“Yes! I know what it’s like to lose a parent, so I know how hard it is. But Jesus, Winter, when I ask you a question and all you give me is ‘yeah,’ I may as well have not even asked it. You gave Melissa more of an answer than you gave me about how you went at your dad’s today. How do you think that makes me feel?” She snatched something from her bag and came my way. “It makes me feel like maybe you actually don’t want a future with me. That maybe you just think you do because you wanted that for so long.”
Pushing past me, she stalked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her with a heavy thud that matched the heavy thud of my heart.
Fuck.
She was wrong.
So fucking wrong.
I stormed into the bathroom, ignoring the closed door, refusing to acknowledge the privacy she wanted. This conversation wasn’t fucking finished. Not by a long shot.
She’d undressed and now stood under the shower, water cascading down her curves. Her bewilderment met me as she angled her head my way.
“When I tell you I want a future with you,” I growled, getting in the shower with her, boots and fucking all, “I fucking mean it.” I put my hands to her waist and spun her around so we faced each other. “Stop letting the bullshit in your head cause you to doubt that.”
That pissed her off even more. Hands to my chest, she lashed out while attempting to push me away. “The bullshit in my head is in there because you’re putting it there!”
I gripped her wrists. “How the fuck am I putting it there?”
“With all this hot and cold behaviour.”
I squeezed her wrists hard. “I’m hot and fucking cold because every time I think I’ve got shit about us figured out, I realise I don’t. I’m confused as hell as to how to fix this.”
“Why do you have to fix it?” she demanded, wrenching her hands from mine. “Not everything is on you, Winter. God!”
“Well who the fuck is it on then, Birdie? You’re the one who fucking walked out. I’m just trying to pick up the pieces and make sense of this mess.”
She smacked me in the chest, wild and furious. “Yes! I walked out! And I’m more sorry about that than you will ever fucking know. But you can’t tell me you want a future together and not let me be a part of fixing the problem I created. Be angry. Get in my face. Be confused. But bring all that to me and share it with me so we can start rebuilding our relationship. Meet me in the middle.”
“Fuck,” I hissed as her hurricane of emotions collided with mine. I wanted to cut this pain from my veins, from hers. It was fucking poison. But we couldn’t cut it out, couldn’t go around it, couldn’t fucking avoid it. All we could do was move through it and hurt together.
Putting my hand to her stomach, I forced her back against the tiles and crushed my mouth to hers. My kiss was violent. Savage. Fucking brutal. I gave it all to her. Everything I hadn’t been able to express with words.
Birdie moaned into my mouth as she grabbed handfuls of my hair, pulling it.
A deep, guttural growl tore from me as we both brought our anger and hurt to our kiss; as our hands frantically demanded what we needed; as our souls bled their emotions all over the fucking place.
Birdie ripped my clothes off, not once letting my lips go. The sound of her need filled my ears to the point where I was coming out of my skin, barely fucking able to restrain myself. She didn’t want that, though. She wanted this as rough and hard as I did.
We needed to take our inner ache and experience it on a physical level. Lay it out, wide fucking open, exposed. Taste it. Feel it. Fucking breathe it.
“Fuck,” I rasped, dragging my mouth from hers. “Fucking hell.”
She stared up at me, breathless and fucking beautiful. When she reached for my dick, my hand snapped around her wrist. I wanted nothing more than her touch, but fuck, I needed to know she was in this with me.
Keeping hold of her wrist with one hand, I brought my other one up to grip her face. “I’ll meet you in the middle, Angel, but if you’re not gonna be there, tell me now. Because no fucking way am I going through all this with you just to have you rip my fucking world out from under my feet again.”
Torment flashed in her eyes and before I knew what was happening, she had her legs around me, her arms around me, and she was climbing me. She gripped the back of my neck. “I’m here. In the middle. Waiting for you, baby.
I’m never going anywhere ever again. Fucking never.” And then her lips smashed down onto mine and she kissed me like she’d never kissed me. Fierce. Bruising. Untamed. It was a promise and a plea all rolled into one.
I knew she meant it. Felt it deep in my gut. And fuck if anything would hold me back now.
I thrust inside her to the hilt before pulling out and doing it again.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I would never get enough of this woman.