I flinch when his cock slips out, and I turn onto my side, clutching my belly and bending my knees, feeling like a pathetic mess—a woman with no fucking pride. If I had any, I wouldn’t have given in so easily to the man who changed the course of my life without blinking.
I’m a wreck because of him, and there is no way I can fix myself. Nowhere I can run to get away from him and the constant reminder of how fucking weak I am, unable to stop myself from wanting him, yet unable to forgive him.
My mind is broken, and my body no longer feels like it’s mine. I have two babies growing inside me, and a man who’s staked his claim. I lost…me.
“Leandra?” Alexius places his hand on my thigh, and I swear to God it runs flames across my skin.
I can’t take it anymore. I can’t handle the pain.
I jerk up and slap his hand away. “Don’t touch me.” Tears lap into my mouth. “Don’t you fucking touch me.” I hit his arm this time. And then his shoulder.
I hit him again. And again. Faster. Harder. His chest. His stomach. His face. I can’t stop. I keep hitting him, wanting him to hurt, too, because I’m hurting, and it’s not fair for him to be in control while I continue to break.
It’s not fair.
My hands turn into fists, and I want to break him. I want to break him the way he broke me. “I hate you!” I scream. “I fucking hate you, you motherfucker!” I hit him with everything I’ve got, aiming for his face, his chest, every part of him I can get to.
And he lets me.
He doesn’t stop me.
He lets me hit him over and over again, simply pulling his face away every time I aim for his jaw.
“I hate you! I hate you! You son of a bitch!” My mind is caught in a fit of hysteria. I don’t think about anything other than hurting him or feel anything other than my own pain. “You don’t deserve to be a husband. You don’t deserve to be a father,” I scream, and finally, he grabs my wrists and jerks me close, squeezing my hands between his chest and mine.
“You think you’re the only one hurting? You think you know what real torture is?” He brings his face so close to mine, the heat of his breath warms the tears on my cheeks. “Real torture is knowing what I did, I did out of fear of losing you because I love you, yet I’m being punished for it.”
“What you did was fucked up.”
“That’s what love is, isn’t it? That’s what it does. It spawns fear, the kind of fear that debilitates the strongest of men.” He yanks me even closer, his expression nothing but hard lines and stone. “It makes us do stupid shit because the possibility of being hated is much easier to live with than the idea of not being loved.”
“There is nothing you can say that can make this right.”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I wanted to hurt you?”
“It doesn’t matter whether you wanted to or not. What matters is you did hurt me.”
“And I hate the fact that I did.”
“Yet, you refuse to apologize.”
“I can’t apologize for doing something I don’t regret.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter and try to jerk free, so I can slide off the table, but he steps in between my legs, pushing himself against me.
“That’s the worst part of all this, Leandra. The fact that I hurt you, but I don’t regret doing what I did. Maybe if you saw regret in my eyes every time you looked at me, you’d find it in your heart to forgive me. But I don’t regret it. I don’t regret wanting to make sure I don’t lose you. Don’t you get that?” He narrows his eyes, tilting his head to the side. “I would much rather have you here hating me than have you out there feeling nothing for me.”
“Well, then,” I jerk my hands free from his grip, “mission accomplished.”
Hurt flashes in his eyes, and it’s the first damn sign of him being human after all. But I can’t acknowledge his pain while I struggle to keep from drowning in mine.
I brush past him and grab my pants, slipping them on without daring to look in his direction. I stuff my panties in my pocket before looking around, not recognizing the furniture. “Whose office is this?”
Alexius rounds the desk and picks up the broken lamp from the floor. “My father’s.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I gather the courage to look at him, catching a glimpse of his grief for a moment, but decide to leave before he manages to reel me in again.
I reach the door when he says, “Stay away from him.”