He peeled the condom off, dropping it into my little bathroom wastebasket.

I didn’t look away while he cleaned himself off and tucked his spent member back into his boxers.

At some point he’d taken his shirt off, and he didn’t bother to zip his jeans.

I enjoyed the view while he came back into the room and started to prowl.

But more than his spectacular body caught my attention as he moved around my room, shooting looks at me every few steps, like he couldn’t help himself.

He was off, more than usual off.

There was a darkness in his eyes, a great black void of it, that called to me, to some integral part of me, deep down inside the marrow of my bones, that I hadn’t even realized existed.

It was heady.

I was witnessing some new level of his rage, and it did nothing so much as draw me in further, even when I knew that all I should be doing was sending him away.

“You got rid of ’Tato,” he growled, moving out into the hallway, then back into my room again.

I sat up, drawing the sheets to me, covering my nakedness.

That caught his attention, and he stopped pacing, just in the doorway, his eyes on the sheets.

“He’s at Raf’s,” I said defensively.  “He’s Raf’s dog as much as mine.  It was his turn.”  This was kind of the truth.  Part of it, anyway.  Raf loved that dog as much as I did, and he’d taken him without a qualm.

But the reason I’d sent him there, of course, I wouldn’t be sharing with Heath.  ’Tato wouldn’t stop barking at this new guy I’m seeing, would not go over well, I knew.

He seemed to catch the hint of deceit instantly, though, going by the way his demeanor suddenly changed.

His lip curled, eyes running over me in a way I didn’t like.  Like he was only just seeing me then.  Like he’d only now noticed something about me that he found unpleasant.

“I know about that other man.”  His tone was more than accusatory.

It was disgusted.

My entire body stiffened.  How dare he?!

“That was fucking quick,” he added quietly and vehemently.

It was a short sentence, not many words, but somehow it was enough to convey something so much worse than accusation or disgust.

It told me he was wounded.  Like I’d hurt him badly.

Like I’d done something wrong.

Like I was the bad one here.

That set me off.

“Excuse me?” I spat at him.

“I do not excuse you.”

That had me cursing at him.  Loudly and fluently.  Losing my cool.  Completely.

“He’s not the other man,” I snarled.  “You are, and that’s all you’ll ever be.  I don’t know what I was to you, but you were never my man.  That wasn’t what we had.”

One second he was nearly in the hallway, the next he had me pinned to the bed, moving so fast it made my head spin.

“That’s a lie,” he growled into my face.  “And you’re not a liar, Lourdes.  I think you only tried to pull off that one because you’re lying to yourself.”

I tried to buck him off, but that only had him moving his hips, seating himself more securely against me, our bodies flush.  I felt the hard bulge of him growing with every movement, grinding crudely into my pelvis.

And I felt my temper going.  Felt myself losing it.

“You left,” I spat at him, all of my bitterness, every ounce of my ire in those two words.

He shuddered on top of me.  “I didn’t want to.  Can’t you see that I didn’t want to?”

His voice was pleading, and the tone of it was like balm to my rage, calming it instantly, and though my feelings were every bit as volatile, they were no longer as uncomplicated as the wrath I’d been feeling mere moments before.

“You left,” I said again, but the tone had changed completely, so that now I was pleading back at him.

He groaned, a pained noise, and started kissing me.

I let him.  No, not let.  Welcomed.

I sucked at his tongue and didn’t stop him even when I felt his hands between our bodies, freeing his rock hard erection.

It sprang free, slapping into my thigh.  He gave me time to stop him as he reached into his pocket, ripped open a condom, and rolled it on.

I didn’t stop him.  Didn’t even consider it.

His hand guided his tip slowly to my entrance.

God, I’d forgotten how impossibly hard he was.  How big.  How perfect.

That first time, I could have blamed on being on the edge of sleep.  On thinking I was dreaming.

I had no such excuse for this round.

As soon as his hand slipped out from between our bodies, my legs snaked firmly around his hips.

He gripped my hair in both hands, still kissing me as he stabbed into me with one heavy thrust.

He didn’t hold my wrists captive, for once, didn’t bind them.

Left free, my arms curled around his shoulders, clutching him to me.

He slammed our bodies against the bed, over and over, his jeans abrading against my inner thighs as he drilled me deep into the mattress.

At some point his hands left my hair and went down to my hips.  He ripped his mouth away to watch me as he rose up onto his knees.

He grabbed my ass in both hands and lifted me into his possessive thrusts.

My hands, which had been forced from his shoulders, moved to my own body, gripping the sensitive mounds of my breasts into my palms, pushing them together, giving him a hell of a view.