“Sam said something that made a lot of sense to me before we left, and I want to try and focus on that. I need to trust that you’ll make the right decisions for both of us and, like, I don’t need to worry. I don’t need to know everything.”
Ronan answered with a small frown. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“Why not? Isn’t that part of the whole 24/7 thing?”
“I don’t want your blind trust.” He broke the bagel into quarters and set one piece on top of my coffee. As I reached for it, the chains on my left wrist clanged loudly around the bedpost.
“It’s not like that,” I told him. “We’ve been together for a year. I trust you because I see you. I think the last couple weeks would have been a lot better if it hadn’t been for Foster and his thing.”
“It wasn’t Foster, though,” Ronan said, “it was me. I made the choice to not be honest with you about what had happened at his house. I thought I was doing a good thing, that the less you knew, the less you’d be brought into it.”
“But I’m with you, so I’m already in it.”
“I know.” He sighed. “I would just…Kevin, I think I would kill him if anything happened to you because of him. Things were so tense with you and me because of the shift in our relationship, and then the stuff with Foster. I feel like we’re here because of me.”
“No.” I would have reached for him if my bonds had allowed it. “I mean, we are here because of you, but here is a good place.”
“I hope it stays that way.” Ronan took my coffee cup out of my hand and set it on the nightstand. “That’s enough talking for now.”
Ronan undid the clip on my other wrist and pulled the chain out of the d-ring. “Get up and get dressed. No underwear. Leave the cuffs on.”
“Yes, Ronan.”
I climbed out of bed, my limbs a little sore from the way I’d slept, but I pulled clothes out of the suitcase and dressed as quickly as I could. It was a fight to get my sweater over the bulky cuffs, but I managed. After I’d laced up my sneakers, I found Ronan by the front door, my coat in his hand.
“We’re going for a walk,” he said before I could ask. "I want to talk.”
I answered him with a timid nod, and Ronan smiled and pulled open the door. I followed him down the porch and around the back of the cabin. I knew there were trails in the area; I’d read it when I booked the place, but Ronan had apparently already sourced them all, setting off toward the tree line to the west. He had a backpack over one shoulder, and I didn’t want to think about what that meant. At least, not in a narrow sense. In a broad sense, to me at least, it appeared Ronan was in his element.
I followed behind him around the side of the cabin, making mental note of the way his shoulders were squared and his head held high. He looked like the confident and dangerous man I’d met over a year ago at Rapture, and I shivered in anticipation for what that meant for me.
The time we’d been together had shown me a different side of Ronan, just as he’d seen a different side of me. Domesticity wrought complacency, and we were both guilty of falling into that trap. While that may be what the future held for us, the future wasn’t here yet. Neither of us was ready. Even though things had been rocky since our anniversary, I always knew in my heart that Ronan and I would find a new level ground. Maybe the first steps were here, behind the tree line of a cabin rented in our best friend’s name because he was also a hitman and told us to get out of town for the weekend.
I didn’t want to overthink that one.
I sighed, and Ronan looked over his shoulder at me, blue eyes bright as the sky. He stopped and stretched his arm out toward me. I took his hand, tangling our fingers together, and he pulled me alongside him. We fell in step quickly, leaves and branches crunching beneath our feet as the trees grew closer.
“You and I have talked about a lot of things the past couple weeks,” he said, ducking under a branch. He let go of my hand and hooked his finger through the D-ring on my cuff instead, a subtle and effective reminder of my place. Another shiver, sending blood between my legs and right into my dick. “But not at length.”
“That’s true,” I agreed.
“Today we set the rules, the expectations.” Ronan reached up to a low-hanging branch and snapped it off. The crack echoed all around us like a gunshot. He slid the long and thin branch through his fingers, plucking at the sharp stray bits of leaf and branch that clung to the length of it. “So it’s important that you be forthcoming and honest with me.”
“You too,” I reminded him.
Ronan gave me a look like that should have been expected without question. I gave the look right back to him and he flicked at the end of the branch with his fingers. God, I loved Ronan’s hands. Sometimes dry from all the washing he did at the hospital, but never calloused and always steady.
“Yes, Kevin,” he said, dropping a small handful of twigs at our feet.
I flushed, feeling the heat of embarrassment creep up the back of my neck.
“I want to know what 24/7 means to you,” he said, pulling another branch from a nearby tree.
“I don’t really know.”
“Think about it.”
“What does it mean to you?” I countered.
