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He smashed his fist against the bathroom door.
Inside, he waged a war. Against her. Against himself. Against every shitty thing he had ever done.
He lifted his fist to smash the door again, even though his knuckles were already a bloody mess, even though he didn’t deserve her forgiveness. He craved it. He’d stood in the sunshine of her love once, and now on the other side, it was midnight, and he was cold.
Fist in the air, he almost hit her in the goddamn face when she yanked the door open abruptly and stood there, wearing her pretty strapless white dress, her tattoo angry and red-black around her ring finger.
‘What?’ she snapped.
He felt the angry wall inside of him collapse, if only for a moment. He was justtired.
‘I want to go back to that first time in your apartment,’ Dornan said gruffly, flexing the fist he’d just about driven into her face by accident. He reached out a hand, cupped her face tenderly with his rough skin.
‘Why?’ she asked tightly.
He sighed. ‘I want to do better. You deserve better.’
Her eyelashes fluttered as she looked at him briefly, and then back at the ground. She was fucking beautiful. She was his wife, and he couldn’t quite believe it. She smiled wryly, and for a moment he thought she might have been going to drop this shit.
The words that came out of her mouth, though, were like a cold pickaxe she was jamming into his heart.
‘I want to go back to that night your father came for me,’ she muttered, ‘so that I could shoot him in the fucking face, and never have to meet you.’
Mariana smacked his hand away from her face like it was fire, and he was burning her skin. He saw red. He saw Mariana on the floor of her apartment, as he laid his fists into her for daring to defy him, and he saw the puddle of blood that had greeted him afterward, when she was already in the hospital, their baby long dead. The sting of her rejection was acute; it was utterly unbearable.
‘When are you going to stop punishing me?’ Dornan roared, slamming his palm against the wall beside her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MARIANA
I saw red.
‘You think I’m punishing you?’ I screamed, pushing him. ‘I can’t even fucking look at you without feeling like you’re beating me against a wall!’
And maybe I was goading him. Maybe I wanted him to force me, so then at least I could say it wasn’t my fault. That he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Because I could already tell, from that psychotic glimmer in his dark brown eyes, that he wasn’t taking no for an answer tonight. He’d claimed me on paper, and now he wanted to claim my body with his.
‘I’m sorry, I’m SORRY!’ he raged. He started to pace in front of me.
I watched, not daring to leave the safety of the bathroom doorway. If he came at me, if he tried to grab me, at least I had a chance at shutting him out and going back to my safe room.
But he didn’t grab me, or try to kiss me, and that surprised me. If anything, the pacing seemed to calm him.
At least, I thought he was calming down, until he spoke.
‘You’ve been avoiding me for months,’ he said coldly, levelling his black gaze at me.
‘What?’ I tried not to squirm under the spotlight of his words.
He just raised his eyebrows. ‘I know you, Mariana Rodriguez. MarianaRoss. You are a woman who demands to be fucked. You used to be addicted to my cock. So if you haven’t been fuckingme, whohaveyou been fucking?’
My stomach dropped. ‘What?’
‘Who. Huh? Guillermo? I’ll slit his dirty throat and screw you beside him, in a puddle of his blood.’
I grimaced at the visual. I didn’t doubt him for a second. ‘No, I haven’t been fuckingGuillermo,’ I replied.As if. ‘I’d rather sew my vagina shut than fuck him.’
‘Who, then? Someone from the club?’
