The Seduction of Destiny Rhode [The Seduction 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (13 page)

“If you weren’t serious before, Des, this is the time to say so.”

She lifted herself partway up to be able to look down into his eyes. Of course, she knew exactly what he meant, and she’d been one hundred percent serious, but it was a lot easier to admit that when she was aroused and in that weird drifty state he pushed her to.

“I was serious.”

He smiled at her warmly and caressed her head.

“I thought you were. You please me, minx.”

She had no idea what she just put into play, but she felt in that moment a lot like the safety bar had come down and the roller coaster was about to leave the station, and she’d better hold on for her life!

“I need to know what happened between you and Destiny.” Ronan was ordinarily blunt, but he was not ordinarily the kind of man who cared where another man’s cock had been. In this case, however, he felt he needed the information. Since it seemed such a raw subject for Destiny, Aiden was the only other option.

“I’m sorry, were we having a conversation where I said, ‘peel my skin back and watch me bleed?’” Aiden immediately crossed his arms over his chest.

“Look, you know me. I’m not into idle gossip, and it won’t go any further, but I need to know what happened.” Ronan hoped he wouldn’t have to go further than that with an explanation, but feared he might.

“I
do
know you. I also know that Destiny’s not your type, so why don’t we just leave it there?”

“Who my type is or is not isn’t your business.” He was irritated now.

“Well, who I’ve fucked and what happened during that time isn’t your business either, so it sounds like we’re even.”

He walked away and pretended to examine a long white curtain along one edge of a large-scaled window. A sliver of sunlight came flooding in from where he pulled back the curtain, illuminating the dust hanging in the air. Standing in one of the two grand ballrooms, Ronan had to admit, the room was showing its age. Still, the contractor in him saw her potential. It had a fifteen-foot ceiling, beautiful old-world moldings, and one wall boasting floor-to-ceiling windows looking over a garden complete with gazebo and fountain. In contractor vernacular, she had good bones.

They were awaiting Destiny and a designer Aiden was contemplating hiring so this wasn’t the
best
time for this conversation, but Ronan found it eating away at him day and night. The more time he spent with her, the more he saw the open wound she still carried from that time in her life and worse, the more he saw her decision to sacrifice any happiness she may find, in some misguided attempt to atone for the pain she had caused her ex-husband. It needed to stop. He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.

“Fine, lets lay it all out then, shall we? I’m with Destiny now. We’ve been together for a while now, but she has enormous walls up, and I thought if you cared at all about her, you’d warn me if I was about to step on some land mine and hurt her.”

Aiden turned to face him head on. “If you’re fucking her, you’re about to hurt her.”

Ronan had seen this side of Aiden only selectively. The look he was getting now was usually reserved for those who’d seriously pissed him off and usually only for people in the corporate world he lived in.

“What Destiny and I are doing isn’t really any of your business. Don’t you have a wife to look out for now?”

Aiden stepped in close and poked Ronan hard in the chest.

“Leave my wife out of it. You hurt her, and they won’t even find your body, understand me?”

Ronan took a deep breath. This wasn’t going well at all, and everything he said seemed to make it worse. The only real option he saw at this point was total honesty, and that wasn’t an option he found particularly attractive

“Back off, Aiden, I’m not trying to hurt anyone. Just explain to me why, if you are so in love with your wife, you feel the need to protect Destiny?”

Aiden ran a hand over the top of his head and through his hair leaving it uncharacteristically ruffled. When he walked a few steps away, his shiny Italian loafers snapped across the hard surface of a would-be dance floor echoing in the otherwise silence of the room.

“Destiny is probably the one thing in my whole life I’d take back, okay?” Aiden looked at him earnestly.

“Now I’m holding back the urge to punch you straight across the jaw, so you’d better explain that.” Ronan flexed the fingers on both hands.

“She’s an amazing, beautiful, sexy woman, Ronan, I’m not denying that. And the time I spent with her was beautiful, but it hurt her, and I can’t forgive myself for that.”

The picture was a little less fuzzy all of a sudden, but not enough so.

“Go on.”

Aiden let out a long sigh then stepped closer and lowered his voice.

“I met Destiny through an employee at a hotel my family owns in Kansas. It was a real fluke sort of a thing, but…” His gaze moved away as if he were remembering the meeting. “There’s just something about her. Something special. The way she laughs, her smile…she sucked me in, and I found myself making excuses to accidentally run into her every time I was in town. I found myself thinking about her and making excuses to
be
in town.

“I knew she was married, yes, but eleven years ago I didn’t understand what that meant. I mean hell, my mother was my father’s mistress, so what did I know about sanctity of marriage? I was still in my twenties, my head was entirely messed up, and I only cared about how I felt when she was around.”

Ronan was starting to get the picture, but there were still a few crucial pieces missing.

“Did you pressure her into sleeping with you?”

“Of course not!” He ran his hand through his hair again and looked away. “Not specifically.”

“And what does ‘not specifically’ mean
exactly
?” Ronan felt his blood pressure rising. He liked Aiden, but if he found out that the man had taken advantage of Destiny, he’d fucking kill the son of a bitch.

“I was a selfish, arrogant kid. I probably should have taken her first—or fortieth—‘No’, for an answer, but I didn’t. I kept flirting with her, kept making excuses to be around her, until she finally gave in. I destroyed her, and at the time, I was too stupid to even notice.”

The grief in his tone was the only thing that kept Ronan from pounding the son of a bitch into the drywall.

“So, wait a minute…” Ronan spread out his arms to encompass the ballroom. “All this, this is
guilt
?”

Ronan’s gut seized. If Destiny ever found out Aiden was doing all this to help her because he felt
guilty
over their affair, it would destroy her all over again.

“No!” He paused a beat and added a less emphatic, “Yes.” He brought his hands up to cover his face and through them groaned, “I don’t know.”

“Shit.” Ronan tugged Aiden to the farthest point from where he knew Destiny would enter the ballroom. The last thing she needed was to overhear this conversation.

“So all that crap about her passion and her fire and whatever-the-fuck-else you said, that was just you bullshitting her? This is about you somehow slaking your guilt?”

“I didn’t lie to her. Everything I said was true, but I would be lying if I said that I haven’t wanted some way to make everything up to her for eleven years. That’s why I’ve kept in touch all these years. I’ve wanted to make sure she was okay. I feel…I owe her, so when she called, I probably would have agreed to anything she wanted.”

Ronan growled and paced a few steps away, scrubbing his hands over his face. Though he could appreciate Aiden’s intentions, if Destiny knew, it would kill her.

“She can’t ever know about this. You know that, right?” He pointed across at Aiden and waited for what had damn well better be an agreement.

“Of course I’d never tell her. The only person who knows this—outside of you and me—is my wife. I told her all this years ago and so when I started all this, she understood.”

“Very understanding woman you’ve got there.” Ronan scowled.

“She loves me. She understands me.” Aiden shrugged.

Ronan refused to admit how much those words made his heart ache. Maybe Aiden and Cassidy had found something that the rest of the world seemed to be missing out on, but that didn’t mean it was available for everyone, and it would serve him well to remember that.

“So where does this leave us, Aiden?”

“Destiny deserves this chance. She’s one of the best people I know, and she’s put everyone and everything else before her, and I want to help her make this work more than almost anything, and that has nothing to do with guilt. Unless you make an issue of this, I don’t see the problem.”

He supposed Aiden was right. Still, it felt wrong somehow to keep this from her, but telling her would only blow her world apart. He didn’t want to be the one to do that.

“I agree. I won’t say anything.” Although there was still a lot he’d like to say to
Aiden
on this particular subject.

“Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it for
you
.” Ronan growled more fiercely than he had intended.

“I understand that, but I’m still grateful.” Aiden stood a little straighter. His calm returned, and he was once again the composed, in-control Aiden that Ronan was most used to dealing with.

“I do, however, still have one issue with you, Ronan. What exactly is it you think you’re doing with Destiny?” Aiden crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

This wasn’t a conversation Ronan wanted to have, in large part because he wasn’t really sure himself.

“We’re consenting adults, and I will
assure
you, I didn’t coerce her into
my
bed in
any
way.” He meant it as a slam but more to end the conversation than to really sting Aiden.

“She has a tender heart, Ronan. She’s not the kind of woman you just fuck, then walk away from. And while I realize the hypocrisy of that statement, I still feel the need to say it. Plus what about your…” He let the word hang in the air unspoken, using a hand gesture to infer there was something he was leaving out.

Ronan knew exactly what he meant. It was true that he didn’t ordinarily go for women like Destiny. He needed a certain level of kink in his sex to truly be satisfied, and she was innocent, despite her age. Ordinarily, he didn’t mess with the innocent. She drew him in, though—in a way he found himself helpless to resist. There was no explaining it. He had to walk this thing one step at a time because though he wouldn’t stay after the job was completed, he also knew he couldn’t live with her this close all summer and not have her in his bed.

“Leave my”—he used the same hand gesture and let the word go unspoken as well—“to me, thank you very much. As for Destiny, I’ve been totally honest with her. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s
not
married now. She’s a big girl, Aiden. Give her some credit.”

Aiden seemed to be considering his words, but he wasn’t the woman’s father for Christ’s sake, what was he going to do about it? Also, he was probably a better judge than Aiden on whether or not Destiny would blossom under the domination of a man, and he’d seen enough submissive tendencies in her, mixed with her passion, desire, her wicked fantasies. He was probably the best thing that ever happened to her because with him, he was hoping, she’d finally allow herself to be authentic and discover the strength she had hidden inside.

“If you hurt her, you and I will have trouble. You understand that, right?”

“Aiden, as much as I enjoy your company, and your family has been very good for my business, I don’t answer to you.” He was beginning to feel like they’d morphed into some alternate universe where Aiden was Destiny’s overprotective father—or at the very least, big brother—whose approval he needed to gain before taking her to the Friday-night dance.

Aiden stepped in close, clearly intending to intimidate him. Ronan didn’t feel in the least threatened, though. He could handle himself just fine up against Aiden.

“On
this
you do.”

“I’m not going to hurt her, Aiden! Why the fuck do you think I came to you in the first place looking for this information? If I didn’t care about her, I wouldn’t care about this!”

The truth of that statement scared him, but he refused to focus on it.

“I plan to spend the summer with her. I’m not proposing marriage. I’m not fucking ten other women on the side. I’m not leading her on in any way.” He devolved into shouting. “And I won’t tie her to my bed without asking first. Are you happy now?”

“Not entirely. I’d be happier if you just left her alone.”

“And what about what
she
wants, Aiden? Doesn’t that matter to you? Or are you just a wee bit jealous that my cock gets to go where yours can’t anymore?”

Aiden hit him so fast and hard, he honestly hadn’t seen it coming. Instantly he went from pissed off to furious and lunged back with a powerful attack of his own.

“Fuck you!” The taste of blood filled Ronan’s mouth.

Aiden swung back in response, connecting with his solar plexus, making him double over, but he wasn’t over for long before he swung back, connecting from below with Aiden’s jaw.