“Are you kidding?” Lucas looked like I’d punched him in the face. “You are not in love with Daniel. You told me so yourself!”
“Right before I discovered all the lies you fed me to stay away from him! You had no right getting in the way of my happy ending!”
“Happy ending? My brother is a drunk and a disaster, Marie, and he would never be able to give you what you deserve. Do you hear me?Never!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, because you won. I did stay away from him. So why are you here at all? What do youwant?”
“YOU!” Lucas bellowed so loudly that the whole city must have heard him. “I want you. Only you. Always you. Are you happy?”
I stumbled backward. Happy? Was Ihappy? I was many things at the moment. Tired. Confused. Turned on. A little drunk. Furious. Happy wasn’t any of those things.
He took my silence as a sign to make another grab, and I slapped his hands away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Why? You were all but begging for it moments ago. I only stopped because you deserve more than a quick fuck in a back alley.”
“And why is that?” I seethed. “You already proved I mean nothing to you. Why bother to make love? Why not just fuck me that way too? At least it would be consistent.”
Before I knew it, my back was against the wall all over again, my legs around his waist, my whole body pinned to the wall by his much bigger one.
Exactly where it wanted to be, the traitor.
“You want a quick fuck, baby?” Lucas demanded as he shoved up the hem of my skirt. “Say it now, and I’ll give it to you. But I can promise you won’t be able to walk away after.”
“I—no—yes!” Unable to stop myself, I grabbed his head and yanked it to me for a kiss that was more bite than anything else.
Lucas groaned into my mouth, low and deep, the sound vibrating straight through my chest. “You drive me fucking insane.”
“Just do it.” I ripped at his collar. “I want you to fuck me. And I’mnotgoing to beg.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
With a muttered curse, he pulled back enough to reach into his pocket, then tore open a foil packet with his teeth and used one hand to slide the condom over his cock, the other to hold me in place.
Then his body was back on mine. He shoved aside my underwear, and the thick head of him found my slick entrance aching and ready.
“Does that feel like nothing?” he demanded as he thrust into me hard enough to knock my head against the wall. “DoIfeel like nothing to you?”
Then he moved. Hard, deep, and ruthless. The cold wall bit into my back while he worked, his pants still half on, the base of him riding over my clit at an angle that stole my breath.
How was it possible to want someone this badly and hate them so much?
For the first time, I understood the thin line people talked about between that emotion and the other I wouldn’t even consider.
It drove me to equal heights of anger and ecstasy.
“You still think this is nothing?” he snarled. “You think I could fuck you like this and you can just walk away?”
He shifted the angle, but only so the pressure on my clit lessened just a little.
“More,” I demanded, writhing to find that angle again, the one that I knew now would drive to the end. “Don’t stop now.”
“Say it,” he demanded, breath ragged. “Say this issomething.”
“No.”
He continued to pound away, and I clawed at him, seeking purchase so I could shift my hips back to where they were.
But he wouldn’t let me.