Page 58 of Running on Empty

“I’m all sticky, Ronan,” I said, playing this game purely on instinct. “I need to get clean. Maybe I should have a shower?”

“The fuck you will.” That growl was the only warning I got as he tugged me closer, right to the edge of the bed, before he buried his face in me.

Ronan had never done this for anyone else. A selfish part of myself smiled viciously at that. He was mine, all fucking mine and damn me, if he didn’t know exactly what to do. My clit was still hypersensitive after we’d rocked each other’s worlds, so he teased at the hood, brushing his tongue around it, rather than across it. But then he dropped lower, spreading my thighs as wide as they would go, shoving his tongue back inside a channel that ached for more.

I’d hurt in the morning. I always did after taking a knot, but it was a sensation I craved. It was the ghost of something amazing, living on in my body until it faded, reminding me of everything I’d done. So when his too soft, too mobile tongue sucked my slick from the source, there was a promise of more to come, right up until I started to squirm. Ronan read me perfectly, seeming to detect the exact point where blood started rushing to my clit, prompting it to swell with pleasure, rather than shy away from it, so that when he flicked his tongue across it, I forced him back for more. He ate me like a fucking animal, hungry and demanding, nipping and sucking and licking me until I couldn’t take it anymore and I forced him up.

“Come on my face,” he told me, chin glistening. His eyelids were at half mast, his expression hazy, as if he was half drugged by me and didn’t I know how that felt? “Do that and then I’ll fuck you through another.”

“No.”

He blinked at that, seeming to come back to himself, and I leaned in then, kissing him hard before licking myself off his face.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting for your knot all my life and now I’ve had it once, fate will step in and snatch you away. I can’t come on your fingers or your tongue, not yet. not until I can be sure you’ll still be there when I’m done.” I snorted then at my own stupidity, but it didn’t stop the words from coming out. “If you knot me—”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He nodded at that, having ended my sentence and made me a promise in the same instance. I scrambled onto the bed then, moving to my hands and knees, but he turned me over, laying me down so I was forced to watch him as he shuffled forward and into the space between my legs. “And I won’t. Not now.”

He pressed his cock down, rubbing it slowly through my folds, nudging my clit until I was forced to squirm, ready to claw him closer.

“I’ve got a room full of weapons.” He nodded to the walls around us. “And the skills to take down most fucks, including the ones who hurt you.” He paused then, waiting to see what mentioning the Spencers would do to me, but he needn’t have worried. No one got to be in this room with us, only me and my mate. “No one’s gonna take me away from you ever again.”

Well, at that I reached up and dragged him down on top of me, needing the heavy weight of him to anchor me to the bed. I felt airy, weightless, too full of everything, him, until I felt the head of his cock brush against me. That was the only warning I got before my leg was hooked around his waist and he drove himself into me.

“Fuck…” I gasped. “I’ll never get used to that.” As if in answer he drew back and then thrust harder into me. “Tell me it’ll be always be like this, that nothing will ever get between us again.”

“Never,” he vowed, right before he thrust again. “You’re mine, omega, for good or for bad and I’ll burn down the world before I ever let you go again.”

But as Ronan was ruining me for all other men, we had a silent witness waiting at our door, just staring at the surface of it, as if it would give him the answer he wanted.

Ash.

Chapter34

Ash

“What the fuck are you doing, son?” Blue asked me, trying to turn me around, but I wouldn’t.

I tried to shake his hand off, but his grip tightened, forcing the issue. It was either meet his eyes or fight it out, so I chose the path of least violence. What had happened today left me empty and hollow. I was glad we’d put an end to Snake. The man was a fucking animal of the lowest order, but… I never took pleasure from other people’s pain, not like Ronan or…? I looked over at Jax with a question in my eyes, but my brother just shook his head and walked off into the complex.

“Ronan has Stevie,” Blue said in the same tone he used to make me see fighting with my brothers as a kid was a bad idea. “She’s claimed him.” He didn’t even need to confirm that, because he knew. It’d been what he would’ve done if it were Mum in the car, not Stevie. “She knows what he is and she claimed him anyway.”

No, Dad, I wanted to snap.She claimed himbecauseof what he is.

The look in her eyes when she squeezed off the trigger, blowing out Snake’s knee, the smile on her face when she watched Ronan drag the alpha’s battered body across the floor. The scent of her arousal. I’d spent my life denying myself and my brothers everything our omega had to offer, thinking I had to protect her, but… I frowned hard then. She was just as bad as Ronan.

Or just as good, my wolf growled.

“If you want to be a creepy cunt and loiter outside your brother’s room, then listen,” Blue ordered. He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, hauling me over to the door and pressing my face against it. “I really don’t want to, because to me Stevie’s still that kid that used to come creeping into the house, looking for a safe place to hide. But you? You can’t see her that way if you want her for your mate. She’s a woman now, and while me and the boys can ignore that, you can’t.”

I shoved him off me, straightening up, but sure enough, I could hear the muffled sounds from behind the door, knew they were of pleasure as my cock punched against my zipper, wanting out. We wanted to rip the fucking door down, tear Stevie away from our murderous brother and then right when she was gasping from pleasure we gave her, we’d… I could see it clear as a bell inside my mind. I’d offer her back to Ronan, because I couldn’t deny either of them anything.

“Come and have a beer with your dads,” Blue said, his tone softening.

“I don’t want—”

“I’m not fucking asking, son.”

So that’show I came to be sitting around our conference room table, a fresh cold bottle of beer pressed into my hand. I twisted off the lid and sucked down a few swallows as Jax and the rest of my dads chuckled.

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