So maybe it wasn’t that I wasnotmyself. Maybe it was that when those bedroom eyes looked at me that way, I was more myself than I’d been in years.
Not sad Seattle Laney, who folded sweaters and balanced books and mourned her mother after a year and a half because what else was she supposed to do with her life?
Not even Vegas Not Laney, who’d been a one-night burst of recklessness fueled by too much tequila and a sassy green dress.
Just… Laney. Or maybe Ariadne, since that’s what he called me. The person I’d forgotten I could be.
That’s certainly who tackled Ronan against the bookshelf and climbed him like a cedar. One moment he was looking at me, the next my legs were around his waist, my arms around his neck. He caught me easily, taking full handfuls of my thighs to hold me in place while we devoured each other whole.
“Christ,” he breathed between kiss after soul-searing kiss. “Don’t give a guy much warning, do you?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
He didn’t respond, and I didn’t want him to. He was too busy kissing me like he was drowning, and I was the air he needed. I was too busy eating him alive like he was a banquet and I’d been starving for years.
Maybe I had been.
He carried me to the old plaid couch I’d found on Market Street and had never bothered to replace. He didn’t notice. I liked that he didn’t notice or even seem to care that everything in my apartment was secondhand or inherited. The pieces of art adorning the walls were mostly framed sketches from Mom’s art journal. I had a few small statues and mosaics I’d collected during research trips to Rome and Greece, while everything else was remnants of my former life as a poor student—the old sofa, the beat-up desk near the windows, the fifties-era dinette next to the kitchen.
Ronan Black was rich. Really rich. If his suits and plush hotel suites were any indication, his life was full of luxury that was a far cry from my little thrifted palace. But from the second he’d walked into my home, he’d seemed as comfortable here as the Vegas penthouse. As comfortable with me as I was with him.
I needed to get closer. I threw a leg over his hips so that I straddled his trim waist, allowing the floaty green bridesmaid dress to ride up around my hips. Wrinkles were the least of my concerns now. My fingers threaded into his hair, pulling, scrunching, allowing the curls to soften under my rough touch.
“I love your hair,” I told him while he sucked hard under my jaw.
“Do you now?” He sucked again at a different spot. I had a feeling there would be marks. “It’s so fuckingcurly. Pain in my ass.”
I grabbed said curls and yanked, procuring a moan from deep in his chest. “That’s what I like about them. You should let them be instead of trying to tame them all the time.”
One of his broad hands wrapped around the back of my neck, guiding my mouth back to his. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then I couldn’t talk again for a long time. He groaned, his hands roaming all over like he was trying to memorize every curve I had. Toying with the fabric of my dress, finding broadening expanses of skin. Like he couldn’t decide where to go. Like he wanted all of me and couldn’t wait any longer.
“God,” his voice was hoarse when I came up for air. “Fuck, you beautiful creature. What are you doing to me, Laney?”
“That’s not my name.”
I didn’t know why I said it. It just didn’t feel right as I ground into him, feeling the way he wanted me as badly as I wanted him. “You know what to call me when I’m yours. You just told me.”
“Ari, then.” I shook in his arms. He licked my neck. “MyAriadne.” His hands found the zipper at the back of my dress, but when it didn’t move, he paused, mouth hovering over my racing pulse. “Are you attached to this dress?”
I gasped, trying to yank him closer. “I—what? No.”
“Good.”
There was a loud rip, and the zipper gave as he rent the dress straight down its flimsy seam, the tiny straps breaking right with it.
Suddenly, I was bare from the waist up as green satin pooled around my waist. Just days ago, I might have hidden fromthat wicked gaze. Now I sat straight in the dim light as Ronan perused my body, eyes dilating with lust.
I had never felt more beautiful.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “You really are a goddess, you know that?”
I didn’t. But at that moment, with the way he was looking at me, I certainly felt it.
I reached out and pulled one of his curls that had flopped forward onto his forehead. “If I am, I’m your goddess.”
For that, I received a growl. “Damn straight you are.”