I could see the flash of danger in his eyes, the low rattle of a warning, “do not go through”. Fuck that.
“No,” I said. “We can’t just go back to fucking like rabbits. You have no idea how… how…”
I felt like tugging at my hair, I was so frustrated. Years of failure and disappointment piled up high atop a world of disadvantage and lack of privilege suddenly came loose and rushed down in a violent avalanche of anger.
“Goodness, Ms Evans,” Ronan said, looking up at my flushing cheeks and breathless stammering with a curiously raised eyebrow. “Whatever is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” I bellowed, throwing my hands into the air and not caring that my tits swung wildly. “Wrong with me?”
Ronan narrowed his eyes, swivelling this way and that casually in his chair. “You seem upset…”
“Upset!” I practically screeched. I wanted to ball up his MBA, I wanted to rip it in half, I wanted to throw it into the fire. “You bet your ass I’m upset. Because you just don’t get it. You just don’t fucking get it.”
Ronan had stopped moving. He stared up at me with his mouth slightly ajar in startlement.
“Ronan, if I had your wealth, your status, your connections, your goddamn hotel empire to go along with my MBA—”
I stopped speaking and sucked in a harsh, quick breath as if I could drag the words back inside. But I knew that was as impossible as pulling cream from a cup of morning coffee or mistakes from the past. My words hung between us like they were real, like they were tangible. But that wasn’t right. Because if they were real, if they were tangible, then I could hide behind them. But I couldn’t. I was as naked as my flesh, laid bare like my breasts and legs and hips: all revealed.
Ronan grinned. I sighed, already regretting my lapse in judgement. It wasn’t something I wanted to admit to anyone, that I had a completely wasted MBA. It certainly wasn’t something I wanted to admit to Ronan. It was like showing a shark your bleeding leg.
“Well, well, well,” he said slowly like a stereotypical movie villain. “Seems like I’m not the only one with a dirty little secret, Ms Evans.”
I rubbed my eyes and then pushed the heel of my palm tightly against them as I said, “Can we please just go back to fucking like rabbits? I’m bored.”
Ronan clicked his tongue. My cheeks were flaring up with uncontrollable heat and I turned to leave, only for Ronan to catch my wrist.
“What are you doing?” I asked, keeping my eyes away from him.
“Stopping you.”
My eyes darted up to the ceiling. “Why?”
“Because we’re going to talk.”
I glanced back at him over my shoulder. He was watching his thumb trace calming circles over the soft skin of my inner wrist.
“You want to talk?” I asked, not believing it for one second.
Ronan raised his eyes to me and he grinned mischievously. “No, you’re going to talk,” he said. “It kind of turns me on when you yell at me like that in that accent of yours that I can’t even understand.”
I huffed and tugged at my bound hand. Ronan gripped me tighter.
“Delaney,” he said.
When I looked back the grin was gone, the mischievousness was gone, the mask of wry humour was gone. Ronan O’Hara was, for once in his life, earnest.
“Come on,” he said, sweeping away the things on his desk to make a place for me.
He guided me to sit and rested his hands on my knees. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, suddenly feeling self-conscious in front of Ronan’s open gaze.
“We’re still naked,” I said, gaze skimming my bare thighs as I covered my nipples with my forearms.
“We’ll get comfortable with it,” Ronan said, gently pushing my arms away from my breasts. “If we try.”
I looked at his face and I could see in the way he looked back that he wasn’t talking about the nakedness of our bodies. So I did what I never imagined I would do with anyone, let alone Ronan: I opened up. I stripped myself of the anger I wore like an armour of flames. I put down the shield of foul language and rudeness that I used to cover myself, to shove people away, far away. I sat there naked and let Ronan see my disappointments, my embarrassments, my failures.
I told him about my poor upbringing, about my parents’ insistence that one must learn their place in the