Breath on Embers (10 page)

It was the perfect symphony of movement and stimulation to catapult Thea into insanity, but Ronan anchored her in the present. Made her feel. His scent, his hands on her, his whispered words in her ear.
Oh fuck. So good. Don’t stop. So...fuck...so good.
His chest heaved under hers as she took him and Tim surged into her body, harder, harder, then he shuddered and jetted into her. Thea’s head drooped as Tim’s powerful body jerked against hers. She trembled on the verge of release, then Ronan lifted his hips, thrust into her, and just like that, light overwhelmed her, hot and bright and clamorous. She saw nothing but Ronan’s face as she came, all brilliant blue eyes and hot, soft mouth, while the contractions wracked her body, and she was looking into his eyes when he tipped over the edge and poured out his release.

So much more powerful with him bare and hard inside her.

For another few moments the hard tempo of hearts pounding in unison held, but then the tumult fell apart, the drums losing rhythm, trailing into silence broken only by her gasping breath, the rapid iambic pentameter of his heart. Then nothing, for a few more racing heartbeats.

Then fear. Because in this hot, sweating aftermath she had to face facts. It was different. She couldn’t blame it on Christmas, because this had nothing to do with sexy Santa’s helper outfits, or skating or decorated windows, or Tim, as sexy and sweet as he was under the player facade. This was just them. All them. A magical chemical reaction that took both her and Ronan to activate.

Emotion surged through her like the leading wave of a tsunami. Fear. A terrible sense of disloyalty to Jesse, to the man she’d loved
until death did them part
. Rather than proving her point, the ménage proved Ronan’s, triggered an emotional shift, the creation of a
them
that death might some day part. She should have said something at the soup kitchen, told him to forget about her, because it was different. Terrifying.

So much more was now too much.

Chapte
r Eight

When Thea looked at him as the adrenaline and endorphins ebbed, Ronan took a punch to his heart. Holy Christ, if that’s what it was like when she was fully present, in the moment, feeling what they made together, he’d probably suffer mild arrythmia every time he looked at her. For the rest of his life.

He could handle it. Eat well, exercise, cut back on the coffee and red meat, and he could handle the shock of looking into Thea’s eyes and finding
them
there.

After relaxing his grip on the wrist behind his neck he shook free of the ribbons still entwined around her wrists, then stroked his palms over her body—arms, shoulders, collarbone, waist, hips, thighs. Behind her Tim steadied himself with one hand on her waist, then pulled out and headed into the bathroom. As if the movement knocked a wheel out of alignment, Thea sat back, ducked her head, tucked her hair away from her face. Two fingers delicately sought the inner curve of her ear, and Ronan’s heart sank. Then she looked at him and blinked.

When she opened her eyes again, she was gone.

Ah, fuck, Thea
.

He wanted to have this conversation in private, so he wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto her back, then disconnected their bodies. Without speaking, he and Tim changed places in the bathroom, and when he returned with a warm washcloth for Thea, Tim was getting dressed. Thea had curled into a ball on the mattress, eyes closed. She still wore the stockings and the corset, and the yards of white ribbon trailed from her wrists as she tucked her hands under her chin.

The fallen angel analogy was a little hard to ignore.

He tapped her shoulder. Her eyes opened slightly, focused on his face, then on the washcloth, which she accepted without sitting up. Tim pulled his shirt over his head and thrust his long arms into the sleeves while Ronan yanked on his jeans. They made their way down the hall. Tim shrugged into his coat before he spoke.

“Remember that offer for the no-strings-attached night of fun with the foodie?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said.

“I’ll get back to you on that one.”

Air huffed from Ronan’s lungs. “Yeah,” he said again.

Tim looked down the hallway. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“I get why you want to help her. I get why you want her, period,” Tim said. “I totally get that. But...” He paused. Chose his words with a care Ronan appreciated. “I hope you can pull it off.”

“I will,” he said, with far more confidence than he felt. He opened the door and let Tim out into the hallway. The elevator dinged before he’d flipped the locks.

Back in the bedroom Thea was sitting on the edge of the bed. He sat down beside her and gently turned her back toward him, then unlaced the corset. She lifted her arms so he could pull it over her head, then she gathered each stocking from thigh to heel and removed them as well. He watched her undress, the scent of sex and sweat heavy in the dark air, before he remembered the ribbons and looked around for them.

They lay neatly coiled in the Idylle box. She’d removed them while he was out of the room. His head dropped forward.

“Thea,” he said wearily, but he couldn’t come up with anything else. He wasn’t going to ask her if it was different, like some dog begging for a treat. It was different. He knew it. She knew it.

Knowing and accepting were two different things. First lesson in grief counseling.

She stood to dress. Silver gray underwear, knee-high socks he found ridiculously endearing, jeans, sweater, and still the silence stretched between them. He found it comfortable. A sign two people could be together without needing to fill the emptiness.

She stomped into one boot and tugged the leg of her jeans down. “Do you want to know why I picked you out of that crowd on St. Patrick’s Day?”

He watched her balance on one leg and pull on the other boot. “Sure.”

“You were the only man there who tried to shut Tim up. He was the logical choice, of course. Loud, drunk and obviously up for anything. He probably would have fucked me right there on the table in plain view of Second Avenue.”

“Not with cops in the group,” Ronan pointed out. “It would have been the bathroom. Still public, but they would have looked the other way.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t see under his surface until earlier today, at the soup kitchen.”

Was that only a few hours ago?
“He’s a good guy,” Ronan said.

“I’d just been to see my grief counselor,” she continued. “She’d given me the ‘it’s been more than a year you should think about dating again’ spiel. I didn’t want to date. I couldn’t. But you were hot, and you were decent, and that was enough for me.”

In other words, she’d all but hurled herself into her first sexual experience as a widow. Great. Just great. “So you had sex. Anonymous, meaningless, emotionless sex. That’s what you chose me for.”

“Exactly.”

Like that day they’d made a bargain, terms drawn up, roles negotiated? Party A agrees the relationship will include meaningless sex with Party B, nothing more, sign on the dotted line? “You’ve tried and tried to keep your emotions out of this, and every time you can’t. Because it isn’t anonymous, meaningless, or emotionless. Maybe it was then. Maybe. But now...it doesn’t matter where we do it, how we do it, or who we do it with. It’s personal. It’s meaningful. And it’s by God emotional.”

She clenched her hands in her hair in frustration. “It can’t be for me. I can’t. I don’t have anything left inside to give you, or anyone else. I thought you’d understand. You lost your uncle, and your friend. How can you even think about being awake in the world, let alone caring about someone?”

“Because they may be gone, but I’m not. I honor their memories by living, not by becoming the walking dead.”

Her eyes were huge in her pale face, but dry. “You’re stronger than I am, Ronan. I can’t.”

“You already have, Thea. Admit it. You haven’t lied to me once. Don’t start now.”

She looked at him, away, then back into his face. God, he admired her strength. “You were right. It is different. But I’m not ready for that, Ronan. I’m just not ready.”

“You said you’d never love anyone like you loved Jesse. You’re right. You won’t, because that love was unique to you and Jesse. But you could love someone differently, in a way that was unique to you and—” He stopped, and what he hadn’t said hung in the air, unspoken. “You don’t have to be better, or healed, or over your husband. You just have to be here. That’s all I’m asking for. I’m not asking for forever. I’m just asking you to be here, now, with me.”

“I can’t,” she said, and hurried into the hallway. He followed her, watching as she zipped herself into her down coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck, trapping that gorgeous, tousled angel hair in the folds. “It’s not fair to keep doing this if I know I can’t give you now.”

“You’re right,” he said.

She froze. The shock in her eyes, the disbelief kept him going. If this hurt her, good. At least she felt something. Maybe fresh pain would call her out of the void, into the now.

“I’m no better than Tim,” he said. “He’s louder, more obvious, but I walked out of the bar on St. Patrick’s Day because I wanted you. It wasn’t rational, or even right, but one look from you and I felt alive again. Lit up inside, and not just with lust. You chose me for all the wrong reasons. You chose me to shut down, to silence all the voices that tell you enough, stop grieving, move on. But I can’t be your anesthesia and keep on living. You have to choose to be with me for the right ones.”

His words hung in the air between them for a long moment, and when tears sheened in her eyes, he thought he’d beaten back the void. But she blinked them away and turned for the door. “Goodbye, Ronan,” she said softly, and let herself out.

After the door latched, after the ding announced the elevator’s arrival, long after the doors closed, Ronan turned for the kitchen. In the cupboard by the fridge he found a bottle of Jameson, and poured an inch into a glass. Still in the darkness, he walked to the window overlooking Madison Avenue and sipped the whiskey. In the movies Thea would be on the corner, longingly looking up at his windows.

She wasn’t.

Goddammit. He took another hefty swallow and searched the street in both directions. No sign of her. He turned and hurled the glass at the tiled backsplash, where it shattered, spraying fine whiskey over the counters and sink.

Ronan slumped into the sofa, fingers laced behind his head and hunched over against the pain in his gut. For a very long time, he sat in the darkness.

* * *

December 24th

Just after three on Christmas Eve, Thea walked out of the eerily empty Cooper Bensonhurst offices into a mild December afternoon. The Midtown sidewalks held very little foot traffic. The holiday fell during a work week and most businesses had the Monday and Tuesday off. With the office closed for the holiday, jobs to copy tables from the old database to the new one kicked off like a line of Rockettes, perfectly synchronized. She thought about getting her email cleaned up, maybe writing up some documentation for the project, but her cube on the nearly empty IT floor felt a little spooky. Without her music, the constant hum in the data center, with its blinking red and green lights on rows of servers, agitated her.

So she kicked off the longest-running job, packed her laptop in her messenger bag, and left. Buses and trains were running on a normal schedule, but weak sunlight battled low clouds, and while the damp air once again boded snow, it was fairly pleasant outside. Very little wind. Her feet took her up Fifth Avenue, making steady progress through numbered streets with light traffic rendering walk signs unnecessary. The clear box over the Apple store on Fifth between Fifty-Eighth and Fifty-Ninth beckoned her. The store was open 24/7/365; undoubtedly she could replace her iPod there, take it home, sync it up and slip right back into her routine.

But Ronan’s plea to
be here, right now, with me
, stopped her. He thought she used music, and sex with him, as fingers in the dike of life. But there was no battle. The music just was. The void, like the music, just was. She didn’t need music, or him, to be who or what she was. She would prove that to herself by waiting until the iPod she’d ordered yesterday arrived in the mail on Wednesday.

Resolute, she strode through the tiny park in front of the Plaza, past a couple of listless horses buckled into carriages, kept calm in the city’s endless traffic and noise by blinders, and into Central Park. Again, silence settled around her. Her soles slapped against the asphalt sidewalk in counterpoint to her breathing as she made her way north.

His ultimatum shocked her, although it shouldn’t have. If a girlfriend of hers came to her with a story about a man who was using her for sex to avoid facing emotions, she’d tell her to kick his ass to the curb. Make a commitment, or find another fuck buddy. But men weren’t supposed to be like that. Men were supposed to take sex anywhere and everywhere they could get it, regardless of the emotional undercurrents.

Moisture crystalized in the damp air with each sharp exhale as she followed the winding paths through the zoo, past the boat pond. Men weren’t supposed to care about
us
, not men like Ronan. Damn him for not being a typical man. Damn him for insisting on sex rather than a blow job, for asking her to be a part of his holidays. Damn him for giving her a dream or two, one she refused to give herself. Damn him for making her feel alive.

Damn him for making her feel.

Except he didn’t make her do anything. He just was. She just was. Together they were...or were not.

The thought drove her out of the park at Seventy-Ninth Street, across Fifth, where the increased traffic noise trickled into the void, but couldn’t wipe away the memory of Ronan’s face, white around his lips and eyes, like she’d punched him in the gut. At the end of the ménage he’d been lit up from within. The memory of the look on his face when she said goodbye, like a blackout in Midtown, made her wince. She’d hurt him, another consequence of
us
, the power to hurt as well as heal.

Heading in the general direction of north and east, she walked with the lights and found herself heading north on Park Avenue. A crowd of people filled the sidewalk ahead, in front of St. Ignatius Loyola, one of the city’s largest Catholic churches. At first Thea assumed this was a Christmas Eve crowd leaving or entering the church, but as she drew closer, she heard music.

A cappella music, performed by male voices. “O Come All Ye Faithful,” her Christmas-tuned ear identified, their tenor, bass and alto voices lifting and blending, twining together to captivate a segment of the city’s most jaded population. As she reached the edge of the crowd Thea estimated forty or fifty people were watching, phones held high to record the scene, as six boys, none of them out of their teens, stood together on the sidewalk, sending their voices to the sky for the sheer pleasure of it.

If she’d had her headphones on, she would have crossed the street to avoid the crowd and missed this.

What else was she missing?

Night was falling as she stood to watch them sing the last verse, then applause rang out from the gathered crowd. Up the flight of granite steps several priests, dressed in their vestments and in between Christmas masses, added to the clapping. The kids nodded their thanks, regardless of whether or not listeners dropped cash in the hat lying in front of them on the sidewalk.

“Someone should call the cops,” a man said behind her. “They’re a nuisance, and they’re blocking the sidewalk.”

“It’s Christmas, Ebenezer,” a woman replied drily. “Let them be.”

The man impatiently shoved his way through the crowd. Without her music, Thea heard a voice inside telling her to stay put.

Two of the boys picked up cardboard boxes and started handing something to everyone in the crowd. Thea couldn’t identify the object until one of the boys, wearing a college letter jacket and jeans, was right in front of her. He offered her a slim white candle in a clear plastic cup designed to catch drips of hot wax.