Scarred Regrets (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 5)

“I’m okay,” she said, holding my stare and broadening her smile to try to reassure me. I flashed back to the moment she’d told me to wait, to the moment I’d done whatever the hell I’d wanted despite the plea on her lips.

I’d fucked her like an animal, with no regard for making her ready to take me.

Like a brute.

“Scar, honey. I promise I’m okay,” she said, pushing forward and stepping toward me. I backed away instinctively, feeling like the caged animal I was. There was nothing she could say that would make this okay.

Nothing could change the fact that I’d defiled her.

Ruined her.

“This was a mistake,” I said. With my hands raised, I saw the ruined flesh of my skin in the same view as her perfect body. With my cum on her thighs and her lips smeared from the way I’d practically eaten at her mouth like a starving man.

“I wonder if there will ever come a day when you don’t break my heart. You may not have one, but I promise you, I do,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as tears stung her eyes. “You didn’t hurt me beyond what happens with rough sex, but if you leave again after fucking me like that? Then you’ve just made me into your whore.”

“I’m pretty sure you did that all on your own,” I growled, watching as the wounding words hit her straight in the chest. I wanted to take them back immediately, already regretting the fact that I’d intentionally hurt her, but a little pain now was far better than more down the line.

She flinched, her shoulders caving in as her bottom lip trembled for a few seconds before she composed herself and stood taller.

The purpose achieved, I turned my back on her to walk to the door. “Scar?” her sweet voice said, the steel behind it that she used when she was dominating her world. “If you walk out that door right now, don’t even think about coming back. Fool me once—twice,” she added with a self-deprecating smile. “But there won’t be a third strike. I hope you find everything you’re looking for, but it clearly isn’t me.”

She watched me walk out the front door, escaping the odd intimacy that I hadn’t deserved.

Even after I’d hurt her, Irina Ryan was more concerned with wishing me well than with dealing with the wound I’d purposely dealt so she would let me escape into the night.

I fled back to where I belonged in my world, without the shining light of a green butterfly to make me think, for even a moment, I could have something more.

That I could have a heart where one didn’t beat.