Hyde's Absolution (Sydney Storm MC 4)

I grabbed my shirt and the towel off the floor. After passing her the towel, I put my shirt on and then snaked my arm around her waist. Dropping a kiss to her lips, I said, “This needs to be continued.”

“No, this was only one night, tiger.”

My lips brushed her ear as I rasped, “Your pussy is, right now, begging you to fuck me again. I’m gonna give her what she wants.”

“My pussy doesn’t need you worrying about her. She can find cock elsewhere.”

I tightened my hold on her, pulling her body hard against mine. “You can fight me on a lot of shit, Monroe, but not this. This is the one fight I win. I’ll be calling you and you’ll be answering that call. And we are going to get clean as fuck in that shower of yours and then I’m going to fuck you harder and longer than you’ve ever been fucked in your life.”

Our eyes met when I let her go. Hers were wide. She didn’t argue with me, didn’t say another word. She simply watched me collect my keys off the bedside table and exit the room.

Monroe might have thought we weren’t made for each other, and hell we probably weren’t. But we were sure as shit made to fuck each other.

Chapter 17

Hyde

I scrubbed my face and stared at Tenille as she slammed cupboards and drawers in my kitchen. She was pissed off with me, but I had no fucking idea why. And she’d hardly said a word to me since I’d arrived home, so there were no clues there.

“Tee, what the fuck’s going on?” I finally asked. Charlotte had hightailed it out of the kitchen five minutes ago after an argument with her mother, so I was making it my mission to figure this out.

She slammed the container she held down and met my gaze. “You came to me! You! It wasn’t my choice for us to come back into each other’s lives.”

My temper spiked. I fucking hated the way she fought with me when I didn’t know shit about why she was angry. She’d done it when we were together, and it seemed old habits died hard. I took a deep breath. “You’re not making any sense. How about you back the fuck up and start from the beginning here. Why are you so pissed at me? I mean, I came home twenty minutes ago and we’ve hardly said a word to each other. How the fuck have I managed to get you so worked up in that time?”

Her eyes widened. “You never did understand women, Aiden, and it appears you still don’t.” She rested her hands on the counter as she glared at me. “How do you think it makes me feel when the man I loved for so long—the man who I just found out didn’t really die years ago, who just showed back up in my life, telling me he wants to be there for me now—comes home the first night I’m in his new home, having just been with another woman? You think that makes me feel good?”

Fuck.

I raked my fingers through my hair, unsure of the best way forward here. Moving around the counter, I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away, so I stopped and said. “Tee, I didn’t know you were coming here tonight. Last I heard, you were dealing with shit in Melbourne with Craig.”

She blinked a few times, and I wondered if she was about to cry. She didn’t, though. “I left him,” she blurted out.

I was surprised, but relieved. As far as I was concerned, Craig wasn’t good enough for her. He didn’t love her the way she should be loved. “What happened?”

She dropped her gaze and fussed with the food she had on the counter. She’d bought a roast chicken and had filled plates with meat and salad for dinner. “He’s been coming home drunk for months, and he’s always fighting lately. I’ve had enough.”

“Fighting?”

“Yea

h. I don’t know where or with who, but he comes home beaten and bloody some nights. Others, he turns up with ripped and blood-soaked shirts.”

Sully had told me about the drinking, but I didn’t know about the fighting. “What did he say about all that?”

She stared at me silently for a long while before admitting, “He told me not to ask questions about things that didn’t concern me. About things I didn’t really want to know.” Her voice cracked. “And when I pushed him on it, he hit me and told me it was all my fault.”

I clenched my fists. I wanted to knock him the fuck out. I wanted to make him bleed myself. Putting my hand out, I demanded, “Give me your phone.”

Her forehead crinkled. “Why?”

My body tensed the longer this took. “Tenille, give me your phone. I want a word with that motherfucker.”

“No. He’s never hit me before. This was just a once off thing. You don’t need to get involved.”

I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, willing myself to get my shit under control. I wasn’t the same man Tenille had married anymore. She wasn’t acquainted with my violent side, and I didn’t want her to get fucking acquainted with it.

Needing a moment, and a whole lot of the one thing that had a shot at calming me, I stalked to the cupboard where I kept my whisky. Grabbing it out, I poured a mouthful into a glass and downed it. Not even close to enough, I poured another mouthful and knocked it back too.