Page 88 of Every Last Breath

He grunted against her neck, his body growing taut as he followed.

The sensation of him coming inside her without protection, the deeply intimate and satisfying nature of it, tempted her to forget her broken heart and how terrified she was to risk it again.

Time stood still in that moment.

Her short breaths grew shallow. The sweaty weight of his body pinned her to the carpet. He brushed his lips over her mouth and kissed her. A tender peck, as if testing for something. He licked his lips and kissed her again, softness stroking her, triggering a wash of agonizing memories.

She twisted her face away, not wanting this…blistering sweetness. Tenderness would have her losing her way, losing her common sense, or worse, her heart.

“Maddox.” A silken whisper. “Please.”

She shoved his chest. He pulled out of her, collapsing in a heap on the floor, his breath in tatters. His arms curled around her, drawing her back against his chest in a spooning position, their bodies stuck like magnets.

Loving him hurt, but the pain was a skinned knee compared to the agony of losing him.

This Band-Aid needed to be ripped off and thrown away. She couldn’t bear to drag it out and tried to pull up, but he wouldn’t let her go and kept his arm locked around her waist.

In another life, things would’ve been different, but this was their reality: ugly and mangled and ruined.

She shoved his leg and smacked the granite of his arms. Still, he held on.

“Let me go, or so help me—”

“What’ll you do?”

She threw an elbow into his side. Not hard, but the force knocked the breath from him and the sound of his groan made her reel in surprise.

His grip loosened, and she sat up.

“I’m sorry.” She brought her knees to her chest, covering herself. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it kind of tickled,” he said in a strained voice.

Naked beside him in the spent aftermath, she was too exposed, too vulnerable. She hurried to the bathroom, raced through the fastest shower of her life, and put on the thickest pair of sweats she owned.

She stared at herself in the dresser mirror, wanting to crawl out the window instead of facing him. Part of her wanted him to stay and the other part needed him gone. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t want to get raked over the coals again either, as collateral damage in his twisted efforts to find closure.

Meat. She needed to treat him like meat to hold it together.

She strolled into the living room and took a firm stance. He sat on the sofa with the towel wrapped around his waist, met her gaze, and gave her a warm, devastating smile.

Her willpower faltered, but it didn’t break. “I want you to leave.”

He recoiled as if she’d slapped him, knocking the smile from his face. “Not like this. Let’s sit and eat. We don’t have to talk.” He raked a hand through his hair, looking off balance. “Let me hold you. We need to be close right now. To let ourselves feel this, without being afraid of it.”

He wanted her to soften in his hands, to be okay with whatever he decided when it was convenient for him. Her heart wasn’t a yo-yo he could throw away and reel in however he pleased. She had a backbone forged in fire, and there’d be ice-skating in hell before she became any man’s plaything.

“I don’t do chitchat and dinner with meat.” The words prickled her tongue. She didn’t mean it and saying it pained her, but this was about self-preservation. “It was a great fuck. Thanks.”

Hair-trigger reflexes brought him to his feet. The fierce expression on his face scared the shit out of her, leaving her a new kind of breathless.

Chapter 24

Vienna, Virginia

11:37 p.m. EDT

Did she call him meat? Like he was nothing more than sex to her?