Page 57 of Tell Me You Love Me

I latch on to his lip, panting when he tears my thighs apart. He stretches me the way he always enjoyed, spreading my ass cheeks and playing with that opening, too.

“Still my girl, aren’t you, Lana?” He slips a single digit into my ass.

“Oh, God!” I explode, heaving in search of fresh air and clinging to his powerful form. I close my eyes, though the action is hardly necessary. It’s practically pitch black out here. “Tommy.”

“Haven’t heard you say my name like that in so long.” He bites my neck and slams me backward, ensuring I’ll have a bruise by tomorrow. But then he pulls out again, robbing me of completion and earning my cry of despair. He sets me on my feet and steadies me when my knees tremble. Then he grabs the back of my neck and turns me, shoving me forward and crushing my chest against the rough brick exterior.

“Heels were a good choice.” He whips my dress up, exposing my panties, but only long enough to tear them clean off my body and make them disappear in one of his pockets. Then he fills me again, dragging me back with a hand around my throat that cuts off my air. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” He rocks his hips with infuriatingly measured strokes. In. Out. Slowing his pace without a single care for how I desperately need more. Faster. Harder.

“I planned to have you again.” He loosens his grip on my throat, allowing me to suck a long line of oxygen into my lungs. “Married or not. I wouldn’t have even cared if he was in the next fuckin’ room. I was gonna have you again.”

“Tommy—”

He squeezes again, destroying my ability to breathe and vibrating from the power he possesses. The demand he controls. The understanding that Iwon’tstop him from playing with me. It’s always been like this for us.

“I didn’t know our last time was our last time,” he snarls. “So I waited. And planned. I didn’t know when, or where, and fuck, I didn’t know how I’d make it happen. The fear you’d say no left me paralyzed with indecision for so fucking long. But I knew we weren’t done.” He leans back and spits, the warm splash of saliva hitting my lower back. Then he slides his fingers through the moisture and draws it down to my asshole. “I was spiraling out of control, wanting and waiting. Needing, but not getting. I was readying to slide into my truck and drive all the way to you, because ten years is a long fucking time to be underwater. But then you came back. Broke my heart and mended it in one.”

Tommy—”

“Lie to me, Alana.” He slips his thumb into my ass and drags my face around, biting my bottom lip and sucking my soul right up through my throat. “Lie and say you love me still.”

Devastating tears make his eyes glitter. But he doesn’t let them fall.

He would never.

“I’m begging you.” He quickens his hips. Faster. Frantic. “You have the power to make me live or die. Youarelove. So for tonight, for right now, lie. Let me live.”

“I love you.” The air stops in my lungs, and my heart aches, weeping for what was lost. But my body still reacts to what he can do to me. I explode around his cock, fluttering electricity pulsing in my veins that only grows more powerful when he erupts, too.

He crushes me under his powerful touch, bruising my flesh and branding me on the inside. And when that’s not enough, he pulls back and slams forward again, claiming my body with the brutality of a man deranged.

“Say it again. Lie again.”

“I love you.”

ROUND EIGHTEEN

ALANA

Whoever said nothing bad ever happened when tequila was involved is a liar. A thief. A regular scoundrel intent on making a woman’s stomach ache and her eyes feel as though they roll around in sand.

Nausea pulses with every beat of my heart, my constant companion I neither invited into my home nor do I wish for it to stay. But I am at home; of that, I’m sure. In my own bed. My face, mercifully crushed against my own pillow.

Which is good, I guess.

Life could be so much worse.

Whacky IIcock-a-doodle-dooson the front fence. His scream, more of a sickly yelp. His announcement that a new day has begun, as welcome as my nausea. I carefully peel my eyes open, a soft whimper disappearing into my pillow as I turn my face and search desperately for… anything. Water and Advil, hopefully. A hammer, if the first is too difficult to come by.

But I find neither.

Instead, I’m met with the ferocious glare of the morning sun pelting through my bedroom window. My phone and lipstick are dropped haphazardly on the bedside table, and beside those, Franky’s Murdle book with a pen stuck in the middle to act as a bookmark.

I draw a long breath and groan when it smells of liquor and barf, then I swallow the taste of bad choices, wetting my throat and praying I don’t puke.

Because I don’t want to revisit that flavor ever again.

“Franky?” I try to turn over. I swear, I do. But my body doesn’t move. So I use my arm instead, blindly patting the mattress in search of my son.

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