“Am I bleeding?”
“Yes,” I say inspecting the swelling of his top lip, and the blood on his goatee. “Actually, it’s your chin. And maybe above your lips, your actual lip isn’t bleeding, but—”
“Then fuck it,” he says, and he’s already kissing me again, and when this man kisses me, it’s impossible to resist. He does it right. He kisses me like the world’s about to end and this is the last kiss we’ll ever share. And maybe it is. Maybe all of this doesn’t just end, maybe it ends us. Maybe he’s going to leave. Maybe he already knows. It’s not like he came back on his own.
It’s the thought I didn’t mean to have, the one that rips me out of the fantasy moment and plants me in reality.
I press on his chest, tearing my mouth from his. “You feel like the same man that left me.”
“I’m not the same man.”
I don’t ask if that’s good or bad. He’s made his opinion of himself quite obvious. “You judge yourself as evil and me a fool for seeing a hero.”
A storm settles heavy in his stare. “I told you,” he turns me and pushes me to the counter, his powerful body pressed to mine. “Don’t turn me into a hero.”
“If you think you’re a monster, you have an excuse to act like one. Or is it to leave?” I don’t wait for a reply. “You don’t get that pass with me, Rick.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
He turns me and my hands catch on the counter, his breath hot at my neck. “I should punish you for being so foolish.” He leans in close. “But you aren’t foolish, are you? You know me better than anyone. You know I have a dark side. You always knew.”
“Then why are we pretending I don’t?”
“I’m not, but you still are and that doesn’t work for us anymore, baby.” His voice is a rough timbre that vibrates hot on my neck.
He pulls my pants down, his powerful hands shifting me, moving me, and in seconds it seems, I’m naked, and my hands are back on the counter, holding my weight. “I need to know you aren’t going to wake up next to a monster and run away.”
“You say you don’t run. I don’t run.”
“I need you to know who I am. You won’t even admit who I am.”
The thick pulse of his erection is at my hip and my thighs are slick with arousal. “I know who you are. You forget that I like it when you’re bad.”
“I’m fucking serious, Candace.”
“Show me then. Show me how bad you are.”
His hand settles on my backside, fingers flexing in my hips, a promise of what is to come next in that touch. “That’s not a challenge you want answered, baby. I’ll win. You will lose.”
“I guess I’ll just have to take that chance and so will you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Candace
He smacks my backside just hard enough for me to feel a sting.
I arch into the touch, my nipples puckering, my sex clenching, but my mind is clear. This is my chance to prove my point, to prove that he isn’t the monster he tries to make himself. “Is your hand on my backside supposed to promise my punishment?”
He curses under his breath and one of his big, powerful arms is suddenly around my waist, the other across my chest and shoulders, his lips at my ear. “I would never spank you out of anger. You know that, right?”
“Let’s find out,” I challenge because the man he claims to be would hurt me. The man he is, will not. “Do it. Really do it. Spank me.”
He turns me to face him again, his hand sliding over my hair, tilting my gaze to his. “What are you trying to do to me, Candace?” he demands.
He doesn’t need to ask that question. He knows I’m proving a point, forcing him to expose himself as the man I know, not the monster of his creation. “It’s more what you’re going to do to me, isn’t it?” I challenge. “Are you going to spank me properly or not?”
***
Savage
I wrap strands of her silky mahogany hair around my fingers, giving it a rough tug. And I do so not just because she’s daring me to push her limits, not just because she’s trying to prove a point. I do it because I know she likes it. I do it because every time I think about that douche Honest Gabe knowing even a little of what she likes, I get angry. “What are you trying to do to me, Candace?” I repeat.
“Trying to scare me away by being rough?” she challenges. “That doesn’t work with me. Because you’re the one who made me like it rough.”
Which says too much about why I walked away from her. “You think that’s a good thing?” I demand, my voice low, rough like she says she likes me.