His eyes flashed and he pushed off the jamb, coming into the room. For the first time, I hated that I had to tip my head back to look up at him. “Not before I tell you what I really think of you, Nora, instead of hiding it behind the subterfuge of giving a fuck what happens with this play.”

“Aidan—”

“You are the biggest coward I’ve ever met in my life. You’re weak and emotionally defunct. What’s worse is how fucking manipulative you are—”

“Aidan—”

“I’ve never met anyone who had me so fucking fooled!” His chest heaved as his cool fled in the wake of his rage. “You lied and strung me along, fled when the going got tough, not once but goddamn twice, and I’m the idiot who let you do that to me.”

“Aidan—”

“But rest assured, Nora, you are the last woman who is ever going to make a fool out of me. I see you now. Who you really are. A fucked-up, selfish, self-involved, immature little—”

Whatever horrible thing he was going to call me next, I swallowed it in my kiss. Unable to bear his contempt any longer, but not knowing how to make it stop, I went with my gut.

And my gut told him to grab his T-shirt in my fists and use it to haul him down to my mouth.

What a mistake.

Because I remembered him now.

I remembered how beautiful he felt.

So when his hands gripped my forearms and tried to pry me off, I let him, only to slide my arms around his neck and cling on tighter, kissing him in desperation.

He grunted and grabbed my arms again and just as I feared he would shove me away, he broke. Aidan jerked me closer, his mouth opening under mine, his tongue searching for my tongue.

Quite abruptly, he was in charge.

I found myself lifted off the ground and then dropped on the dressing table counter. He forced my legs apart as we continued kissing hungrily. Our hands were everywhere, just as starved. Mine slipped under his T-shirt, roaming the hard muscles of his abdomen, while his roughly caressed my sides, squeezed my breasts, and finally delved under my dress.

I gasped into his mouth as his fingers slipped under the waistband of my underwear and fisted, ripping them down to my knees. His lips abruptly left mine, his angry glower burning into me and holding me totally captive as he hurriedly unzipped his jeans and pushed them down his hips to free his cock.

My eyes dropped to it, but I only had a second to take it in and question the fit of the huge, throbbing erection pointing right up at me, before Aidan gripped my hips, his fingers bruising. He drew my gaze back to his as he tilted my hips upward. Face fierce with need, he guided his dick between my legs and slammed inside me so deep, it was painful. I whimpered, clinging onto him as my inner muscles pulsed around him, trying to get used to the overwhelming hot fullness of him inside me.

His hold on me tightened, his movements rough, hard, and frenetic, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to stay so deep inside of me, no one would be able to pull us apart. Already the tension had started to coil within me, and my sputtered breaths and cries for more mingled with his animalistic growls and grunts.

My skin was on fire, my thigh muscles burning, but every thrust of his dick brought less pain and more and more pleasure until my own fingernails were digging into his lower back and my hips undulated against his drives, reaching for more.

I wanted to rip off my clothes so my skin was against his, finally, both of us bared to one another, but that would mean stopping, breaking apart, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop. I wanted more. I wanted it forever. “Aidan,” I begged.

One hand left my hip to grasp the back of my head and he crushed his mouth over mine in answer, a panting, gasping, slide of lips and tongue, no finesse … just a wild need to mimic with our mouths what his dick was doing to my insides. He tilted my hips up further, dislodging my mouth from his as I held on. His green eyes were like a dark forest of possessiveness as he pounded into me.

Each thrust was like a hit to my internal thermostat, each slide into me stoking my flames, until I wasn’t sure I could come without taking the whole building out in a fiery explosion.

The orgasm hit in wave after wave, and I yelled out his name, the sound garbled in pleasured shock when he came with a “Fuck!” and I felt the delicious sensation of my inner muscles contracting around his pulsing cock. His hips jerked against mine and my hold on him slipped, my muscles liquefied. Aidan collapsed against me, his hands caressing my thighs as if to soothe them from his harsh grip. I felt his breath as he panted against my neck, and his chest heaved inches from my face.

It felt longer. The entire explosive encounter. But when I looked back, I realized it had all lasted minutes.

However, he didn’t even stay inside me a minute and as he pulled out, I froze with the cold, hard reality of the fact that we’d had sex without protection. I was on the pill, thankfully, and had been since Jim, and saw no point in coming off it because it regulated my period.

But if Aidan was out there screwing a ton of women, I was stupid for letting him inside me without a condom.

I was the stupidest woman on the planet.

Completely controlled by my freaking hormones.

Aidan cursed and grabbed tissues out of a box on the dresser beside us. He turned from me and presumably cleaned up before zipping his jeans up. Feeling more vulnerable than ever, I used the moment while his back was turned to slip off the counter, clean myself with the tissues, and pull my underwear back up and my dress down.

When I looked up again, Aidan was glaring at me like he loathed me.

I withered under that expression, fighting the need to burst into tears. Instead I tipped my chin up haughtily, like him hating me didn’t matter.

“Are you on the pill?”

I nodded. “Are you clean?”

He nodded.

I scoffed. “And I’m to trust you?”

Aidan sneered. “Out of the two of us, I’m not the one who can’t be trusted.” He shook his head, dragging his eyes up and down my body like I was a slug he’d found in his salad. “I can’t believe I used to care about you. What the fuck did I see?”

I’d never been shot or stabbed, but I had to wonder if anything in this life could’ve hurt as much as Aidan Lennox saying those words to me after we’d had sex.

After I’d had the roughest, most pleasurable sexual experience of my life.

After I’d had sex for the first time since my husband died.

I turned away so he couldn’t see my tears and pretended to put my school papers away.

Tell him!

But I couldn’t. I was bleeding internally from his words, and that was all the evidence I needed to know this had to end. Aidan Lennox had the power to hurt me more than anything else in this world and I was done with that shit. Why I reached for him, I didn’t know. But it was time to try harder to get over my confusion when it came to him. His words helped.

They helped a whole lot.

“Nora—”

“I got what I wanted, Aidan.” I grabbed my bag. Without looking at him, I marched by him and said the words I knew would end this for good, “I scratched a two-year-old itch. Let’s leave it at that.”

To my utter relief, Aidan didn’t hang around for rehearsal. It was bad enough I needed to shower him off me, I didn’t need him watching me in revulsion while I was on stage. But I couldn’t get through the night with his smell on me, with the feel of him between my legs.

So I faked sickness and I must’ve been pretty convincing because Quentin told me to get out of his rehearsal in case it was something the rest of his actors could catch.

Without looking at anyone, I left, so desperate to get home and shower that I grabbed a cab rather than take the bus.

I was shaking.

Trembling to my core.

Deep down I was filled with dread, that awful feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know something is gone or lost or over for good.

I refused to allow the feeling to float up to the surface, however, creating a metaphorical hard layer of concrete in my mind that bricked over those emotions so I could function.

Once in my flat, I hauled my dress up over my neck and threw it and my underwear in the wash. Then I got straight into the shower and I scrubbed. I scrubbed my body hard in hopes of cleaning away not just the smell of him but the feel of him. I didn’t want to remember his hands on my body or how he felt inside me. Who wanted to remember something like that when they were never going to have it again?