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My heart was pounding as he pulled me flush against his body.

“You can! Please, Léonie, please give me a second chance with my family. To show you I will always put you and Ciel first.”

My face was upturned, tears running down my cheeks as I scanned the ferocity of his gaze.

I could not stop thinking about the what ifs. About what would have happened if Étienne hadn’t been here.

“It was all about me,” I sobbed, my legs giving way as I slid down the wall, but he was there, his arms around me, and we slid down together in a pile of limbs, my legs wrapped around him, our bodies sticky with sweat and blood.

“If only you hadn’t chosen me—if you hadn’t put léger on your forehead—all this could have been avoided⁠—”

“No,” he said fiercely. “Never think that way. There is no universe in which I do not choose you. Ever. I only wish I hadn’t tried so hard to keep you sheltered. I shouldn’t have kept so many things from you. If I had told you everything, working together, we could have seen what was happening sooner.”

“Next time I will do better.”

“Next time!” I cried, and I didn’t even want to look at him. “There can never be a next time! Too much has happened. We can never go back to what we were. It was broken beyond repair.”

“It was broken,” my husband said gently. Gentler than I had ever heard him talk before. Such a contrast with how bloody and raw his hands were. “It can be remade.”

“I don’t know—” I cried, but then his hands were on my face and he was carefully, gently, raising my lips to his.

“Let me try. Please.”

Suppressed desire and uncertainty boiled inside me as he captured my lips with his, his tongue eager, longing.

I grabbed angrily at his shirt, ripping a long, jagged gash in my fury.

“You had no right to do what you did! Feckless, selfish, arrogant bastard!”

“I was,” he growled, his hands cradling my face, his hands and body slick, sweaty, bloody, his hard cock pressing against the thin fabric of my skirt.

“But after this, believe me, sweetheart, I will never take your love for granted ever again.”

I could feel the full length of his arousal as the rough tips of his fingers scraped by my soft flesh.

My husband’s life was more violent, bloody, and dangerous than I had imagined. The choice to be gentle with me was deliberate.

I put my hands on his face, tried to span the width of his granite jaw.

“You’re desperate for this, aren’t you?” I asked, tightening my fingers.

There was a flicker deep in his eyes, something that made every inch of my skin heat, like it was too hot and tight to sit over my bones.

“Yes,” he rasped out. “I want this, I want you, more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life.”

His cock was pressing hard against the thin length of my panties, and I tipped my hips backwards, his dark eyes widening, that muscle throbbing in his jawline, and the panties tore with a rending rip, as I sunk straight down on his cock, all the way down that thick length, until my butt hit his thighs and he hissed with pleasure and kissed me.

Then we were moving against each other, our bodies jerky, urgent as I wrapped my legs tighter.

Étienne’s lips were on mine, his hands frantic for connection, pulling me tighter, closer as he ground my body down over his.

His kiss was almost a wound, his fingers gripping my hair, teeth and tongue and a hard, bruising length inside me.

He was chasing love and forgiveness, and I was chasing. . .what? What was I chasing?

The mere carnal pleasure my husband had always given me? The physical release? The feeling of a cock so big it stretched every inch of me, pressing me full to bursting?

Was that all I was chasing?