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‘Hey,’ Dornan murmured, one hand coming around to my chin and tilting it so I was looking at him over my shoulder. ‘Talk to me. You never talk to me anymore.’
I turned in his arms, resting my face against his chest for a second. His heart thrummed along slowly, evenly. In my mind, I’d already said goodbye to him a long time ago, checked out of the relationship the moment I woke up in the hospital, my pregnancy over, my baby scraped away. I’d gotten used to the idea that Dornan Ross was no longer the great love of my life, but the heart is a fickle thing. My heart still remembered his concerned eyes, his insistent touch, the way he’d always kept me safe. My heart was a goddamn traitor.
What about John? It’s possible to love two men at once, you know. I wouldn’t be the first woman torn between obligation and desire.
I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. I’d managed to push everything away for months now, to forget the man he used to be, but suddenly I was overcome by the memory of the first time I ever saw him. Sadness engulfed me and my eyes started to fill with fresh tears. I wouldn’t blink, didn’t want to let them fall down my cheeks and give them to him. They fell, anyway. Gravity is strange like that.
‘What happened to us?’ I whispered against his neck, just loud enough for him to hear. ‘We used to be different.’
A different question.What have we done to each other? What have I done to you?
He tucked a stray strand of hair up on top of my head, winding it around a hairpin so it stayed put. ‘It’s not too late,’ he murmured, his hands on my neck, firm, but gentle. ‘We can start over. I’ll get us a new place. A real house. We can have a baby.’
I turned my head away, covering my mouth with my palm so I didn’t cry out. ‘We had a baby,’ I whispered, my teeth grittedas grief was replaced by rage, my tears falling of their own volition. ‘You never hurt me in ten years,’ I seethed. ‘Why’d you have to hurt me like that when I was carrying ourbaby?’ I stepped back and shoved him as hard as I could, barely moving the solid mountain of muscle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, digging his fingers into my hips as he knelt in front of me. He lifted my nightgown, and I tried to push him away, until I realised he wasn’t trying anything sexual. He rested his stubbled cheek against the bare flesh beneath my belly button, moving his head back and forth ever so slightly, rubbing against my skin. His fingers dug into the backs of my thighs as he pulled me as close as possible, and I had to steady myself on his shoulders so that I didn’t fall.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I whispered. ‘Why now?’
And no, I wasn’t perfect, and no, I hadn’t even been sure about keeping the baby Dornan and I had conceived unknowingly. But in the end, by his act of violence, he’d taken that choice away. He’d ended a life that was yet to begin. And although he’d said the words, he had yet to show me that he was ever truly sorry. Mostly, I think, he just wanted to forget about it and move on. A dark few days in the evolution of him, of us. In the space of three days, he murdered his son’s mother, raped me while her blood was still all over him, and then punched me so hard for questioning him about said murder that our baby died.
Before then, I would have said there was hope for him. For us. We’d walked a dark road, Dornan and I, months and years of violence and suffering and compromise, thanks to our fathers and the choices they’d made.
‘Why am I doing what?’ he asked me slowly. And truth be told, I didn’t even know what I was trying to quantify. What was he doing? Begging for my forgiveness, on his knees, the both of us surrounded with enough flickering candles to wipe out half the apartment building.
He straightened, my thighs aching from where his fingers had been as he towered over me once more. He bent his head down to mine and kissed me, taking me by surprise. He tasted like whiskey and cigarettes. His kiss was soft, almost hesitant. He kissed me like a boy would kiss a girl on prom night, one hand at my waist and the other cupping my chin. It was the sweetest gesture he’d ever made, and something in my chest expanded painfully, a supernova that stretched insistently, ready to shatter me.
How could I feel anything for him?
He broke the kiss, another anomaly, and pulled his head back so we were eye to eye. ‘I wish I could take it all back,’ he said, his eyes glassy.
Damn him to fucking hell. I had to hate him. I couldn’t love him.
My heart was a fickle bitch.
He picked me up like I was weightless, gripping me so tight it was almost painful. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my head burrowed into the space between his shoulder and ear, almost like a child, my breath and his neck creating a warm pocket of air that I stared into vacantly.
He laid me down on my bed, and softness enveloped me. It felt blissful, to sink into downy blankets as hands stroked my face. I was shivering despite the heat, burning up with a fever that no medicine could fix. Heartsick and confused, asthe man who professed to love me the most, for once, touched me with loving hands.
‘You remind me of her,’ he whispered, his thumb tracing my bottom lip. ‘Stephanie. She had a fire inside her, like you. You would have liked her.’
I stared at the ceiling, rememberingStephanie, who I’d met only in death. The memory was anything but pleasant.
‘You can’t say that,’ I choked. ‘You murdered her. You can’tsaythat.’
Dornan’s palm wiped the tears away from my cheeks, but more streaked down to take their place. ‘Shhhh,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not okay.’
He kissed me. His mouth silenced me, drowned me out. He ground his hardness against my thigh and I remember wondering if I’d go to hell for fucking two men in the space of a few hours. A whore. That’s what I’d been labelled as. Might as well enjoy the benefits.
I felt guilt, thick and swirling in my belly, as I pictured John’s face. If he saw this, he would kill Dornan. But he was the other man, and he knew it. He had no say, and for that matter, neither did I.
Dornan hitched my nightgown up over my knees, bunching the material around my hips. The air on my stomach and thighs was cold, despite the night heat. I think it was being exposed like this, a gentle caress, a loving touch. Two hands, one on each of my knees, and then I was open, my hips protesting at how wide he’d parted them, his cock heavy as it rested against my pussy. My nipples were hard pearls beneath my thin nightgown, the material deliciously rough as it rubbed againstthem. I throbbed with desire – I still possessed desire for this man, somehow – and shame blanketed me like fog.
It was so much easier to detach when you were thrown onto a bed and fucked without any tenderness. When you weren’t given a chance to say yes or no. When it was mechanical, going through the motions.
Love made things . . . complicated.
