Ronan pulled the Jeep to the curb in front of Alexis’s house and shut off the engine.
After dematerializing away from his townhome to put five miles of much-needed distance between him and Micah—and his prick of a father—Ronan stopped by his dad’s crib, swiped the spare keys, then took off in the Jeep. He hadn’t known where he was going at the time, just that anyplace was better than being near his fucked-up family.
He used the term family loosely, because he didn’t think of either his dad or Micah as family. They shared genes, but that was about it. And genes alone did not a family make. At least not by Ronan’s definition. He thought of Alexis more as family than his own father.
Once he’d climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep, it hadn’t taken him long to figure out where he was going. He hadn’t seen Alexis in a while, but she was just what he needed. She was his partner in crime, his nurse when he needed mending, the feminine body he wanted when his appetites turned more hedonistic, and the ear he needed to vent to when he’d had enough of his father’s shit.
In some ways, she was his mentor. In others, he was hers. But they were equals where it counted.
The one thing she wasn’t was his mate. Hell, she wasn’t even what he would consider a lover. Best friend, confidante, and fuck buddy? Yeah, that pretty much described their relationship. When he needed sex, he went to her. When she needed it, she came to him. No strings attached. Nobody got hurt that way. After all, you couldn’t miss what was never yours, and they’d both already been hurt enough. They didn’t need to try to be more to each other than they were.
Alexis was as damaged as he was, and, as the saying goes, it takes one to know one. He got her, she got him, and that was all that mattered. Trust naturally followed suit.
But casual and uncomplicated didn’t mean boring or ordinary when it came to the time they spent in the bedroom. After all, she was the one who had taught him rope bondage, an art he’d taken naturally to when she started letting him tie her up.
But bondage was as far as she wanted the kink to go. And spanking. She did enjoy a good spanking. But no flogging. No hitting of any kind beyond a firm hand on her ass. No ball gags. No blindfolds.
Although . . .
Ronan liked the idea of blindfolds. A deep, dark corner of his personality adored the thought of rendering a female helpless and taking care of her. Call it a hero complex, but the fantasy of earning a woman’s trust and keeping her safe always got him hard. Alas, that was one sexual fantasy that would never play out with Alexis, because while she liked being tied up, she detested be treated like she couldn’t take care of herself.
He hopped out of the Jeep and winced. His arm throbbed as his feet hit the pavement a little harder than he’d intended. He cursed under his breath. Damn shoulder ached like a motherfucker. The bullet was still lodged in the flesh.
Alexis opened the door and leaned against the jamb, her arms crossed. She was barefoot, wearing loose jeans that were torn at the knees and a draping, off-the-shoulder top that fell to midthigh. “What happened to you?” Her straight black hair hung over her shoulders to her waist.
“Bullet.” Holding his injured arm against his body, he marched up the steps and pushed past her, into the entryway.
She closed the door and locked the half dozen deadbolts that had probably taken her an inning’s worth of baseball to unlock. “Let me see.”
He peeled out of his bloodstained shirt, cringing as he lifted his injured arm, and tossed it over the back of the settee a few feet away.
Alexis inspected the wound. “Let me guess. This has something to do with your brother.”
She knew all about Micah. She was the only person he’d told about his family problems and his plans to steal the ankh from Micah’s ridiculous penthouse apartment. Then again, she’d been the one to put the final pieces of the ankh’s power together for him and show him the map she had created of the portals she’d identified in the Chicago area. At least the ones she was able to locate. Pretty much any structure that looked like a pyramid or obelisk served as a gateway.
Being that she had done most of the legwork and research for the ankh’s purpose, she could be considered a co-conspirator in the ankh’s theft, whether she saw it that way or not.
When he didn’t answer, she peered up at him. “Ro, please tell me you didn’t actually go through with it.”
“Damn right I did. Fuck him.”
She sighed and pushed him toward the back of the house. “Come on, let’s get this thing out of you.” They entered the kitchen, where she pointed toward the table. “Sit.”
He did as he was told while she disappeared in the back hallway, where he heard her rummage through the bathroom cabinets. A moment later she returned with her first aid kit.
Hers wasn’t a standard kit. For starters, it wasn’t a tiny white and red box. It was a large metallic-grey, multilayered fishing tackle box she’d customized to hold all her medical supplies. You didn’t survive off the grid this long without having your own miniature surgical unit in your home, as well as basic medical knowledge. And given Alexis’s line of work and who she was hiding from, she was a master at independence and self-preservation.
She plunked the tackle box on the table beside him then retrieved a bowl and several small, stained towels from the linen closet. The towels were clean, but she’d removed a lot of bullets and sewn up a lot of wounds over the years, and Tide could only get out so many bloodstains before it said “Fuck it,” and gave up.
“You wanna talk about it?” She pulled another chair in front of him and sat down, studying the bullet hole under the brighter lights of the kitchen.
“Not really.” He wasn’t in the mood for being Dr. Phil’d, and he already knew what she would say.
She stood and flicked the latches on her medical kit, popping the lid. “I told you going after Micah was a bad idea.” She dug out a small bottle of local anesthesia then grabbed a syringe.
“Well, I did it anyway. He deserved it.”
“Is he the one who gave you this?” She nodded toward his wound.
He glanced down at the hole in his arm that was still leaking blood. “He surprised me at my house. Popped me before I could pop him.”
“Did you deserve it?”
He frowned. He knew what she was getting at. She thought he should have left Micah alone, but that wasn’t Ronan’s style. Micah had been a black mass of oppression in his life since birth, and he was sick and goddamn tired of living under that shroud. The best way to break free was to cut his way out. If that meant literally running the blade through Micah to get out from under his shadow, so be it.
Alexis shook her head and set down the syringe. “Of all the people to rob, you picked him. Have I taught you nothing?” She grabbed an alcohol wipe and tore open the packet. “Never steal from someone in your own family, Ronan, no matter how much you hate him, and especially when he’s AKM’s fiercest enforcer. He could have killed you. I’m surprised he didn’t.”
“Must have been my charm.”
“It must have been dumb luck.”
“What’s done is done—AH!” He flinched and pulled back as she swabbed the bullet hole with alcohol.
She gave him a tart smile. “Serves you right.”
He grinned back. “Sadist.”
“Only when you’re bad.”
“Is that how it works?”
She let out a breathy laugh. “Look who’s talking.” She picked up the syringe.
“I’m not a sadist.”
This time she laughed outright. “Are you kidding? My ass is still burning from the spanking you gave me the last time I saw you.”
That had been a good night. He’d been especially torqued, having just had another argument with his father.
“That wasn’t sadism. That was affection.” He hissed as she pierced his skin with the needle and injected the local. It burned at first, but within seconds, he felt nothing.
She capped the syringe and set it back on the table. “Affection?”
“You know how much I care about you.” He did care about her, but they preferred to joke about their feelings rather than take them seriously.
“Uh-huh. My ass you do.”
“It was your ass.”
She picked up a scalpel. “Hush. Let me concentrate.”
He laid his head back and stared up at the ceiling as she sliced into his flesh then used a pair of forceps to dig out the slug. Despite the local, he could still feel her mangling his muscle tissue. That shit was going to hurt like a bitch come morning . . . or whenever the local wore off. Then he heard the bullet drop into the ceramic bowl beside him and glanced down at it. It always amazed him that such a small object could cause so much damage.
Alexis pressed a towel against his shoulder. “Hold this.”
He placed his hand over the towel while she grabbed a small squeeze bottle of saline solution from her kit.
Pulling the towel away, she cleansed the bloody wound, catching the runoff with the towel, then placed a second towel over the injury. He held it in place while she threaded a surgical needle with suture thread.
Several stitches and one large, thick bandage later, she was finished.
“You’ll need to change that bandage in a few hours.” She stood and began tidying up her kit. “When was the last time you fed, anyway?”
“Are you offering?” They often fed from each other. Like everything else about their relationship, it was simpler that way.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You’re bleeding too much. That wound should have healed more than it had before you got here. You need to be feeding more, Ro.”
“Like I said, are you offering?” He slid his good arm around her hip and pulled her toward him.
Her hands landed on his bare chest as her legs straddled his thighs. “If you need to feed, my vein is yours, but you shouldn’t wait until you’re with me. You can feed from others.”
“I feed from others.” He sounded defensive, even though he wasn’t. “You’re just my favorite flavor.”
The corner of her mouth turned up. “I like feeding from you, too, but you need to hit up other sources more often, especially if I’m not available.”
“You’re available now.” He pushed his hand up her shirt.
She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nipple puckered instantly as his fingers brushed over it. She moaned and sank onto his lap, closing her eyes.
She enjoyed the sex as much as he did. Neither was getting it elsewhere, and they were sexually compatible enough to know what the other wanted without having to ask, so it was the perfect arrangement.
Like now, for instance. He knew Alexis loved her breasts played with. It was the surest way to turn her on other than tying her up. If she seemed to be on the fence, all he had to do was fondle her breasts or caress her nipples, and she was putty in his hand.
He pinched both nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, and she rocked her hips against him.
And there she was. The wanton female he had hoped would come out to play the moment she mentioned feeding.
“Come here.” He pushed her shirt up and off then pulled her forward, sucking one nipple into his mouth.
She wrapped her arm all the way around his head, holding him in place as he tongued the tight peak of her breast. She groaned and rocked more forcefully against him.
He could make her come this way. He had before. But that’s not what he wanted or needed tonight. When he made her come, he wanted to be inside her. He had as much frustration to expend as she did.
With her nipple still in his mouth, he found the fastenings of her jeans and quickly released them while she did the same to his. Within seconds, her jeans lay in a heap on the kitchen floor and his were around his ankles.
She straddled him, guided his cock inside her, then gripped the back of the chair as she rode him, pressing her other breast against his mouth.
Taking the hint, he drew her neglected nipple between his lips, sucking hard then soft, nipping it with his teeth, and swirling his tongue around it.
She whimpered then shuddered, and a moment later, she cried out as she came, shivering violently.
When she was finished, he picked her up, still inside her, stepped out of his jeans, and turned her toward the table.
He laid her on the polished wooden surface, grabbed her ankles, and levered her legs open, outstretched to the sides.
He had to bend his knees to take her in this position, but it didn’t matter. When he came, it still felt just as good when he collapsed over her and sank his fangs into her neck.
Simple.
Casual.
And safe.