Things We Never Said (Hart's Boardwalk 3)

I knew what he was asking.

I knew what he wanted to hear.

And even though I shouldn’t, I found that I couldn’t deny him. I shook my head. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you.”

With an animalistic growl of satisfaction, Michael launched up off the bed, and turned around to drop us on it with me on my back. The motion made him drive so deep inside me, it took my breath away. I gasped to find it.

Michael muttered a hoarse expletive and then wrapped his hands around my wrists and pinned them to the bed at either side of my head.

The slow seduction from earlier was over.

He moved inside me with powerful thrusts of his hips, his eyes focused intensely on mine. Like he needed the eye contact. Like I needed it.

I wanted to feel him; I wanted to grip his ass in my hands and feel it clench and release with each stroke, but he held me down.

That only excited me more.

The tension built in me again with every thick drag of him in and out. His features strained taut with lust and with one more powerful glide in and out, I came again, shorter, sharper, but no less intense than the last. With just one hard tug of my climax, Michael swelled to impossible thickness. He pressed my hands hard to the bed as he tensed between my legs and then—

“Dahlia! Fuck!” His hips jerked and shuddered against mine.

Eventually, he released my wrists and slumped over me, his face in my neck, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him, caressing his warm, damp skin.

Slowly, however, as his breathing eased, and his whole body relaxed, the heaviness of his weight on me became too much. I couldn’t breathe. And it wasn’t because of his weight. I grew cold and panicked from the realization that I’d taken something I shouldn’t have. I’d given something I shouldn’t have.

Especially when I hadn’t been sure of Michael’s real motives for sleeping with me.

“We could stand here all night, yelling at each other, trying to find ways to dig out all the pain, or I could throw you on my bed, and we could fuck out all the anger and hurt.”

I thought of all the pain and bitterness he felt toward me. All the horrible things he’d said. When I was younger, I thought what Michael and I had was special. Ex

plosive and passionate. But maybe that wasn’t a good thing. Especially if it could turn tender feelings to poison. If it could make a good man like Michael do and say toxic things …

I wanted him to forgive me and to forget, but how could I when I wasn’t ready to forgive him for trying to fill me up with all the hurt he’d carried for years?

Shivering from the sudden chill, I released him and stared at the ceiling. Pain, unimaginable pain, swamped me. My voice sounded flat, dead, even to my ears as I asked, “Is that what you wanted? Have you fucked me out of you yet?”

Michael braced his hands on the bed at either side of my head and glared at me. “Jesus fuck, Dahlia. I’m still inside you.” With a huff of disbelief, he pulled out, and I shivered as he moved off me.

Lying on his back on the bed beside me, I waited for his response.

When none was forthcoming, I pushed up off the bed, and my upper thighs tremored a little from the thorough fucking. Because that’s what it was, right?

Michael’s face flashed in my mind as I swung my legs off the bed. The way he’d never broken eye contact as he moved inside me.

Was that fucking?

Heart heavy, I shook my head and put my feet to the cold floor. I’d been so hot with anger and lust when we’d come into his apartment, I hadn’t realized that the place was freezing.

Hurrying around the bed, I grabbed my clothes off the floor.

I was aware of Michael in my peripheral vision as he sat up. “What are you doing?”

Not looking at him, I replied, “I have to go.”

Hearing him getting out of bed, I looked at him. His dark eyes glittered under the bright glare of the overhead light. To my surprise, he bent down and snatched up my socks and boots. “I need to use the bathroom, so I’m keeping these,” he said, lifting the boots, “as insurance you’ll stay. We need to talk.”

“Michael—”