Scorch (Virtues & Lies 2)

That was the message that sent his phone crazy. All the notifications I had to swipe away from the guys.

He’s going to leave me here alone.

I can’t let him do that.

I won’t let him leave me behind again.

This right is as much mine as his.

Before he has a chance to say anything, I wipe my tears as I sit up. “I want in.”

“No.” His reply

is resolute. Uninviting to contradiction.

“She was my daughter too.” He spins so fast towards me that the duvet pulls from under me and I have to claw at it in order to balance myself. “I didn’t get to hold her properly, but she was mine. I carried her. I hugged her with my body. I fed her…I felt her every move when it kept me up at night. When you touched me or spoke to me.” Fire starbursts in my chest and belly, but no tears come. I swallow every single fucker down as quickly as they prickle up my throat.

I will not give you reason to think I can’t handle this.

I keep repeating this as he glares at me.

“Absolutely not.”

“Please.” Holding the phone to my belly, I crawl to him on my knees. “You got to hold her in your arms, Christopher. You got to see her with your eyes. You felt her warmth. You heard her breaths. And I hate you for all of it. I hate you so much that it physically hurts.” Climbing onto his lap, my body is so hot and so raw that his own heat feels like an inferno. “I don’t want to hate you or envy you for giving our child all the things I couldn’t. So please…”

“Belles.”

A tremor moves through him when I take his hand and place it on my heart, my thumb stroking the cool metal and stone of his wedding ring. “What’s a marriage if we don’t stand together?”

The pounding of my heart stutters as I wait for him to call out my hypocrisy over all the things I’ve done. All the ways I’ve wronged him.

He never does.

His sting back never comes. Instead the pressure of the hand on my chest increases as his other goes to the small of my back, pulling me closer to his body as he pushes me back onto the bed.

His hard body crushes mine into the mattress. Teeth scraping up the column of my neck, he nips his way to my ear with deep, ragged breaths.

The fabric of his being is as frayed and torn as mine. The only way to fix it is to patch ourselves up with one another.

Sucking my lobe into his mouth, his hand runs from the small of my back to my thigh, hitching my leg over his hip, opening me up to him.

He’s so hard that the pressure of his dick on the supple flesh of my thigh is bruising.

“I won’t risk you for poll position, Arabella.” Nose skimming up to my temple, he braces himself over me.

“It’s not about poll position. I don’t care about that.”

Looking down at me, his stare is dark, boring into mine with unguarded intensity. With a hiss he pulls his lip between his teeth, biting like he does when he’s deep in thought and consideration. There’s cool calculation in the way he leans up slowly, kneeling between my legs.

Fingers sweeping down my neck and décolletage to the phone, he picks it up and throws it on the bed beside us before popping the button holding the shirt closed over my breasts open. His cupped hands round the full, aching globes, squeezing and kneading as he fills his palms until they’re overflowing with my flesh.

Smarting from his tight, relentless grip, my body bows up to his, the unsteady rhythm of my heart punctuating my shallow, uneven breaths.

“Please.”

Glancing down to my thighs, his lip pops from between his teeth as he finds my bare pussy. His breathing falters with a faint gasp.

“Please what?” Pinching both of my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, he pulls, the weight of my flesh aiding gravity.