Page 66 of Manhattan Heart

We don’t fuck easy. We don’t fuck sedate. We are animals fighting for the pleasure.

Even when we make love it’s strenuous and long. Leaving us sweating and panting.

I keep thinking about the damage to his heart when all those times we had sex and didn’t know it could have stopped beating at any time.

So brutally aware of our shared breathing, it’s a miracle in itself how I haven’t plastered my sex to his gorgeous face.

“We… can’t.”

“We can, you don’t want to.” I swear that sad, resigned smile of his cuts me down to the bone. He leaves me to follow him out of our bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen where he starts the coffee machine.

“What does your day look like?” He asks, like we weren’t just having a major life discussion. That’s Gray. He doesn’t hold grudges and I fucking hate that, because if the shoe was on the other foot, I definitely would.

But then I’m crazy and a selfish bitch because I’m too scared to fuck my husband’s brains out. Or rather, scared I will fuck his heart out.

A nasty, dark thought floats through my head.Thanks, anxiety, you bitch.

And it blurts out of me. “Are you going to get it from someone else if I won’t put out?”

Gray turns slowly, two cups in his hand and I feel the look. It’s a living, breathing, snarling look as his eyes darken like right before a thunderstorm hits the skyline. Then he peels his lips back. “Don’t fucking insult me, India.”

I recognize my mistake the moment he abandons the cups and rounds the huge white marble island towards me.

I love our kitchen. It’s everything I wanted right down to the last back splash tile. But as he pins me to the edge, I’m not thinking of how good the kitchen looks, not when thunderous eyes are hooded and furious.

“There’s no ceiling on how deeply I love you, India. My perfect woman, my adorable wife.” I snort at the adorable because we both know I’m anything but. I’m annoying and hard work. Case in point. He has to jerk off because I won’t sex his brains out. “And I know how much I scared you and I wouldn’t do that for anything, if it can be helped. So I let this go until you worked through it or you talked to me about it. Suggesting even in a joke that I’ll fuck someone else just because I can’t fuck you, insults the enormity of our marriage.”

My stomach sinks when I hear it back in his words and I feel shame. “Gray, I’m sorry.”

When his hand comes up to circle the front of my throat, I still see the banks of fire in his eyes. It takes a lot to get him to this point of fury. He talks low but there’s no mistake that his voice is still pissed off. “Do you think I only want you for sex, India?”

“No. I…”

“Do you think all I want from you is to bury my cock in you as far back into my beloved pussy as I can go, until I’m strangled in wetness?”

God, I sway. When he gets dark, my brain shuts off.

“That I only keep you around just so I can sink myself into that mean girl mouth of yours? Is that it? You suggest our marriage is based solely on sex and god forbid we don’t have it, that my cock will lead me to another woman.”

Well, now I’m mad because the idea of someone else touching him drives murderous thoughts through my mind.

“This sex ban is supposedly for my benefit,” his hand roams slowly in soft circles around my throat, sending my pulse wild and strong under his palm. I can’t look away from his eyes, because now I’ve poked the beast and he’s let himself out of his cage. “Does that imply my very desirable and hungrywifewill go and get it from someone else because she won’t take it from me?”

“God, Gray.” His question has hit the mark and I suck in a stuttered pained breath. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s not out of the realm is it, baby-girl? You recall climbing into that elevator and going up to a party so ready to screw me out of your life for good.”

Oh. Fucking. God.

My whole body shudders but it’s not from being turned on.

It’s utter pain.

This is the first time,the only timethat Gray has used that against me in the four years we’ve been together. That awful, terrible night where I was so out of my mind with anxiety and feeling worthless, that I thought he was better off without me in his life. I wasn’t good enough for him.

Nothing happened, I felt sick even being away from him. And Gray took me home, and he forgave me. But this is the first he’s ever used it as a weapon and I want to throw up.

I try knocking his hand away and he won’t let me. “Move back, Gray.”

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