Page 42 of Running on Empty

“It’s fine.” I smiled automatically. “I’m fine, I just—”

“No, you’re not.”

His eyes softened then, bleeding back to hazel and the boy I’d grown up with was now on the bed with me, so it was those memories I thought of as he scooped me up and held me close, tucking me up under his chin. Of Ronan picking the gravel out of my knees when I’d fallen off my bike, then washing the wound clean with the garden hose. Of sneaking me sandwiches, disappearing when Lois called him in for dinner, the two of us dining like kings in the bushes that grew in their garden. Of him walking at my shoulder when I first started high school, a dark presence that stopped any of the older kids from giving me a hard time. Of the man now. Our history rewrote what had happened the other night and with that I let out a sigh.

“I don’t think I can let you touch me like that yet,” I told him.

“So I won’t. We won’t. We can lie down—”

“But I think I want to touch you.”

His breath eased out of him, softening his spine.

“I don’t need that, not until you’re ready. This…” He tightened his arms around me. “Is more than I ever expected to have and if it makes you feel uncomfortable…?”

I pulled his head down until I could look into his eyes.

“It doesn’t. I think I might need a lot of it.” He snorted at that. “Make up for lost time and all.”

“Take all that you need from me.”

That was just what I needed Ronan to say.

For a moment I sat there, allowing myself to be held, experiencing the bone deep sense of satisfaction that came from it, my internal compass stopping from spinning. Breaths in and out, we took them together, our bodies becoming synchronised. But it seemed I couldn’t be satisfied with just this as I shifted in his arms, moving back to my previous position.

I don’t think I’d rode any of the Spencer pack. No muscle memory was triggered when I did it with Ronan, running my fingers through his hair once I pulled the tie out, luxuriating in the feel of it. He watched me do this, his eyes heavily hooded and lazy with pleasure, making me want to give him more. While I wasn’t a selfish lover, I didn’t exactly go out of my way to lavish pleasure on the guys I fucked. It was kind of transactional. If he pleased me I’d give him something back, tit for tat. But Ronan? The way he observed everything I did with this terrible kind of focus, like I was his whole world? Yeah, that did things for me that no one else had been able to stir. So a question formed in his eyes as I pushed him back down on the bed, and I answered it by moving over him.

“I think I want to take this.” I showed him by dragging my nail down his chest and he shivered in response, his muscles tensing. “I think I want to harvest your responses, your pleasure, to try and replace everything I lost. I want to reclaim this.” The back of my hand slid into the hollow of his hip bone, nestling there. “My pleasure feels… tainted somehow, but yours?”

“Everything inside me is screaming to throw you down on the bed and make you come over and over,” he growled, but he nodded when I stiffened. “But if you’re not ready for that, then take me.”

He grabbed my hand, wrapping it around the swollen base of his cock so my palm pressed into his knot and the feel of him jumping in my hand, the way it flexed and twitched? I smiled then and shoved his hand away. Both of mine smoothed down the plain of his groin, feeling the stubble under my fingertips before I wrapped my fingers around him.

“Yes, Stevie,” he hissed as I began to stroke him. “Just like that.”

Chapter25

This was mine.

I’d never thought of a handjob being an especially sexy act. It was usually just a prelude to all the good bits, something done to get me wet and him hard. But faced with the restriction of my hand on Ronan’s cock being the beginning and an end to things, it took on a whole new vibe. I smoothed my palm up his shaft, his breath coming harder and faster and I hadn’t even closed my fingers around him yet. But part of what made this feel so different was the intimacy of it.

I stared up at him, watching every twitch of his facial muscles, his eyes finding mine and holding my gaze as I touched him. So I knew when I was teasing him, wrapping my fingers around him, but keeping my grip featherlight, just tracing the very extremities of his cock. I watched his mouth fall open, his brows crease, his hands become claws and then saw them rake at his quilt, as he fought the urge to force me to stroke him harder. He said he liked pain? Well, I was forcing him to experience the pain of longing in a whole other way. And it wasn’t just for sadistic reasons. I’d had a million overheated dreams that he was the focus of and now I had him in hand, I wanted to take my fucking time. But once I felt like I had the shape of his burned into my fingertips, I tightened my grip hard.

“Oh my fucking god, yes, Stevie. Like that. Just like that.”

His abs jumped, every muscle tightening, his hips now moving in tiny little thrusts in time with my strokes, but when I changed angle, swivelling my hand down and around his shaft, a feral growl escaped his chest.

“Fuck…” His eyes snapped open and they were bright, bright silver now. “Fuck, not gonna last.”

“You don’t have to last.”

But in contradiction to that I pulled my hand away, grasping the base of his cock with one hand, holding his impressive length away from his body as I spread the fingertips of the other hand over his crown and then slowly slid them down his shaft. He shuddered, the less intense stimulus killing some of the intensity, making him want to beg for more.

“Fuck. Stevie, I need—”

“I know what you need.” God, how I felt powerful right now. I was in control. He was entirely at my mercy, his pleasure only coming when I was ready to give it. “I know what will get you off.”

And to prove my point I cupped his knot in my hand and gave it a squeeze.

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