Her lips parted, heat touched her cheeks, and she tried to hide it, but her body gave her away. She fucking trembled. Then she used my ten-year-old words against me. “You used to want to make love to me.”
“I said I would make love to you one day,” I corrected. “I never said I wouldn’t fuck you.”
“Is that what you do now?” She swallowed. “You fuck?”
“Yes.” Every goddamn year on the anniversary of that night, I found a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman and I fucked her until she begged me to stop.
Abruptly pushing to her feet, she turned toward the view and gave me her back. “Well, I don’t.”
She would if she gave me permission to touch her. “Turn around,” I ordered.
“No.”
This wasn’t about us anymore. This wasn’t about recapturing the past, righting wrongs or rekindling what once was. I wasn’t delusional. We couldn’t go back. There were no second chances in life, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think there was a place in her world for a former Marine turned bodyguard with a covered-up homicide in his past.
There was no chance for us now.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to fuck her and ruin her for all other men. I wasn’t a gentleman, and I sure as hell wasn’t honorable. If I was, I would’ve accepted her apology a decade ago. Even our own mother couldn’t always tell me and Vance apart, especially if we remained silent. Knowing that, a better man would’ve forgiven the shy, innocent, beautiful girl.
Except I wasn’t better, not then and not now as I stared at her perfect ass and full thighs and thought about my cock down her throat and my fist in her hair as my invasion made her eyes well.
And I sure as hell wasn’t better as I lowered my voice and said the one thing I knew would get results. “Turn around, Songbird.”
Her chest rose with an inhale, and like a wet dream, she obeyed.
Facing me obediently, she held her arms close to her chest. “Don’t call me that.”
With my stance nonthreatening and my hands still in my pockets, I used the same tone I’d just said her name in, the same one I’d used on her back then, and I became every asshole who’d ever taken advantage of her. “Give me permission, Sanaa.”
Her body, her eyes, her pulse, her breath, they all reacted—because she remembered.
She remembered, and she knew exactly what I was demanding.
The younger version of me had made her a promise. When I was ready to make her mine, I would ask permission to touch her.
That would be her warning.
Her only warning.
Except I wasn’t asking to make her mine.
Not anymore.
“Give me permission, Sanaa.”
His deep, quiet voice was pure, magnificent seduction, and my body betrayed me. Goose bumps raced across my heated skin, my breath caught and my heart skipped, then it slammed against my chest. Tingles spread everywhere, and I couldn’t believe how naïve I’d been dropping to my knees.
I was never going to give myself to him.
Ronan Conlon was going to take.
His hands were tucked civilly in his pockets, his face was impassive, and his stance was like that of gentlemen, but it was all a lie. I saw his eyes. I saw the dark depth in them that said the man in front of me was anything except polite and gentle.
If I said the word, he would pounce.
And God help me, I wanted him to.
This wasn’t like standing in front of his twin when his eyes sparked with the excitement of the fight. My body wasn’t naturally priming itself, loosening my limbs and making my movements fluid. I wasn’t preparing for battle.
I wasn’t preparing for anything, because I was standing here breathless and needy and so very delusional that I wasn’t running for the door.
I wanted to give him permission.
I wanted to say the word that would seal my fate and no doubt destroy the last tatters of my heart.
I wanted Ronan Conlon to touch me.
I wanted it so bad I could taste his last kiss and feel his warm skin.
Holding on to a young, innocent girl’s fantasy, I breathed four simple words. “I give you permission.”
His eyes darkened to a perfect storm, but he didn’t pounce.
Ronan ambushed me. Body, mind, soul.
One moment he was an arm’s length away. The next, the entire