And yet here we are. The pieces of what we used to have are lying in ruins at our feet and all that’s left is the pain and the fury and the heat. Always the goddamned heat. Already I can feel a response rising in me, my body so attuned to his that I’m growing wet even as my mind and my memories rage against the position he’s holding me in.

I’m not the only one. His breath is ragged against my ear, his cock hard against my lower back. He’s burning up, hot and shaky and so aroused that I can all but taste it in the air around us.

“Let me go!” I say again, jerking against his grip. If I don’t walk away now, I’m afraid I won’t find the strength to do it later. And I can’t stay, not after everything that’s been said and done.

“Don’t you think I would if I could?” He sounds as tormented as I am. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do. Now it’s too fucking late.”

He pushes me against the door with a hand flat on my back, while his other hand yanks at the waistband of my yoga pants.

“What are you doing?” I demand as my pants and underwear hit the floor. I’m in agony, aroused and afraid and anguished all at the same time.

“What the fuck does it look like?” he growls, sounding nothing like the Ethan I know. The Ethan I love even now. He’s pressed against my lower back and I can feel him fumbling with his own pants. Unbuttoning them. Lowering the zipper.

For a moment, just a moment, terror blanks everything else out. This can’t be happening. Please, God, this can’t be happening again. Not now. Not with Ethan. Not when I finally feel safe.

I lash out, rake my nails down his biceps.

He curses, presses me more firmly against the door.

“Ethan, please.” I don’t have a clue what I’m asking for—whether I want him to stop or to continue—and I don’t think he does, either.

We’re standing on the edge of an abyss, one where any wrong move will send us—and the pieces of what we’ve shared—tumbling into the darkest oblivion.

I’m paralyzed with distress. I don’t know what to do, what to say. And all I can think is, Bring it on, you bastard. Bring. It. On.

This is the moment where I see what he’s made of, what he’s capable of. And where I see just how much I can take.

Maybe we’ve been working up to this all along, maybe we haven’t. Either way, I’m not leaving here until I find out exactly how this one moment, this one encounter, is going to play out. He owes me that much, just as I owe him.

At that moment, he pushes himself even more firmly against me. His cock is so hard that it actually hurts to have it shoved against me like that, and I brace myself. Prepare for the worst, even knowing that it may very well send me careening over the last edge of sanity.

I get Ethan instead.

Because no matter how tormented he is, how broken we are, he’s still my Ethan. Tender, sweet, soft. And when he touches me, that’s all that matters. All that will ever matter.

The thought breaks me into even more pieces, but I don’t pull away. I can’t. I’m caught in his grip, pulled under by the passion and the power of this connection that just won’t break.

But then he moves and I tense as he strokes his hands over my shoulders.

Whimper as he lowers his head and kisses my neck.

Shiver as he nibbles at the ticklish spot behind my ear.

I can’t help myself. He’s an addiction that I just can’t kick. One I’m terrified will haunt me the rest of my life.

He laughs in response, even as he licks his way down to the sensitive place where my neck meets my shoulder. Then he bites me.

My body lights up like the Fourth of July, my fear mingling with his fury, my arousal tangling with his need. And I know—I know—that there’s no more reason to fight. Because this is Ethan. He might have torn my heart to pieces, but he still holds me like I’m the most precious thing in his world. I don’t know what that means, and at the moment I don’t actually give a damn.

“Ethan. Please.”

This time he knows what I’m asking. We both do.

His hand slides around to my lower back, presses so that my back bows and my ass pushes more firmly against his stomach. At the same time, his other hand reaches up and cups my breast.

I moan as he squeezes my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, whimper as he bends his knees and slowly slides his cock through the wet, aching lips of my sex.

“I need you.” His breath is hot against my ear. “I tried to let you go. Tried to make you leave. But I can’t. Chloe, baby, I can’t.”

I’m so confused. So turned on. And listening to him is only making it worse. “Ethan. I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” He kisses and licks his way along my shoulder to the nape of my neck before sliding his tongue slowly—oh so fucking slowly—down my spine.

He’s talking the whole time, murmuring sex words, love words, words that make no sense except that they make me hotter. Make me burn. I want to turn around, to wrap myself around him and beg him to fuck me right here, right now, but Ethan is completely in control of how this goes down and he obviously wants it this way. Needs it this way.

All I want, all I need, is to feel him inside me one more time. He’s barely touched me and already I’m way too close. But I don’t want to come. Not on my own. Not if this is the last time Ethan is ever going to touch me like this.

“Do it!” I tell him, my voice so hoarse it’s nearly unrecognizable.

His only response is to bite me again, his teeth nipping at my back hard enough to leave a bruise this time. I scream, a high-pitched, primal thing that comes from deep inside me. Ethan must like the sound because he does it again. And again. Then his hand slides down my stomach to my abdomen, my mons, and finally, finally, to my aching, desperate sex.

Usually he’s gentle with me, sweet and careful, but this time the need is obviously riding him as hard as it is me. I can feel it in the urgent hardness of his cock, in the fine shivers that rack his body, in the quick, brutal way he shoves three fingers inside me.

Without warning, I go careening over the edge of an orgasm so intense, so shattering, that for long moments I lose myself. I forget everything—the pain, the fear, the rage, the devastation—and just feel.

Before the tremors even stop, Ethan is on his knees behind me. He grabs on to my thighs with his huge hands, yanks my legs apart. I’m spread wide open for him now, so wide that I’m off balance and the only things holding me up are the wall in front of me and Ethan behind me.

The aftershocks of ecstasy are still tearing through me, and I’m off-kilter. Vulnerable. And hurt—still so hurt. But before any of the feelings can take a firm hold, Ethan lifts me up onto my tiptoes and shoves his tongue deep inside me.

I scream. Clutch at the wall. Try to hold on to the last broken pieces of myself that I can claim as my own. But Ethan won’t have it. Not now. Not this time.

He wants everything, every little shard that I have left, and he’s not shy about claiming them. Claiming me.

His tongue is everywhere—circling my clit, sliding along my labia, thrusting deep inside me.

His fingers are everywhere—pinching my nipples and my clit, sliding along the sensitive skin at the bends of my knees and elbows, digging into my thighs and grounding me with small pinches of pain.

He’s everywhere—behind me, beside me, inside me so deep that I know I’ll never get him out.

Not now. Not after this.

The pleasure is building again, taking me higher and higher and higher until I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but feel. I’m insensate with it, completely overwhelmed. Completely under his spell. Just the way Ethan wants me.

With a twist of his tongue, he sends me tumbling into ecstasy again. And again. And again.

Time loses meaning, everything does, until there’s nothing—no one—but Ethan and me and the cataclysmic heat between us.

I’m holding on to the wall now, my fingers seeking purchase, surcease, as my entire body trembles violently. I can’t take much more without breaking, but I don’t want it to be over, either. Don’t want it to end. Not until I feel Ethan inside me one last time.

“Do it,” I choke out. “Damn you. Just do it.”

Ethan’s only answer is to thrust his tongue even deeper inside me at the same time as he presses his thumb slowly, inexorably, into my anus.

My knees buckle as another climax roars through me. This time not even the wall can hold me up. My body starts to sag, to slide down, but Ethan catches me like he always does. Holds me in place. And sends me careening over the edge one more time.

I’m crying now, hot tears of pleasure and pain rolling down my face as sobs rack my body. It’s too much. Too much. Too much. I can’t take anymore.

Ethan knows—like he always does—and suddenly he’s on his feet again. He turns me to face him and through my tears I see the same ecstasy and agony that I’m feeling reflected back at me from his damn oceanic eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me even as he presses hot kisses against my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Just do it,” I choke out. “Please. I can’t—”

His mouth takes mine in a kiss so ripe with emotion—with pain and pleasure and everything in between—that all I can do is open myself and take everything he needs to give me.

Then he’s lifting me up, and he’s strong enough that he doesn’t even need the wall to help support me. Instead, he holds tight and growls, “Wrap your arms and legs around me.”

I do, and that’s when he slides deep inside me with one powerful thrust.

“Oh, God. Baby. Oh, God.” He buries his face in my neck, and even as pleasure races through me I register the feel of hot tears against my skin.

“Ethan.” My fingers tangle in his hair, and I try to pull his head up so I can see his eyes. But he refuses to look at me. He’s shaking and shuddering now, so badly that he finally does press me against the wall for added support.

He’s kissing and licking the bend of my neck, sending new sparks of pleasure shooting up and down my spine. But the tremors are still racking his body and I can still feel the tears.

I can’t help it. Destroyed and devastated though I am, I can’t see him like this and not ache. I wrap my arms around him, pull him even closer.

“I love you,” I whisper into his ear, relinquishing the final, broken piece of myself into his care. I can’t stop myself, don’t want to stop myself, even knowing he might very well throw it back in my face before this night is over. “I love you, Ethan Frost, and will until the day I die.”

“Chloe!” He grabs my face in his hands, his mouth latching onto mine like a dying man who has finally found salvation. Seconds later he starts to come, and I pull him closer, hold him tight, as he empties all that he is inside me.

Chapter Twenty-eight

I don’t know how long we stand there like that, Ethan impaled inside me, me wrapped around him. And I don’t care. All that matters is that he’s mine. For these long, trembling moments Ethan Frost belongs only to me. Even knowing that I’m only minutes away from having to give him up once and for all doesn’t mar the preciousness of these moments. How can it when, for the first time, Ethan is as vulnerable, as open as I am?

He’s still kissing me, his mouth hot, demanding, voracious on mine. I kiss him back. I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. Until my lips burn and my jaw aches and my tears have finally burned themselves away. And then I kiss him some more.

“I didn’t mean it,” he finally says, lifting his head just enough so that there’s a scant inch of space between us. “I didn’t mean any of it.”

His breath is hot on my face, his body hard and solid against me. Inside me. And still I don’t know what to say. What to think or feel or do. How can I when his earlier indifference is still an open, aching wound inside me?

“Baby, I swear. I never meat to hurt you.”

I shake my head, look away. Try not to hear. Try even harder not to listen to the words coming out of his mouth. They’re exactly what I wanted him to say twenty minutes ago, thirty minutes ago. But not now.

Not when it’s too late.

Not when I feel like I’ve been ripped open, all my pain and fear and need on trembling display.

Not when I’ve already broken.

I must have spoken out loud, because he tells me, “It’s not too late. It’s not.” He drops kisses on my cheek, my temple, the side of my neck. For the first time I register that his torn-up lip feels rough against my skin. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The tears have stopped now, and I don’t move, don’t speak, barely even breathe. My whole body feels like it’s been encased in ice, and for the first time I’m grateful for the chill. Because I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to feel any of it. But he’s still inside me, and as he moves and trembles against me, it’s impossible for me not to feel. Impossible for me not to love him.