For a moment, just a moment, terror blanks everything else out. This can’t be happening. Please, God, this can’t be happening again. Not now. Not with Ethan. Not when I finally feel safe.
I lash out, rake my nails down his biceps.
He curses, presses me more firmly against the door.
“Ethan, please. ” I don’t have a clue what I’m asking for—whether I want him to stop or to continue—and I don’t think he does, either.
We’re standing on the edge of an abyss, one where any wrong move will send us—and the pieces of what we’ve shared—tumbling into the darkest oblivion.
I’m paralyzed with distress. I don’t know what to do, what to say. And all I can think is, Bring it on, you bastard. Bring. It. On.
This is the moment where I see what he’s made of, what he’s capable of. And where I see just how much I can take.
Maybe we’ve been working up to this all along, maybe we haven’t. Either way, I’m not leaving here until I find out exactly how this one moment, this one encounter, is going to play out. He owes me that much, just as I owe him.
At that moment, he pushes himself even more firmly against me. His cock is so hard that it actually hurts to have it shoved against me like that, and I brace myself. Prepare for the worst, even knowing that it may very well send me careening over the last edge of sanity.
I get Ethan instead.
Because no matter how tormented he is, how broken we are, he’s still my Ethan. Tender, sweet, soft. And when he touches me, that’s all that matters. All that will ever matter.
The thought breaks me into even more pieces, but I don’t pull away. I can’t. I’m caught in his grip, pulled under by the passion and the power of this connection that just won’t break.
But then he moves and I tense as he strokes his hands over my shoulders.
Whimper as he lowers his head and kisses my neck.
Shiver as he nibbles at the ticklish spot behind my ear.
I can’t help myself. He’s an addiction that I just can’t kick. One I’m terrified will haunt me the rest of my life.
He laughs in response, even as he licks his way down to the sensitive place where my neck meets my shoulder. Then he bites me.
My body lights up like the Fourth of July, my fear mingling with his fury, my arousal tangling with his need. And I know—I know—that there’s no more reason to fight. Because this is Ethan. He might have torn my heart to pieces, but he still holds me like I’m the most precious thing in his world. I don’t know what that means, and at the moment I don’t actually give a damn.
“Ethan. Please. ”
This time he knows what I’m asking. We both do.
His hand slides around to my lower back, presses so that my back bows and my ass pushes more firmly against his stomach. At the same time, his other hand reaches up and cups my breast.
I moan as he squeezes my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, whimper as he bends his knees and slowly slides his cock through the wet, aching lips of my sex.
“I need you. ” His breath is hot against my ear. “I tried to let you go. Tried to make you leave. But I can’t. Chloe, baby, I can’t. ”
I’m so confused. So turned on. And listening to him is only making it worse. “Ethan. I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. ” He kisses and licks his way along my shoulder to the nape of my neck before sliding his tongue slowly—oh so fucking slowly—down my spine.
He’s talking the whole time, murmuring sex words, love words, words that make no sense except that they make me hotter. Make me burn. I want to turn around, to wrap myself around him and beg him to fuck me right here, right now, but Ethan is completely in control of how this goes down and he obviously wants it this way. Needs it this way.
All I want, all I need, is to feel him inside me one more time. He’s barely touched me and already I’m way too close. But I don’t want to come. Not on my own. Not if this is the last time Ethan is ever going to touch me like this.
“Do it!” I tell him, my voice so hoarse it’s nearly unrecognizable.
His only response is to bite me again, his teeth nipping at my back hard enough to leave a bruise this time. I scream, a high-pitched, primal thing that comes from deep inside me. Ethan must like the sound because he does it again. And again. Then his hand slides down my stomach to my abdomen, my mons, and finally, finally, to my aching, desperate sex.
Usually he’s gentle with me, sweet and careful, but this time the need is obviously riding him as hard as it is me. I can feel it in the urgent hardness of his cock, in the fine shivers that rack his body, in the quick, brutal way he shoves three fingers inside me.