A better man would have prepared her more. A better man would have touched her and made her mad with desire.
I lined the head of my cock up with her entrance, shoving through the resistance I met when her pussy clamped down against the invasion. She groaned again, a low sound that sounded more animalistic than human as I pulled back and pushed further in on the second thrust.
“Wait,” she said, her face scrunching into a grimace as she reached behind her to try to reach my chest.
There was a moment of panic when she reached for me, quelled only when I caught her wrist in my grip and pinned it to her back. Seeing her arched like that, her face pressed to the cushion of the sofa with her ass in the air and my cock sliding into her impossibly tight pussy, unleashed something inside of me.
I drove in harder, my hips slamming into her ass so harshly that the smack echoed through her living room. She whimpered, taking it all as her free hand dug into the cushion beneath her. I pulled back, watching her body shift when I drove back into her, setting a fast, harsh pace.
It wasn’t conscious, just the brutal rutting of a man who needed to mark his mate as his. And there was no doubt in my mind with the way her pussy clenched down on me perfectly that she’d been made for me in a different world.
If our lives had been different, I’d have spent the rest of mine buried inside her and filling her with my cum.
I slapped her ass as I fucked her, turning her skin pink with the assault that made her moan and groan with every strike. I’d always imagined my butterfly would be an innocent flower, but there was no denying the way her pussy reacted to my touch.
That she loved the brutality in the way I fucked her.
“Fuck, Butterfly. Quanto sei stretta,” I groaned as her pussy fluttered. She came on my cock, her desperate moans driving me along with her until my groan echoed through the room and I flooded her with my release.
I dropped my forehead to her spine, feeling the fabric clinging to her skin as I pulled my cock free from the vise of her body while she whimpered. My cum dripped down her thighs, glistening over her skin in a way I’d never seen before.
It wasn’t until she pushed herself to her feet and turned slowly with a pained grimace on her face that I realized what I’d done.
I stepped back, running hands through my hair as I looked at her disheveled body. At the damage I’d caused to the angel of Chicago. She leaned against the arm of the couch, folding over herself and wrapping an arm around her stomach protectively while she gave me a tiny smile.
“I hurt you,” I said, tucking myself back into my pants.
Fuck.
“I’m okay,” she said, holding my stare and broadening her smile to try to reassure me. I flashed back to the moment she’d told me to wait, to the moment I’d done whatever the hell I’d wanted despite the plea on her lips.
I’d fucked her like an animal, with no regard for making her ready to take me.
Like a brute.
“Scar, honey. I promise I’m okay,” she said, pushing forward and stepping toward me. I backed away instinctively, feeling like the caged animal I was. There was nothing she could say that would make this okay.
Nothing could change the fact that I’d defiled her.
Ruined her.
“This was a mistake,” I said. With my hands raised, I saw the ruined flesh of my skin in the same view as her perfect body. With my cum on her thighs and her lips smeared from the way I’d practically eaten at her mouth like a starving man.
“I wonder if there will ever come a day when you don’t break my heart. You may not have one, but I promise you, I do,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as tears stung her eyes. “You didn’t hurt me beyond what happens with rough sex, but if you leave again after fucking me like that? Then you’ve just made me into your whore.”
“I’m pretty sure you did that all on your own,” I growled, watching as the wounding words hit her straight in the chest. I wanted to take them back immediately, already regretting the fact that I’d intentionally hurt her, but a little pain now was far better than more down the line.
She flinched, her shoulders caving in as her bottom lip trembled for a few seconds before she composed herself and stood taller.
The purpose achieved, I turned my back on her to walk to the door. “Scar?” her sweet voice said, the steel behind it that she used when she was dominating her world. “If you walk out that door right now, don’t even think about coming back. Fool me once—twice,” she added with a self-deprecating smile. “But there won’t be a third strike. I hope you find everything you’re looking for, but it clearly isn’t me.”
She watched me walk out the front door, escaping the odd intimacy that I hadn’t deserved.
Even after I’d hurt her, Irina Ryan was more concerned with wishing me well than with dealing with the wound I’d purposely dealt so she would let me escape into the night.
I fled back to where I belonged in my world, without the shining light of a green butterfly to make me think, for even a moment, I could have something more.
That I could have a heart where one didn’t beat.
18
IRINA
I downed the wine from my glass, tipping my head back and letting the liquid pour down my throat in a way that felt like a crime. I’d spent more than I cared to admit on the bottle, even knowing that Grant would bring his own wine when he arrived for our yearly tradition.
The memory of the loss of my mother seemed even closer in the wake of Scar’s stinging rejection, and the answers I so desperately wanted felt like they hovered just out of my grasp. People didn’t just disappear into thin air, and while part of me wanted to question why I even cared, the other part of me still clung to the hope that maybe she would have returned to me someday, if something hadn’t gotten in the way. Even as unlikely as that was, given there was evidence of her being within the city for months after she’d walked out of the Ryan Estate.
The knock at the door made me swallow the last drops of wine in a gulp, the liquid courage forcing me to set my wine glass on the counter and turn for the door. Usually our yearly tradition found me wrapped in my snuggliest pajamas with a worn robe wrapped around myself and my hair tossed into a messy bun.
But I was through with men who didn’t want me. I was done holding out for a man who gave me butterflies in my stomach. I’d found him, and he wasn’t the man who could offer me safety and security.
He wasn’t the man who would love me and stand by me for the rest of my life.
That man had been there since I was a girl, waiting for any sign from me that I might want the same thing. I’d meant it when I told Scar that Grant would love me.
Of that, I had no doubt. He knew all the worst pieces of me, the jagged little edges that I’d sharpened into weapons to use when my insecurities became too much.
I’d tried to hurt him so many times, but he always saw right through my bullshit.
Shoving away thoughts of how Scar had bent me over the arm of my sofa and fucked me the night before, I answered the door to find Grant’s smiling face on the other side. What was usually his trademark grin was softer in the dim lighting, the sympathy in it making my heart clench.
He was the smart choice. The one that wouldn’t lead to complete and total heartbreak. I forced myself to smile through my nerves, through the doubt that plagued me.