
I cry out, my sound of pleasure echoing in the barren garden as he thrusts again, hard. He feels incredible, long and hot and thick, his bare skin sliding against mine only where we’re joined. There’s something fiercely erotic about it, our layers of clothing covering us everywhere else except for in that one place, where his flesh meets mine as he drives himself into me again and again.
It’s hard and frantic, and I’m on the verge of coming even before his thumb finds my clit, rolling against it as he grabs mychin with his other hand, hard. “Come for me before I come inside of you, Leila,” he growls. “It’s not going to take long.”
His mouth covers mine again, his tongue sliding inside with the same ferocity as his cock between my thighs, and I can feel myself hovering on the edge of a climax, the sensation of him pounding into me driving me mad with pleasure.
“Fucking come for me,” he pleads, kissing me again, hard. “Fuck, I’m going to?—”
The sound of his voice, begging for my pleasure along with his, sends me over the edge. My hand flies up, curling around the back of his neck, my nails digging into his flesh as the orgasm washes over me. I hear him groan, feel him throb inside of me as he surges against me, pinning me to the tree as one hand clutches at my waist, the other still stroking my clit. I feel his hips rock against mine, the hot rush of him filling me as he moans my name against my lips, the two of us shuddering together.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I feel overwhelmed by what just happened, and I don’t want him to stop touching me. I don’t want him to let me go.
I realize, as I feel the warmth of his breath against my neck, his body still linked with mine, that I’m no longer sure if I want this to end.
25
RONAN
Iwake to the sensation of Leila's hair tickling my chest, her body warm and pliant against mine in the early morning light. For a moment, I let myself pretend this is normal—waking up next to my wife, her head pillowed on my shoulder, her arm thrown over my chest.
For the first time in my life, I’m waking with a woman in my arms. With mywifein my arms. I never held Siobhan like this; we never even shared the same bed for an entire night. And I’ve never held Leila like this before.
I pulled away from her last night, again, after what happened in the garden. I fixed our clothes and made excuses about needing to talk to Colin, and told her we’d talk about the baby later. I could tell she was hurt. I stayed in my office until after dinner and didn’t see her again until we both came to bed. And I could see that she wanted to talk—wanted to know what it was that I wanted to do about all of this, what our plans were for this complication that I tried so hard to avoid.
But we didn’t talk. I pulled her into my arms, and we fell asleep. I’d expected her to argue, to pull away, to demand we talk, but she didn’t. She let me hold her, as if she knew that forthe first time in my life, I needed to feel the woman who wears my ring and carries my name and my child in my arms. I didn’t know what to say, yet, but I knew that.
