My chest heaved as I tried to catch my breath. “Y-yours.”
“Whose!” He roared, slamming his hands on either side of the tile by my face, his mouth pressed against mine as he continued. “Fucking, whose!”
“Yours!” I shoved him and then slapped him across the face for scaring me.
His head whipped to the side as his chest rose up and down. He wasn’t calm.
He was ready to commit murder.
“Mine.” His teeth nipped at my bottom lip then gave a painful tug as he flipped me around so the cool tile bit into my cheek and stomach, my breasts ached as the cold almost burned my skin. “Mine,” he repeated, roaming shaking hands around my body, cupping my breasts before lowering them to my hips.
I let out a gasp when he jerked me back against him. With one harsh thrust, he was inside me. I choked on my next breath as the second surge filled me to the hilt only to pull out again.
“Whose?” he rasped, his voice hoarse as he pumped into me, digging his hands into my hips to pull me back against him only to slam me back against the tile with each jerky movement. “Whose!”
“Yours.” Tears streamed down my cheeks from pleasure, from pain, sadness, fear, but most of all, the broken heart that refused to heal between us. “I’ve only ever been yours.”
“I need you.” His voice cracked. “I’m sorry, I need you like this, I’m sorry—”
“Junior Nicolasi, you have me; however you need me…” I tasted the salt of my own tears as I looked down at the blood swirling down the drain. “Even like this, Junior, even like this.”
With a groan, his movements were wild as he got me closer to release, and when I clenched around him, trying to dig my nails into the tile, trying to grab hold of something, anything, he drove in one more time and stayed there. Out of breath, his head resting on mine, his arms wrapped around my body like he was afraid I was going to disappear.
He’d never been rough with me before.
Not like this. In fact, I’d always found it odd how tender he was during sex since it was the exact opposite of how he was in real life. Now I knew. He’d been holding back. He’d given me the prettiest pieces, keeping the jagged ones to himself.
Part of me wondered if this was a piece of him that he’d hidden on purpose—or if Claire’s death didn’t just crack Ash—but the rest of us too.
Because it was suddenly real, wasn’t it?
Because we’d always been told to embrace the monster—because I knew Junior’s number one fear was to lose himself in it.
And now, I wondered if it was too late.
If he was already gone.
And if I was the only thing keeping him sane.
“I’m sorry.” Junior kissed down my neck. “I’m sorry I can’t—” He pulled away, and then he was gone, leaving me with my clothes tattered on the floor and my heart even more broken than before.
Woodenly, I grabbed a towel and felt more fresh tears when I noticed that his door was closed.
And worse, when I tested the doorknob, it was locked from his side.
What the hell had just happened?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Junior
I was a monster.
I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw black dots, and even then, nothing made me forget the rage that had swarmed over me when Breaker touched her, kissed her. Breaker was one of my best friends, he was family, but I’d snapped, something in me had snapped.
From the hospital to fighting with Ash, to watching him down his whiskey and then burst into tears before I even had a chance to hit him, I had become acutely aware of the last human parts of me breaking in two. I didn’t know how to fix them, how to fix me when all I saw was a red wall of rage.
“I’m fucking lost.” He fell to his knees in the middle of the gym, and then he threw the whiskey bottle across the room, smashing it into the wall. His scream pierced my ears so loud that I was surprised the building didn’t come down around us.
“Fuck!” He slammed his hands into the floor and then his knuckles, breaking the skin immediately, causing blood to drip from his fingertips.
“Ash!” I pulled him back against me.
He didn’t even fight at first; he just let me hold him while he sobbed in my arms.
“I love you.” I held him tight. “I love you, and I have you.”
His entire body shook in my arms.
I don’t know how long I held him like that.
He finally relaxed his grip on me and walked over to the ring, peeling his shirt over his body and sitting on the edge of the mat, his head lowered.
“I was going to marry her,” he whispered, and then in a horrifying moment, my heart crashed to the floor as he very carefully pulled out a blue Tiffany’s box. I hoped to God it was a promise ring, a necklace, a bullet—anything.