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I tip my head back to look into his eyes. His gaze burns a path across my skin as he studies each freckle, hair, and mark as if he’s seeing it for the first time. That same gaze drags down the length of my neck, burning me from the inside out.
"Fuck, Flower. I can’t put into words how good it feels to see you. To feel your fucking skin beneath my hands. This entire month has been a neverending nightmare.”
I grit my teeth, and the familiar pricking of tears in my eyes makes it hard to hold his gaze. “A nightmare…?”
“Yes, a nightmare.”
I blink back the tears threatening to slip from my eyes. Of course he would make this about him. About how much he suffered and how badly I treated him. How stupid of me to assume he would actually have an ounce of empathy for the things I’ve gone through in the past month. He’s far too selfish for that. Far too consumed with his own wants and needs.
"I don’t know why I’m surprised. I guess I thought maybe you’d think of someone else before yourself for once in your life. I thought maybe you might feel bad about what you did, about how deep your actions and words cut me, but if anything, it made you a bigger victim. It made you think you’re the one who got hurt.”
The reminder of the pain he caused me is bone deep.
It’s suffocating and throbbing. My heart is in a vise, the life being squeezed out of it.
“That’s okay, though. Lesson learned. I see the real you now. What you were trying to show me all along, and I can’t fucking believe there was ever a part of me that saw good in you.” I desire to rip his heart out the same way he ripped my own out, but that will never happen because I'm not even sure he has a heart to rip out. “I’m glad your month has been a nightmare, and I hope the rest of your fucking life is too because you don’t deserve happiness.” I stab a finger into his firm chest. “You, Andrew Marshall, mean nothing to me, and I hope that realization eats you up inside. You’re a coward. Now let me go, and maybe I won’t tell Sebastian about this.”
His response to my hate is the opposite of what I expect.
He leans down so his face is so close that his lips nearly touch mine. His lower body molds, melting into me and not leaving one single inch to the imagination.
I feel everything.
The hard planes of his muscles and each indentation.
All of it.
But especially the long, hard length of his cock, which digs into my belly.
Instantly, my traitorous body turns to molten fire.
“Hate me or love me, Bel. It doesn’t matter to me. I warned you. When I told you I wasn’t a good man, I wasn’t lying to you. I’m not lying to you now, either. I said those things and did what I had to do to protect you.” There's remorse in his eyes, and I hate it. It looks too much like pity, and the last thing I want is Drew Marshall’s fucking pity.
“I don’t care why you did it.”
“You say that, but you don’t mean it. Even as badly as you don’t want to admit it, you know as much as I do that I did it to protect you. My father… I didn’t want him to hurt you. For him to realize how much you mean to me. You’d become another pawn on his chess board, another avenue to control me, and I couldn’t let that happen to you. If I have to be the villain in your story, then I will be, but I’m not letting you go.”
“I don’t belong to you. I belong to me. Now let me go.”
“No. I have so much more to say.”
“Say it to someone else, like your fiancée,” I sneer.
“I know you’re upset, but let me help. Let me fix this.” I can feel the pain splintering through the slow-healing wound. “I’m sorry about your mom. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. That I wasn’t able to take the pain away. I’m so fucking sorry, Bel.”
“Stop!” I whimper. It feels like I’m reliving the memory, experiencing her loss for the first time all over again. “Just fucking stop!”
I hate his words and their meaning, but more than that, I hate that small part of me that wants to believe him. He grinds against me, his hard length stoking the flames of desire that flicker in my pulsing core.
No. We can’t.
This is wrong. Both morally and ethically. Even after everything that happened, I could expect him to still want me, but after his father’s confession? I’ve replayed the conversation over in my head a million times.
True or not, this cannot happen. We cannot happen.
Every cell in my body pulses, urging me to let him in and let him soothe the dreaded ache in my core, but I can’t. Not only because I despise him but because I don’t, which might be as frightening as the revelation that he might be my brother.
"What is it that you want me to stop?" he taunts, acting as if he has no idea what he’s doing. He can’t really think this is okay, can he?
