Addicted (Ethan Frost 2)

“Baby, don’t cry. Please, Chloe, don’t cry.” He kisses my tears away, one by one by one. Over and over again. In between the kisses, he murmurs incoherent fragments of love and loss and apology and I can feel the crack widening deep inside me. Can feel myself breaking into thousands of irreparable pieces. So many pieces that even Ethan won’t be able to hold them together, no matter how strong or safe or determined he is.

I take a step back, out of his arms. Away from his warmth. It hurts, physically hurts, but I know I don’t have a choice. I have to push him away now, while I still have the strength. Or we’ll both end up destroyed under the weight of my failures.

He tries to hold on to me, tries to keep me in his arms. But all it takes is a whispered, “Ethan, please, stop,” for him to let me go.

“I can’t do this,” I tell him. “I’m not strong enough.”

“I am,” he tells me. “Let me be strong enough for the both of us. Please, Chloe.”

He reaches into his pocket, then presses something metal into my hand. I know what it is before I even look down.

“You had it fixed.”

He presses a gentle kiss to my temple. “Always.”

I stare at the belly chain, my fingers stroking familiarly over its cool platinum and diamond links. I want it so badly. Want to wear it. Want to feel the weight of it around my waist, a tangible symbol that I belong to Ethan. That we belong to each other.

“Can I put it on you?” he whispers against my ear as his fingers brush against my waist.

Yes! I want to scream my assent, want to beg him to claim me again, to make me his. I want to feel safe in the way I do only when Ethan is all around me.

But I can’t let him do it. Not now when everything is so, so awful.

“No.” It’s quieter than a whisper, so soft that I can barely make out the sound of it and I’m the one speaking.

But Ethan hears. Somehow he hears, and he looks away, but not before I see the obvious hurt in his eyes, hurt that echoes the agony slicing through me like the dullest of blades.

His fingers clench on my jaw, and we stand that way for what feels like forever, the same pain that is keeping us apart somehow also tying us together. And then he’s tilting my chin up so that I have nowhere to hide, no choice but to look at him.

And I do. God, I do. The anguish of the past couple of days is etched into his face. I can see it in the bruises from the fight, in the dark circles beneath his uninjured eye and the grooves around his mouth that weren’t there last week. Before I even know I’m going to do it, I reach up to stroke the deep line to the right of his mouth. He turns his head then, brushing his lips against my fingers.

The pain intensifies until it feels like there’s a fist around my diaphragm, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. I know I need to pull away, but I can’t. Not when Ethan is pressing soft, sweet, tender kisses across my palm.

My breath hitches in my throat at the feel of him and Ethan smiles a little at the sound. Then it’s his turn to brush a thumb across my lips, his turn to shudder when I press a kiss to the tip of it.

“Chloe.” My name is soft on his lips, reverent, as he slowly lowers his head, giving me plenty of hints as to his intention … and plenty of time to move away if that’s what I want to do.

It isn’t.

It should be. A little while ago, it was. But right here, right now, there is nothing I want more than for Ethan Frost to kiss me.

The first touch of his lips on mine is tentative, sweet, like he’s asking permission or forgiveness or both. It’s gentle and lovely and so not what I want from him that I can’t resist pushing to my tippy toes, can’t resist wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him into the kind of kiss we’re both craving.

It’s hot and heavy and carnal, tongues sliding against and around, over and under, each other. It’s teeth nipping at lower lips and mouths mashing against one another. It’s murmured whispers and violent heat, terrible pleasure and even more terrible pain. It’s everything a kiss with Ethan is meant to be, everything it always has been and everything I’m terrified it will never be again. It’s sex and seduction, lust and love, and I can’t get enough of it. Enough of him. This man who has given me more in a few weeks than anyone in my life has given me ever.

Maybe that’s why I cling to him, arms wrapping around his shoulders, fingers digging into the nape of his neck, mouth sucking desperately at his own.

He tastes like the ocean and feels like it, too. Powerful, violent, infinite. I want to immerse myself in him, to drown in him. And I want this kiss—this feeling—to go on forever.

But even as I cling to him, even as I stroke my tongue against the warm roughness of Ethan’s, I can feel the magic fading. Can feel the horror creeping back in until the heat fades and all I’m left with is the frigid, terrible cold that has taken up residence deep inside me.

“Chloe.”

He bends his head to kiss me again and I let him because I am weak and he is not and I can’t believe this is happening. I don’t want to believe it.

His fingers skim my waist, burrowing under my blouse and the fitted waistband of my suit. He strokes my stomach, my hips, my lower back and I know he wants to fasten the belly chain around me, I can feel his need to reclaim me, to mark me as his, throbbing in the air around us.

But when he takes the chain from my hand and slides it around my waist, every alarm bell I’ve got inside of me starts to shriek. Letting him do this will break both of us. Already I can feel the jagged pieces inside of me shifting around, trying to make room for this new reality. But there is no room. There is nothing but horror and fear and emptiness, so much of it that I can’t feel anything else now that he is no longer kissing me.