His lip curled, eyes running over me in a way I didn’t like. Like he was only just seeing me then. Like he’d only now noticed something about me that he found unpleasant.
“I know about that other man.” His tone was more than accusatory.
It was disgusted.
My entire body stiffened. How dare he?!
“That was fucking quick,” he added quietly and vehemently.
It was a short sentence, not many words, but somehow it was enough to convey something so much worse than accusation or disgust.
It told me he was wounded. Like I’d hurt him badly.
Like I’d done something wrong.
Like I was the bad one here.
That set me off.
“Excuse me?” I spat at him.
“I do not excuse you.”
That had me cursing at him. Loudly and fluently. Losing my cool. Completely.
“He’s not the other man,” I snarled. “You are, and that’s all you’ll ever be. I don’t know what I was to you, but you were never my man. That wasn’t what we had.”
One second he was nearly in the hallway, the next he had me pinned to the bed, moving so fast it made my head spin.
“That’s a lie,” he growled into my face. “And you’re not a liar, Lourdes. I think you only tried to pull off that one because you’re lying to yourself.”
I tried to buck him off, but that only had him moving his hips, seating himself more securely against me, our bodies flush. I felt the hard bulge of him growing with every movement, grinding crudely into my pelvis.
And I felt my temper going. Felt myself losing it.
“You left,” I spat at him, all of my bitterness, every ounce of my ire in those two words.
He shuddered on top of me. “I didn’t want to. Can’t you see that I didn’t want to?”
His voice was pleading, and the tone of it was like balm to my rage, calming it instantly, and though my feelings were every bit as volatile, they were no longer as uncomplicated as the wrath I’d been feeling mere moments before.
“You left,” I said again, but the tone had changed completely, so that now I was pleading back at him.
He groaned, a pained noise, and started kissing me.
I let him. No, not let. Welcomed.
I sucked at his tongue and didn’t stop him even when I felt his hands between our bodies, freeing his rock hard erection.
It sprang free, slapping into my thigh. He gave me time to stop him as he reached into his pocket, ripped open a condom, and rolled it on.
I didn’t stop him. Didn’t even consider it.
His hand guided his tip slowly to my entrance.
God, I’d forgotten how impossibly hard he was. How big. How perfect.
That first time, I could have blamed on being on the edge of sleep. On thinking I was dreaming.
I had no such excuse for this round.
As soon as his hand slipped out from between our bodies, my legs snaked firmly around his hips.
He gripped my hair in both hands, still kissing me as he stabbed into me with one heavy thrust.
He didn’t hold my wrists captive, for once, didn’t bind them.
Left free, my arms curled around his shoulders, clutching him to me.
He slammed our bodies against the bed, over and over, his jeans abrading against my inner thighs as he drilled me deep into the mattress.
At some point his hands left my hair and went down to my hips. He ripped his mouth away to watch me as he rose up onto his knees.
He grabbed my ass in both hands and lifted me into his possessive thrusts.
My hands, which had been forced from his shoulders, moved to my own body, gripping the sensitive mounds of my breasts into my palms, pushing them together, giving him a hell of a view.
It did not go unappreciated.
He tensed and heaved on top of me, getting close.
The lights in the room were bright, and so my view was unimpeded as I saw him start to lose it, the coldness going, the wildness overtaking his beautiful, broken eyes.
His jaw went slack, gaze boring into mine, taking me with him, dragging me under, straight into the heart of this madness we shared.
If it was up to me, and it wasn’t, I’d have slept after that.
I knew we needed to talk, but it was the middle of the night, and my body had just been exhausted. Twice.
He wrenched himself out of me, off me, climbing from the bed.
I was already on the edge of sleep when I felt his hands grip my ankles and start to pull.
“Oh no you don’t, honey,” his gravelly voice was a rough croon. “You don’t get to sleep. Not tonight.”
He dragged my hips to the edge of the bed, spreading my legs wide.
I listened to the sounds of him putting on another condom.
I still hadn’t opened my eyes, but I wasn’t in the mood to sleep anymore.
“Look at me,” his voice rumbled.
I opened my eyes just in time to watch him push between my thighs. I scrambled up onto my elbows to see as each thick inch of him disappeared inside of me.
“You’re insatiable,” I told him, voice low and needy.
“Had you forgotten?” he shot back. “And besides that, it’s been months . . . for me.” His tone was so dark and accusing that my eyes shot to his face, raking over it, trying to decipher if he’d meant what I thought he had.
But I couldn’t tell from his expression, and he wasn’t elaborating.
He was otherwise occupied. And so was I. There was no room in my overtaxed brain to spend on wondering what was in his just then.
He planted his fists on either side of my hips, rocking in and out of me at a jackhammer pace.
I tried to go to sleep again after that round, but he, again, was not having that.
“Get up,” he said, hands on my shoulders, pulling me to sit. “There’s no time to sleep. We still need to talk.”
I propped myself up on my hands, looking down at myself.
He was still wearing his jeans. He’d cleaned up, again, and even zipped them up this time.
But I was still nude, completely, sitting on the edge of my bed, legs splayed wide apart.
It was so undignified, the way I was spread open for him, just letting him stare at every part of the body I’d just let him have three times, that it spurred me into action.
“If you want me to stay awake,” I informed him, standing and moving to shrug on my favorite silk robe, “I’m going to need coffee.”
He left the room without a word to make said coffee, I presumed.
I took the opportunity to clean myself up and finger comb my disheveled hair.
Also, I gave myself a good berating in the mirror.
What’s wrong with you? I asked myself. Why do you just keep going back for more?
But it was swiftly clear the berating did no good, as, after I’d straightened myself up to a minimal degree, I went out to join him in the kitchen.
Going back for more.
He handed me a cup of coffee right as I got to the kitchen, moving past me, into the dining room, and taking a seat.
That was unusual.
He never just sat down.
It was so strange that I found myself standing over him, right in his personal space.
He just sipped his own cup of coffee and stared at me.
I sipped mine and stared back. I had not one clue what to say to him, where to start.
The truth was, I didn’t want to start, because I knew how it would end.
Don’t come back here. We’re finished.
How was I ever going to manage to make those words come out of my mouth? I had not a clue.
But I knew that they needed to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“I don’t know what to say to you,” I finally told him, after we’d both drained our cups.
We’d been silent the whole time, watching each other between long drags of coffee.
Neither of us wanted to have this talk, it seemed.
He took the mug from my hand, set it on the table, then picked me clean off the ground by the hips, setting me astride him.
We were breathing our coffee breath into each other’s mouths. “I thought you said we needed to talk,” I said softly. “This won’t solve anything.”
He didn’t answer, just stared at me while he worked between our bodies, getting us both ready.
“Heath,” I chided when I realized he was hell bent on fucking me again.
He stilled, cold eyes intense, then spurred into action, reaching for my hands, setting them, palm down, over the muscled flesh of his pecs.
“Go ahead,” he rasped. “Touch me. Do it.”
I did, hands moving over his chest, softly tracing at his scarred flesh, and as I watched the way it made him cringe, I knew why he wanted me to.
It was painful to him, and he wanted to hurt.
But, regardless of everything that had happened, all the ways I was hurting myself, I didn’t want that.
I took my hands away, gripping his where they held my hips.
He made a pained noise and kissed me.
So much for talking.
He took me right there in his lap, opening my robe and impaling me.
“Condom,” I cried out. Just because we’d had that one night of a slip up, months ago, didn’t mean I meant to be so careless again.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he rasped into my mouth. As he spoke, he closed his eyes, dropped his head back, and rocked his hips in and out, fucking me hard, bouncing me on his lap with firm hands and bucking hips.