Page 104 of This Wild Heart

I didn’t want to know if this was pretend. I didn’t want to know if that testosterone-fueled display wasn’t real. I wanted his jealousy. Wanted his possessive hands everywhere on my body. There wasn’t a whisper of caution anywhere, maybe because I couldn’t hear anything over my raw, blinding need for him.

We stood there staring, my chest heaving as I tried desperately to pull air into my lungs. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to breathe again until this man kissed me.

I didn’t know who moved first, but in the next heartbeat, Parker’s mouth was on mine.

Chapter 28

Parker

I missed this.

I missed the feel of her under my hands, and the desperate urge for more had me kissing her deeper, angling my head so I could lick into her mouth and swallow her sounds, breathe them into my lungs where they’d hit my bloodstream like a shot.

A furious heartbeat thundered in my ears because I couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe she’d come to me.

The sound of his voice saying her name lit a violent, territorial explosion deep under my ribs.

He didn’t deserve to say her name.

Didn’t deserve a second of her time. And not because of anything between Anya and me, but because he had his chance, and he fucking blew it. You were given the trust of a woman like her once, and if you lost it, there was no going back.

It should have torn into the lust ripping through my system, but I was too far gone. I wanted her too badly. Wanted her more than I should have.

Anya’s body writhed against me as I backed us up against her bed, one hand fisted in her hair and the other gripping her tight around her waist. The pathetic excuse for shorts hardly covered her ass, and I moved my hand from her waist underneath the threadbare cotton. Her skin was warm and soft and strong, and it had been forever since I’d tasted her.

That was what it felt like. Weeks and months and years. Long enough that a reckless craving anchored itself deep inside me.

Maybe I didn’t deserve a second of her time either because it was so hard for me to untangle what I wanted, and what I needed, and what made sense for both of us, but all of that was knocked aside with a brutal swipe of my hand.

It wasn’t about taking something that she was offering. It was giving it right fucking back to her.

Right now, one thing was true: Anya sought me out for something. For comfort, to feel needed and wanted when everything in her head was upside down.

In this bed, with just the two of us and no one watching, I could give her everything.

Give her the thing he couldn’t.

Even a single moment of one single day when this woman felt like less was too much, a fucking tragedy that I couldn’t stomach. Bracing a hand on the bed, I pushed Anya backward until she was spread underneath me on the mattress. My hands shook as I curled them around her thighs, my fingers denting the skin there. She inhaled shakily, arching her back slightly into my touch.

“You know what I want?” I asked, sliding my hands around until her backside was firmly in my grasp. I yanked her forward, her open legs around my midsection. Anya gasped, her hands clutching my forearm, nails digging into my skin. “I wish I could answer that phone again and let him hear.”

Her pupils were blown wide, her cheeks flushed, and her lips shiny from where she’d just licked them.

“Imagine that,” I whispered, prying her thighs open and prowling closer until my mouth hovered over hers. “Imagine if he could hear what I’m about to do to you. Do you like the idea of that, baby?”

Anya’s breaths were choppy and short, and there was only the slightest hesitation before she nodded. “Show me what you’d do if he could,” she said, a daring tilt to her chin that made me fucking crazy.

I growled, surging forward to steal a fierce kiss, licking into her mouth, my tongue over hers in a rough drag that had her whimpering.

My hand tugged at the waistband of her shorts, and she scrambled to help.

“Leo?” she asked, panting against my mouth.

“Asleep in my room.”

Anya tossed her head back, and I licked at the line of her neck. “Oh, please.”

With rough hands, I leaned back to tug her shorts off, ripping them off her legs with my blood pumping furiously in my ears. All she was wearing underneath was ivory lace, cut high on her legs, and that came off next.

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