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I hadn’t gotten much sleep. Hardly any, in fact. I’d drifted off several times, but each time I’d woken up with my husband inside of me, mindlessly fucking again. Like he couldn’t get enough.

But that had been his sole purpose. To get enough of me.

I knew this because at some point in the sin-filled night, he’d whispered it in my ear.

He’d been on my back again, finger soft on my clit, hard cock buried deep. “I’m going to have you as many times as it takes until I have my fill…” he groaned into my ear, “so I can leave you for good without another thought.”

It was an outright cruel thing to say, but somehow it hadn’t kept me from getting off harder than ever. I wished I knew what the hell was wrong with me. Why did my body operate so oppositely from my brain?

I assumed he’d accomplished his goal. I was raw with his efforts. On the other hand, perhaps not considering that that very thought made my loins pool with fresh need.

At the moment he was deeply asleep and plastered against my back. We were lying on our sides and I was using one of his impressive biceps as a pillow. His chin was nuzzled into the top of my head. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but it was hot. Hotter was his other arm thrown over my side, his big hand gripping one of my breasts like it was a handful of his favorite teddy bear.

He was an affectionate sleeper and an amorous, insatiable lover.

TMI.

Every encounter with my husband taught me things about him that I didn’t need to know. In fact, I needed not to know them. If I could, I’d erase them from my brain.

It would do me no good to become attached. He didn’t have it in him to return the sentiment. Not for me. He couldn’t have made that more clear.

I was contemplating how best to extricate myself from him when Asha took the dilemma out of my hands.

She opened my door and poked her head in, only knocking twice loudly on the door when she was already inside the room. It was her usual routine, but I’d hoped that would change after Calder’s harsh words to her the day before.

I just glared at her.

Calder’s reaction was much, much worse. He came out of a dead sleep and went straight into a rage.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he roared at her.

She retreated. He was up, had pulled his pants on, and was out of the room, following her in an angry whirlwind.

I’m not sure what he did or said to her after that. I dragged myself into the shower. I’d never needed one more. I still felt his touch everywhere. All over every inch of me. I wondered if it would scrub off.

I ran my hands over my body with a strange feeling of disconnect. My husband was right. My body didn’t belong to me anymore. It was his. He’d staked his claim.

Even my own touch only reminded me now of his touch.

As if that wasn’t enough, he’d marked me. Little love bites on my breasts, hickeys on my neck.

On the insides of my thighs were small, fresh bruises shaped like his thumbs.

And inside my chest, were small, fresh bruises from his careless ways.

I’d just dried off and had flung my towel over a hook on the wall when Calder walked in. He’d gotten up in such a rush that he still wasn’t wearing a shirt and hadn’t bothered to button up his jeans.

I froze mid-motion.

He froze too when he saw me, his eyes raking me up and down.

After the night we’d shared, how could he possibly want more?

But that was the funny thing I was learning about sex. The more you had, the more you wanted. The more you craved.

“I left some marks,” he noted. “Sorry,” he added, his mouth quirking up at one corner.

Sorry. Yeah, right. “Inside and out,” I agreed.