It was stupid. Probably even stupider than spending a night with Hyde’s mother when I was off balance and unhinged after two-plus years without an ounce of freedom. Both experiences would end up leaving forever marks on who I was and how I loved. I knew Sayer was going to break my heart and I was willingly letting her do it. She was as cold as she had ever been on the outside, her skin like ice everywhere we touched. On the inside she was an inferno, a raging storm of too many emotions, making her typically clear eyes cloudy and wild. Again I thought she was a tempest, a gale that was going to wreck me and ruin me, and I wanted her to lay me to waste.

Everything I had ever felt for her, good, bad, uncertain, clean, and dirty, flared up into burning-hot points that wanted to pierce through my skin in order to get at her. She was going to completely melt for me now because there were no more icy walls holding me back from the very center of her. I’d done the hard work, made room for myself and my boy in her life, rearranged a space that was just mine; now it was up to her to figure out how to get rid of all that other junk so I could rightfully claim the rest of what was mine.

I undid the buttons on my flannel as soon as her bedroom door was shut behind me. I would leave her in this house I had built just for her and I would leave as much of myself behind with her as I could, so even if she wanted to, she couldn’t forget me and couldn’t ignore what I knew we meant to one another.

I watched with heavy-lidded eyes as she pulled her blazer off and turned toward me as she peeled off the rest of her clothing. She was beautiful and this was all so tragic. I told myself to turn around and walk out before things got even more complicated and fucked up between the two of us. But then her shirt cleared her head, and her bra hit the floor, and her hands were suddenly under the T-shirt I had worn under the flannel in defense against the diving fall temperatures. Her touch was firm and far more direct than it typically was when she put her hands on me.

She liked to run her fingers over me, liked to explore and caress with a light touch. This felt more like she wanted to take something. Like she wanted to hold on to me even though she was the one pushing me away with both hands. Before I knew it, she had my pants undone and was shoving the denim and my boxers out of her way. Even if my head and my heart knew this was good-bye, my dick didn’t seem to care about the impending heartbreak. It eagerly fell into her waiting hands as she looked up at me with those tumultuous eyes. It wasn’t a pretty squall trapped in there. It was ugly and crashing. Beating against the inside of her in endless waves, and it almost killed me that this wasn’t something I had the skills or know-how to fix. There was no repairing Sayer Cole. She had to tear it all down and rebuild from scratch.

I was already as bare as I could be for this woman. There wasn’t anything else I could offer her or create for her, so I stepped out of her grasp, which made her whimper a little and my dick really pissed off at me, and put my hands on her shoulders so I could turn her around so that she was facing away from me. I wasn’t sure I could get through this alive with those tumultuous eyes pleading up at me to make it all better. I had done all I could. Now it was all on her.

I popped open the fastener on her pants and skimmed the charcoal-gray fabric down her long legs. Just like I suspected when I bet her in the mall about her underwear, they were a deep turquoise in color and very much in my way. I got her out of those as well, still without turning her around to face me, and slid my hand around the back of her neck. Her hair was still all twisted and tied up on the top of her head, so the skin was exposed and made her seem slightly more vulnerable than she really was.

I kissed her naked shoulder. I licked the vein that was pulsing out my name as it throbbed on the side of her neck. I ran my nose along the sweet curve of her jawline and stepped even closer so I could whisper in her ear, “When this is over, and I’m on my way out the door, I’m going to tell you that I love you.”

She went stiff where my chest pressed into her back and tried to turn around to look at me. I wouldn’t let her. I curled a hand up under her arm and circled her rib cage so that I could fill my palm with her breast. The delicate pink tip immediately puckered and dug into my skin. I used my hips to point her toward the edge of the bed since my legs were still trapped half in and half out of my pants. I had no intention of getting any more undressed. I loved her, but I couldn’t make love to her right now. I was too pissed. Pissed at her. Pissed at myself for following her inside when I knew it was going to end in sorrow. And just generally pissed off at the entire situation. We deserved to be happy. We deserved to make this work. It infuriated me that I couldn’t just force things to be the way I wanted. I was used to my persistence and stubbornness getting me what I wanted.

She obeyed my silent command to get on the bed in front of me on her knees. The position had that delectable ass up in the air and her already slick and glossy entrance lined up perfectly with where my cock was pointed. She crossed her arms and rested her forehead on the bed, unable, I think, to look at me after what I told her. I did love her. Whoever she was and whoever she decided to be, but I couldn’t be in love with her until she had the room inside of her to love me back.

I walked my fingers up and down her spine and palmed the curve of her hip. I wanted to slam into her. I wanted to pull her hair and use my teeth on all of that delicate skin. I wanted to scrape my face across every pale inch of skin and leave marks on it with my beard. I wanted to use my tongue to torment her, to bring her to the brink of pleasure and then take it away like she had done with all the love I had for her. I wanted to use everything that normally brought her pleasure to cause her pain. I was hurting and I knew she was, too. The difference was she had the power to make it all stop. All that pain and all that hurt was in her hands, she just had to put it down and grab on to the other stuff I was trying to hand her, things like love and forever.

I dug the fingers of one hand into her hip and let the others trace those little indents at the base of her spine that I was infatuated with. I skated my touch along the plush curve of her ass and didn’t play around when I reached her already hot and begging center. I dove right in, swirled several fingers around, and told her to hold still when she jerked a little at the sudden invasion of her body.

It wasn’t very nice. It totally wasn’t smooth or romantic in any way, but I was feeling pretty split open and nasty. A good-bye like this wasn’t supposed to be easy on either one of us, I supposed.