Scarlett had already proved herself by the time that she could dance—the whole world knew what she could do. I had to know my place in the world, if only for myself.
Other reasons had factored in at the time too.
Her career, for one. With me around, she wouldn’t have lasted long, and sooner or later, she would understand that—perhaps come to appreciate it.
Some of it also had to do with Luca and his Wildflower. I’d seen what a love like that could do, and I didn’t want the same fate for Scarlett.
Was I a fool? Without a fucking doubt. There wasn’t much I could do about it then, though, except to cling to the hope that one day fate would reveal herself, and if not prove that I was right, give me something in return for being selfless enough to let her go. Until it was time to reclaim mine.
Give me something to give to her for what I’d done to her.
It wasn’t the time to rehash the past though.
The distance between us seemed to stretch me beyond my means.
I took one step forward.
Instinctively, she put her hands up. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t touch me.”
The general rule is that you never touch a woman if she tells you not to. Not my wife. If it was any other man, she'd mean it. Not me. I knew her well enough to know that herdon’tmeantdo.
She wanted me to fight for her, to bleed for her thorns, as she had bled for me. To come to her, my own life’s blood staining my hands crimson.
I’d be damned if I didn’t take her thorns and crush them. I'd bleed myself dry to make up for those years that had cost us both.
She’d fight me, I knew, and as expected, did.
The anger she took out on my body was nothing compared to the self-loathing she could never feel inside of me. It didn’t belong to her. This wasn’t something we could share, or that I allowed her to feel. It reminded me of what I’d done, and more than she ever could, I punished myself.
It was a feeling of carrying something vital in my hands as I walked over a fathomless height, palms slick, tingling, a complete sense of helplessness as what I couldn’t live without might slip through my fingers.
That was what I felt whenever the thoughts came to mind—What if she would have. What if I wouldn’t have. What if he would have…
“Abbastanza!” I said, my voice hard. “Do you hear me? Enough!”
“Never!” she said. Yanking my hair, pulling my mouth to hers, she bit my lip hard enough to make me bleed.
A curse snapped from my mouth, and we collided with the wall, a figurine falling over from the dresser with our impact, my busted mouth capturing hers.
“You want me show you what it means to miss? How it feels to drown in fucking insanity? I’d show you. I’d always show you. You’d feel the wounds that still haven’t healed inside of me.”
Her mouth was stained with my blood, and I hoped she could taste it—the tang of iron—and hear it—how it called to her marrow from an echo in my heart.
“Effing liar!”
Before she could rake me over, I turned her, bending her over the bed. Running my hand up her leg, I felt her muscles tremble. If the entrance to what lay beneath her dress wouldn’t have presented itself to me in the form of buttons along the underside of the leotard, I would have ripped it to shreds like a feral animal, with my teeth.
Wet, she was so fucking wet, and she smelled… I hissed out a breath, one hand on her, the other getting my pants down.
The shocking wet heat of her made me dizzy.
She let out a cry that expressed both relief and more hunger. Her head came down, almost lolling, but I refused to allow her to hide from me.
Taking her hair, I pulled her head back, exposing the expanse of her jaw, those high cheek bones that created shadows along her cheeks, and her throat, so vulnerable.
I was grunting with effort, and she was making noises that spurred me on, from soft sighs to outright cries.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
