Page 87 of The Truth About Love

“Is this what you want, baby?” he snarls. “You want me to fuck you? You want to come all over my cock for me?”

My eyes widen. I don’t know who this man is. Don’t know if I love him or hate him, but I do know that I want everything he’s saying.

I need him inside me.

And I need it now.

I nod and that’s all he needs. In one perfect thrust, he’s buried inside me to the hilt.

“Fuck,” he groans, the harsh grip of his fingers on my thigh surely leaving bruises.

I’m hit with a searing pain as he fills the part of me that has been empty for so long. It burns, almost agonizing, but nothing could make me stop this right now.

He gives me no time to adjust to the stretch of him, just pounds into me relentlessly, his breath rough and brows furrowed together in concentration.

It’s not long before the pain melts away and turns into extraordinary pleasure. I bite my lip hard out of fear of making too much noise, drawing blood and tasting iron in my mouth. But it only heightens the experience.

My head falls back against the wall and bangs against it with every punishing thrust. The orgasm he denied me of before begins to crest again. Growing and swelling like a tidal wave, it drowns me. My entire body vibrates. Tremors wracking through me as excruciating pleasure pulses like a drum beat and momentarily blinds me.

I’m only faintly aware of Auden finding his own release, too far gone in the throws of my climax to realise that he hasn’t kissed me.

Breathing hard, he slips free of my body, finding my ruined pyjama shorts on the floor beside us and using it as a rag to clean between my legs.

Exhausted, I collapse to the floor and slump against the wall. Auden does the same. Despite what we’ve just done, we sit more than a metre apart, more than just physical distance between us. The anger from before is gone, but an uncomfortable tension still lingers.

“I broke up with her,” he says quietly after a long period of silence.

I let the confession linger like smoke for a little while as I work to calm my thundering heart and racing thoughts.

“Why?” I whisper.

“You know why,” he says it simply like it invites no further questions. “Besides, I didn’t treat her the way I should have done anyway.”

That doesn’t make sense to me. Because in the time that I was blessed to be his girlfriend, not once did he treat me like anything less than a queen. Even when I fucked up and hurt him, he’d still reassure me of his love like nothing I could do would ever change the way he felt about me. So, the idea of Auden not treating a woman the way she deserves doesn’t compute in my mind at all. It goes against everything I know to be true about him.

“You told her we were cousins.” It’s a statement, but he can read the question behind it.

He nods. “I knew she’d never let me stay here with you if I’d told her the truth.”

“Was babysitting me that important? Enough to risk your relationship?”

Please say yes.

The thought is a selfish one, I know that. But despite not regretting letting him go, I’ll always have that part of me that hopes he still cares about me.

He tuts. “Don’t call it babysitting, that’s not what this is.”

But it is. That’s why he’s here. It’s the reason he’s installed motion sensors around the apartment. It’s why he checks my arms and legs for fresh cuts every night. He never finds anything, but that’s only because he’s looking in the wrong place. Over the years, I’ve learned how to better hide my scars. If he started asking to see the soles of my feet, he’d confiscate the razor in my bathroom.

I ignore him and ask again, “Was it so important to risk your relationship, Auden?”

He tilts his head to one side and assesses me, thinking over whatever it is he wants to say. “Yeah, Summer-Raine, it was.”

“But why?”

I don’t get it. Why would he go against the morals that he’s always taken so much pride in and lie to the woman who loves him? I saw her. She’s every man’s dream woman. Why in hell would he risk losing her?

He looks at me then.Reallylooks at me. I can feel the heat of his stare from here. The warmth of him wraps around me like a quilt and I wish that I could lie in it forever.

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