Page 29 of Deadly Aloha
Her jaw tightened slightly. “It was messing with my hormones. I needed to stop to reset my system before I went onto a different kind. But then I came back, and I haven’t been with anyone since so it wasn’t a priority.”
She’d been back nearly a year. It irked me that she’d been with other men without me. I was very aware how irrational that was, seeing as she’d been with other menwithme and given the number of women I’d been with since she’d walked out my frontdoor. But I never claimed to be rational when it came to this woman.
Like me, Lu had a high sex drive. I loved that about her, and her confidence to not shy away from sex or asking for something that she wanted made her all the more perfect for me. It didn’t surprise me that she’d been with other men while living on the Mainland. Pissed me off, which I was very aware was the epitome of hypocrisy. Again with the whole ‘irrational’ thing.
No, what surprised me was that she hadn’t been with anyone since she’d beenback. I didn’t know what ‘almost a year’ meant. That could be eleven months and twenty days or it could be nine months. Either way, for Lu, that was a long time to go without sex. Hell, I’d been involved in a gangbang only the day before I’d discovered her fucking plan to get herself kidnapped by the Bloody Scorpions. And I had a free use shoot scheduled for tonight that I still needed to discuss with her.
“What happened?” I demanded.
She looked confused, but there was something there in her dark gaze. Sheknewwhat I was asking, and yet she was about to play dumb. “I don’t know what you mean.”
My grip on her throat tightened. Not enough to cut off her air. Just enough to capture her attention. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Lu. You knowexactlywhat I mean. What. The fuck. Happened?”
Her nostrils flared as her anger returned. “I broke up with someone and he didn’t like that.”
Broke up. Implying a relationship. Feelings. My own anger started to simmer. “Did you love him?”
“I broke up with him, didn’t I?” she shot back at me.
I brought her face down to mine. “You love me,” I reminded her, “and you broke up with me.”
That time her cheeks did flush, and she didn’t meet my gaze. “That was different.”
Because I broke my promise to her. She left to protect herself—from me. That chafed, but it was going to be different this time around. I’d make sure of it. “Then why did you break up withhim?”
I was very aware of the jealousy in my voice. By the way her pupils dilated, she’d picked up on it too.
Lu put her hands on my pecs, and applied pressure. I glanced down, not entirely sure why. It was like she was trying to hold me down, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Then she said the words that changedeverything.
“He hit me.”
Pele had never known anger like the kind that erupted inside me. I was fire, I was vengeance. Some asshole had hitmywahine. Mine! It didn’t matter that we’d been broken up, didn’t matter that she’d been living two thousand four hundred and eighty-five miles from me. She wasmine. And some fucking prick had laid his hands on her.
My hand automatically released her throat at her words. I went to stand, tohunt, to maim, to destroy, but Lu moved her hands from my chest to the back of the couch on either side of my head. She slammed her hips down, squeezing my cock with all her might. It broke, but did not destroy, my haze of anger.
Her mouth captured my lips. I huffed out hot air from my nose, but I’d have to be dead and turned to ash before I refused a kiss from this woman. I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her captive against me.
Lu moved her lips around, kissing my nose, my cheeks, my jaw, my temple… “I’m fine,” she assured me in a low voice. “I’m fine, Aloiki. It was one time, and I left him because of it.”
“One time too many,” I snarled.
“That’s why I left him,” she reiterated. Her voice was stern. My Lu was stubborn and she was not the kind of woman who forgave easily. Her loyalty was absolute—until you broke it.
Like I had done. I’d made her a promise, and I’d broken it.
Guilt swarmed me, mixing with the anger inside my gut. If I hadn’t broken my promise, she would have never gone to the Mainland. She would have never met that asshole and he would have never had a chance to hit her.
It was Lu’s turn to collar me. She needed both hands, gripping my throat like a joystick to maneuver my head. She made me look up at her. “We were together for a short period of time. He wanted me to move in with him, but I was really homesick.” Her voice turned sad, and I knew it had to do with her missing Hawai‘i, not over her broken relationship with the douchebag. “Nishi and I were already talking about coming back home. He didn’t like it when I told him that. Thought I was being a big tease or something.”
I had to concentrate to keep my voice steady enough to form the words. “Where did he hit you?”
She gently touched her left cheek. “It was a slap, not a punch, but it was enough. I left him.”
I knew it hadn’t been recently. Yet I lifted a hand to her cheek as if searching for the mark he’d left behind. The pad of my thumb rubbed carefully against her skin. “Name.”
Lu, though, shook her head. “It’s in the past, Aloiki. Leave it there. He’s on the Mainland, and I’m back home.”
It wasn’t good enough. Never good enough. He’d laid his hand onmywahine. He’d hurt her. I was not about to let that slide.
