My heart breaking, my head spinning, my traitorous body pulsed with need. My core was wet from the simple truth of his hands on me, and I was in over my head.
I always had been with him.
Which made me think that maybe a part of me had signed that contract all those years ago in self-sabotage. Maybe a part of me wanted him angry with me. Maybe I’d unconsciously wanted an out from his intensity.
Mentally shaking the errant thoughts away, I forced myself not to turn and look at him.
He’d given me a choice, and I wanted to make it for me. Not for what I would see in his eyes that contradicted his words, not for him, not for what I thought he wanted me to do.
I wanted to make the decision just for me, and that meant there was only one choice.
I knew what I wanted. “Take me.”
The air conditioner hummed, the distant sound of the angry waves twenty stories below pounded at the shore, and my own heartbeat echoed in my ears as my pulse raced. But he didn’t make a sound.
For three breathless heartbeats, he was so deathly still behind me that nerves rushed across my skin and chilled the heat between my legs.
Then the air shifted, and I heard it.
A sound so distinctive, it made my thighs press together.
He undid his belt and lowered his zipper. Not slow, not fast, but with an execution that said more than words ever could.
A split second later, his hand was on my lower back and he was pushing. Bending me over the bed, he kicked my feet apart with his polished boot, and I had a wayward thought, wondering if I could see myself in the shine.
A shiver ran up my spine as my breasts landed on the downy-soft, white comforter. Before I could think what to do with my hands, he’d grabbed one wrist, then the other, and brought them to my back.
I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was terrified.
In all of my wildest dreams, this was never the position I ever would’ve dreamed of when I thought about how he would take me for the first time. My young heart had foolishly envisioned candles and kisses and gentle caresses.
As he pinned my hands behind me with my ass in the air, I realized my naivety had been laughable.
Holding my wrists in one hand, he dragged his other hand over my ass. “Tell me, Songbird.” He fingered the edge of my panties. Then in one swift yank, he pulled them halfway down my thighs and cupped my bare pussy. “Who’s touched this cunt?”
Sucking in a shocked breath, my entire body jerked. My heart in my throat, my voice trapped, I couldn’t verbally reply. Groaning as his finger stroked through my heat-slicked core, my unfaithful body betrayed my heart and exploded with desire.
Needy, I pushed into him.
It was so fast and sharp, the slap echoed through the bedroom before the impact hit my brain and traveled to my nerve endings.
“Did I tell you to move?” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for submission.
My ass bloomed with stinging heat, and I panted. “No.” Oh God.
Stroking over his offending assault, he rubbed my cheek. “Answer my question, Songbird.” Grabbing my core, he pressed his thumb down through my slick folds.
Oh God.
I couldn’t stop it.
My hips swayed to a song they’d never heard, and tight pain clenched deep inside me. “Please.” I didn’t know what I was asking for. I’d never felt anything like this, but I needed more, and I needed it that second.
“Tell me,” he demanded.
I wanted to tell him no one. I wanted to tell him I belonged only to him. I wanted to tell him I’d waited. But I couldn’t. He stroked again, and my mind fractured. “More, please.”
The slap hit my ass fast and viciously hard.
Tears sprung and my body jumped, but a flood of wetness surged between my legs. “Oh God.” What was happening to me?
“Answer, Songbird.” The demand no sooner left his mouth and his fingers my sex, then brutal, rapid-fire slaps hit my empty, pulsing core and each cheek of my ass.
Crying out in pleasure-laced pain, I had no room for lies. “Only one person,” I admitted, praying for him not to hate me, but a twisted, sick part of me was desperate for him to punish me more.
“Who?” he barked, repeating his slaps.
Flinching at his assault, dripping with desire, breathless from his fierce demand, the name left my lips before my mind could censor it. “Leo.”
The cold metal of his necklace brushed against my shoulder blades a second before his chest covered my back. Trapping my hands between our bodies, letting go of my wrists to grasp my hair, he gripped a fistful and yanked it out of the way. My head tilted, and his mouth landed on my exposed nape.
Biting then lapping my heated skin, he mercifully stroked his rough fingers through my soaked sex as he lowered his voice. “Did you give permission to him, Songbird?”
Instant and uncontrollable, a vivid memory lashed my conscience. I didn’t realize I’d made a sound until his hand stilled against my weeping core.
The tight pressure of his grip on my hair loosened, and he gently but firmly cupped me. Then his voice dropped to an achingly tender whisper. “Did Amherst force himself on you, Sanaa?”
I burst into tears.
Horrific shame eclipsed every single point where his body touched mine, and I tried to push him off.
But he didn’t budge.
My Ronan, the man who’d promised to fuck me but not keep me, the boy who’d said he was going to marry me, the Marine who carried a gun to protect me—he didn’t let me go.
He didn’t comfort me.
He didn’t use words to console.
He didn’t make angry threats of retribution.
He calmly, dominantly pushed the back of my thigh, lifting my knee onto the bed. My thong fell to my ankles, and he spread my leg wider.
Then he dragged the head of his engorged length through my heat, and without pause or mercy, he drove into my body.
Tight.
So fucking tight, my eyes rolled back and I forgot who the hell I was.
But I couldn’t forget her tears.
Gutted and enraged, I made a vow. Amherst was going to pay. He was going to fucking pay hard.
Right after I erased every memory of him touching her.
Deep inside the only woman I’d ever given pieces of myself to, I stilled even though I knew giving her a moment to adjust was a joke. She was virgin tight, and I was going to hurt her more than the heated tint on her ass from my hand. Stretching her, using her, she was going to feel me later, and the bastard in me fed off it. He fucking relished in it.
Grabbing her hips, I pulled back and thrust deep.
Her tears of the past mixed with my invasion, and she cried out.
The tortured sound triggered the beast in me.
Pulling back, slamming into her harder, my mind bent, and ten years came to fruition.
One moment I was finally taking my siren into my arms, the next I was pounding out a decade of anger and thrusting to erase every goddamn memory she ever had of sex.
Wrapping an arm around her, grabbing her breast, holding her to me, I drove in and out of her tight cunt to the sound of her cries. My thumb on her clit, every thrust making her wetter, I demanded more.
“Cry for me, Songbird.” I worked her hard nipple. “Show me how my hands on you make you sing. How I make your body come alive.”
Strained and nothing like her voice on stage, her guttural cry filled the room.