Page 68 of The Vow

And after just a few minutes alone with him—injured and hardly touching me—he’d still worked his way underneath my defenses. And I’d gone and prostrated my vulnerability to him by coming all over his cock.

“I’m not your wife, Damon. Not really,” I choked out, scrambling to stop this madness before it broke anything else.

His lust-laden pupils blew out with fury, his hands turning into brackets of steel on my waist.

“You’vealwaysbeen my wife.”

Like a drug, my traitorous body responded to his heady promises on a purely chemical level.

“Fifteen years, and I haven’t used your name. I haven’t worn your ring, and you haven’t kept my vows.”

As I leaned back, anger shattered his invincible veneer of calm. His beauty was exquisite in every scenario, but when coupled with rage, it was dynamite.

Suddenly his hand was on the lapel of the jacket I wore, hauling my face right up to his, the heat of his breath scorching my lips.

“You’re wrong.” Damon’s voice was lethally low.Thiswas the Remington the world was afraid of. The vicious one underneath the suave facade. The one who killed without qualm and ruined those who gave him the barest slight. “It’s only been you, Robber. Ask me to prove it.”

Shock startled my breath.Prove it?Prove what? His celibacy? His love?What kind of man would claim to have proof of those things? And what kind of person would believe him?

A fool, that was who. The kind of fool who’d found herself on top of her hated husband, in his bed, and grinding on his cock to oblivion. A fool who’d forgotten about his lies, his betrayal, and every rational reason to keep her distance because she still so desperately longed for this man and every single one of his promises.

I wouldn’t be a fool for him again.

“Go to hell,” I hissed and launched myself back, slipping from his hold and off the bed.

His arm shot out as he lunged to stop me, but his injuries handicapped him. Breathing heavily, Damon rested against the headboard, breathing raggedly, and dragged the ice to his stomach.

“I need you to trust me, Robber,” he said, his voice pained. “Please.”

His words tugged at something inside my chest. A piece of shrapnel lodged in my heart from the first time he broke it. A piece of the past was working its way to the surface no matter how hard I tried to keep it buried.

My throat worked valiantly to swallow, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. I couldn’t submerge the sharp slice of bitterness—of brokenness any longer. It clawed up my chest, scraped along my throat, and embedded itself into my tongue.

A bullet in the chamber.

Cocked.

Aimed.

“Says the husband who left me for another woman.” The accusation fired from my lips. An assassination of the apathy I feigned about our past.

“Robyn—”

I walked out of the room before I could hear anything more—before his sweet tongue made me want to hear anything more. It was because of Damon that my body burned with relief as equally as my eyes burned with regret. Lust and loathing etched into the two sides of the same fateful coin.

My breath expelled just as I shut the door. Almost as instantly, a loud crash echoed from in the room like something slamming into glass.

I almost went back inside until I realized what it was—the only thing it could be.The ice he’d thrown against the window.

It would dry.And so would his pants.

In the morning, there would be no trace of what happened between us tonight. Not the way he’d broken me. Not the way I’d broken him.

And definitely not of the shreds of hope still clinging relentlessly to the shards of my broken heart.

Chapter Eighteen

Robyn

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