Page 86 of The Truth About Love

“Take some goddamn responsibility, Auden. I didn’t ask for you to still be thinking about me after all this time. You could have gotten over me, you just didn’t. But I did, I got over you, it wasn’t that fucking hard.”

My rage and jealousy make the lie all too easy. It’s just that in this moment, no matter how wrong it might be, I want my words to hurt him as much as his are hurting me.

He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and shakes his head, laughing darkly. “I’m the only one who feels this, am I? Can you seriously look at me right now and tell me that it’s not my face you picture every time another man makes love to you? That it’s not my fingers you feel touch your soft skin, not my voice you hear whispering words into your ear, not my kiss you taste on your lips?”

He takes a deep breath, his chest heaving.

I shake my head, my lips pursed and nostrils flaring with the effort of not launching myself at him in furious lust.

He doesn’t know how wrong he is.

“You can’t, can you? Because you know it’s true. You never did get over me. Who’s the liar now, huh?”

“No.” I stare straight into his pitch-black eyes. “No, it’s not true.”

“Stop lying,” he growls through gritted teeth.

“I’m not.” I blow out a long breath as I steel myself for my next words. “I’m not lying, because there were no other men, Auden. There has never been another man. My body has known no other touch, no other kiss but yours.”

He blinks.

I can feel his chest rising and falling against mine. Heartbeat against heartbeat.

The only sound comes from our shallow breaths as we fight for air like we’re drowning.

And then suddenly, I’m thrust into his arms. My legs close automatically around his waist, muscle memory taking over as my ankles lock behind his back.

I smell the pinewood and old, worn books that have always made my head spin, the scent of him filling my lungs and threatening to choke me. It’s a sweet kind of torture.

He buries his face in my neck, nipping and sucking every inch of exposed skin.

There’s nothing gentle about the way he’s handling me. There’s no tenderness to his touch, no soft kisses or whispered words of affection.

It’s his fury that’s fuelling this fire and my own that ignites it like gasoline.

I claw at the lapels of his jacket as I work to get the material over his broad shoulders. I’m not careful. I don’t care if I tear it. I just need it gone so I can rid us both of all the layers standing between us.

My breath hitches as I feel Auden’s fingers creep into the opening of my pyjama shorts, a featherlight touch whispering up my thigh to toy with the lace trim of my panties.

“Fuck, these legs.”

When he mercilessly thrusts two fingers into me, I scream.

“You better be quiet if you don’t want to wake your sister,” he growls into my ear, reminding me of Winter and her sons fast asleep in Auden’s bedroom down the hall.

He hooks his fingers, hitting that magic spot deep within me that makes my toes curl and fingernails dig crescent moons into his neck. I don’t care if it hurts him. In fact, I hope it does.

He plays me like a master musician. I have no choice but to surrender myself to the sensations he’s forcing upon me, the waves upon waves of pleasure that threaten to overwhelm me.

Auden has always known how to touch me. But whereas before, he always handled me with a kind of unpractised, boyish charm, whatever he’s doing to me now is the definite ministrations of a man.

But he doesn’t let me come.

I snarl as he pulls his fingers out of me and sucks them straight into his mouth.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he smirks, pulling open his belt and tugging down his dress pants and boxer shorts so that his cock stands tall and proud against his lower abs, “it’s not over yet.”

He tears my satin shorts straight from my body and pulls my panties to one side, the thick head of his cock sliding against my opening. Rubbing, teasing, but not entering.

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