I licked my lips, breath still shaking. “It’s just a thing I say,” I managed the words, “to get people to leave me alone.”
Ronan chuckled and slipped around me. Instead of moving across from me where I could see him, he stood beside me, his shoulder grazing against mine like we were familiar. And while we were, somehow, we weren’t. This was…different, but different in a way I couldn’t explain.
“So you wanted your friends to leave you alone?” he asked.
I managed a nod.
“Use your words.”
“Yes,” I choked out.
“Why’s that now?”
I didn’t have a good answer. I hadn’t realized I wanted them to leave me alone, but Rich’s constant hovering and attention had me feeling like I was being babysat, and I hated that. I didn’t want to have my hand held, if anything, I wanted my fingers broken. With that thought, I flattened my palms on the top of the table and stared down at my fingers, counting each digit, then counting the knuckles until I found the answer.
“Because I came here to get fucked.”
Beside me, Ronan made an indecipherable noise in the back of his throat and I worried that had been the wrong answer.
“Fucked how?” he asked. He reached up and touched me. Just barely. He dragged the sharp edge of his fingernail down the entire length of my pinky finger from knuckle to nail, digging in enough to make me wince when he reached my cuticle. He didn’t let go, didn’t let up; he maintained a constant pressure while he waited for me to answer.
This was…
Unexpected, but not unwelcome.
This was the Ronan I met a year before, not the Ronan I lived with now. I’d known the whole time that I missed the edginess of the way things had been before, but I’d somehow forgotten the way my heart couldn’t seem to beat a steady pace when he was around, when he was like this. It was a little scary, but it made me hard and I liked that.
“Rudely.”
He chuckled, a soft and short sound that had precum slicking out of my cock and wetting my underwear.
“I think I can oblige that.”
I dared a glance to my side, my breath catching in my throat when I saw him. Ronan looked…he looked not like himself. His hair, which I’d grown accustomed to falling loose across his forehead after a long shift, was slicked back. His blue eyes were brighter than normal, shattering the darkness of the club as he dragged his stare over my whole face. He had on a black button-up, and I wondered briefly if it was the same one he’d worn the night we met. It couldn’t have been. He had so many.
I rubbed at my sternum, the harness Sam had talked me into wearing under my shirt suddenly feeling far too small, far too tight around my chest. It hurt to breathe and I loved it.
“What else did you come here for?” Ronan tilted his head to the side, that penetrating and focused stare never leaving my face.
“To…” I cleared my throat. “To hurt.”
Ronan leaned in so close I could taste the fruit gum on his breath. “Hurt who?”
“Me.”
He licked his lips, a slow drag of his tongue, lingering on his lower lip until my gaze darted downward and caught the movement.
“I think it takes a special kind of man to hurt you the way you like,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I agreed, lashes fluttering.
“Did you want to go upstairs?” Ronan asked. It was then I realized he still had his nail pressed against my cuticle. He applied more pressure and drew a shiver out of the deepest parts of me. “Maybe you can find out if I’m special.”
He was. I already knew it. “Yes,” I said.
“My name is Ronan,” he said. “You’ll call me that.”
“Yes, Ronan.”
