Marly's Choice (Men of August 1)

“I won’t.” Her fists clenched as she stared into his tormented features. “I won’t Cade. I love you too much. I need you too much to ever play a role for you so you can hide the fact that you need me too.”

“No.” He grimaced at the accusation.

“No?” She questioned him with an amazed laugh. “So whose hard-on did I have shoved down my throat? Whose finger was pushed up my ass, Cade? I could have sworn it was yours. And I could have sworn it was me getting it. Are you fooling yourself into thinking it’s someone else?”

Her voice rose with her anger as she faced him, ignoring the storm brewing in his eyes, the fury gathering in his expression.

“Stop,” he bit out. “Just stop this, Marly.”

“What about me, Cade?” She stepped close to him now, her body vibrating with the injustice of what he had done to her. “You left me kneeling in the dirt, the taste of your climax still in my mouth, needing you. I needed you too. Where was my orgasm, you son of a bitch?”

“Horny, Marly?” He threw her own, earlier words back at her.

Marly drew herself up stiffly, ignoring the tears and the pain.

“Hell yes, and I’m woman enough to admit to it,” she said slowly. “And you know what, Cade? I’m woman enough to do something about it.”

She shoved past him roughly, heading for the door. She turned the knob, ready to throw it open when his voice stopped her.

“What the hell does that mean?” There was danger in every syllable.

She turned back to him, her smile mocking and bitter.

“Simple, Cade. If you can’t put out the fire you started, then fuck you. I’ll find someone who will.”

She jerked the door open as she spoke, turned and ran headlong into Sam’s chest.

She raised her eyes, seeing the quiet anger in his face, the sympathy in his eyes. He had heard it all. She shook her head, her face flaming in shame.

“Hey, Munchkin.” He lifted her face up, his thumb touching the corner of her lips briefly, then staring down at the creamy residue he had wiped from it. Marly felt sick, overwhelmed with humiliation and fury.

Sam raised his gaze, looking over her shoulder as his expression hardened.

“Sam,” Cade’s voice was warning him not to interfere.

“Come on, Marly.” Sam drew her outside the room, his arm wrapping around her shoulders in a gesture of brotherly concern. “Greg and I decided on pizza tonight. You can go with us to get it.”

“Sam.” Cade’s voice was harder now as he started towards them.

“Stop.” Sam pulled Marly out of harm’s way, pushing her towards a silent, grim-faced Greg. “Leave her the hell alone, Cade. I think enough is enough. Go wallow in your liquor, if there’s any left from your temper. I’m getting Marly out of here for the night.”

“Marly, don’t leave.” Cade stared at her darkly. “We aren’t finished.”

“Yeah, we are.” She shook her head, moving for the door. “At least, for tonight we are.”

Chapter Ten

The night was dark. Even though Marly had left the curtains open to her balcony, the cloud-filled sky filtered the glow of the moon. The nightlight was on, though. It cast a soft light over her bed, over her pale naked body as she slept restlessly. Cade entered the room, pacing silently to the chair at the side of the bed and eased himself into it with slow, weary motions.

Sam had kept her out late. Cade knew his younger brother was furious with him, so angry he refused to speak to him. Cade hated it, but for the life of him, he could think of no way to fix it. His conscience and his lusts were tearing him apart to the point that here he was; sitting silently in her room, staring at her, because he couldn’t have her any other way.

Her slender body was stretched out on the mattress, one arm bent over her stomach, the other laying at her side. Her thighs were parted, her bare mound glistening. Damn, did she stay wet? His body throbbed at the thought.

He stifled his groan, rubbing his hands over his face, denying the need to shed his soft sweat pants and crawl into the bed with her. His cock demanded it, his head refused, and his heart was torn. How do you fuck the woman you spent eight years protecting and raising? What kind of pervert did that make him? He leaned back in the chair, watching her painfully.

He used to do this when she was a child. Knowing when the nightmares would come and wanting to be there for her if they did. He’d had none of these thoughts then. No lust for her. She had curled innocently in her bed, sleeping while he tried to protect her. She had been so damned tiny as a child. Still was. With those big blue eyes and all that hair. He had loved her the minute Annie had brought her to the door that day. When had it changed?

He couldn’t pinpoint the day he had started lusting after. He knew it hadn’t begun before her eighteenth birthday, but he knew when it started it had been hard and quick. He remembered the day he realized it. Right after her graduation, at the pool with her friend Lexia. He had looked at her, a brief glance out the doors of his study, and lust had consumed him. It had been all he could do to keep from stalking out to her, picking her up and thrusting into her then and there. And it had gotten worse since then.