again, and this time I stepped into his path. “Jace, give us a minute.”
“Hell, no!” He was tense all over, and I could feel fury radiating like heat from a bonfire. “You shouldn’t be alone with him when he’s like this.”
My dad growled in warning, and I glared at Jace. “Don’t tell me where I shouldn’t be. Stay here. I need to talk to Marc.”
He scowled, but nodded. I shot an apologetic glance at my father, then ran out the back door after Marc. But the backyard was empty. I raced down the steps, adrenaline flooding my veins, demanding an immediate search.
“Over here,” Marc said, and I whirled around to find him leaning against the shed near the tree line. I jogged across the yard and into the shed while he held the door open for me. He yanked the pull chain on the light, then leaned against the closed door, and I held up the wall next to him, giving him the two feet of distance he seemed to prefer.
I pushed hair behind my ears, wishing he’d look at me. Wishing he’d touch me, and show me that he could still feel something for me other than anger, even if that something else was buried way down deep.
But instead, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, reinforcing the physical and emotional distance he was building. He blinked into the glare from the naked bulb, and his face was blank. Completely unreadable.
“You were really going to hurt him.” I’d read that much in his posture. And then Jace would have hurt him back, and the situation would have been unrecoverable.
He rolled his eyes and let his head fall against the wood plank wall at his back. “Do you blame me?”
I sighed. He had every right to be pissed, but I had to think about the good of the Pride. “If this war really happens, we’re going to need him, and you know it.”
“Maybe you both should have thought of that before you let him shove his tongue down your throat in front of—” Marc’s voice broke beneath obvious anguish, and my heart suddenly felt like it weighed ten pounds. “Why are you doing this to me, Faythe? Am I not suffering enough, knowing he’s been inside you? Is the floor show just to give me a visual? To make sure I know exactly how much you like it…?”
“No!” I took a deep breath, trying to compose my thoughts. “Marc, I’m not trying to hurt you. I swear. I just…You say I have to choose, but I don’t know how to do that if you won’t come near me, and you won’t let him near me, either. You won’t touch me, Marc. Not a hug. Not a kiss. You won’t even sit less than two feet from me.”
“And your solution is to let him grope you in plain sight?”
“I just wanted to know I wasn’t alone.” I closed my eyes, grasping for an explanation he’d understand. “I know how he feels. He wants to show me how he feels about me, and you don’t. You won’t. I miss you, and missing you is so much harder when I can still see you, and hear you, and smell you, but you won’t touch me. You hardly ever even look at me unless you’re too pissed off to avoid it, and I can’t tell if you still want me, or if you just want to make me pay for what I did.”
“You slept with someone else!” Marc whirled around and punched the wall of the shed, and his knuckles came away bloody. “Hell, yeah, I want you to pay! I want you both to pay. How am I supposed to look at you after you’ve been with him? Knowing you still want to be with him? I’m in the right here, Faythe. You screwed up—you screwed him—and I’m paying for it.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Sorry doesn’t mean anything! Not when you’re still with him. It’s not just that you cheated—it’s that he’s still here, and you’re still with him. It just goes on and on, and it hurts every single time I see you with him. I hate it that he makes you smile, and that there’s nothing I can do to stop this. I can’t think straight, and everything hurts, and nothing makes sense anymore. You’re shredding my heart with one hand and stroking his ego with the other. And it’s killing me, Faythe. You’re killing me. And it’s only going to get worse, now that everyone knows.”
I swiped tears from my cheeks with cold, shaking fingers. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be sorry enough to tell him to go get his thrills on top of someone else’s girlfriend. I want you to swear I’m the only one you want, and the only one you’ll ever want, and that you’ll never even look at anyone else again. I want you to want me, Faythe. As much as I want you.”
“I do want you. I never stopped wanting you.” I couldn’t hold back the tears, and my words were halting half sobs. “This isn’t about you…”
“Well, it should be!” he shouted, and I flinched. “Everything I do is about you, and I want the reverse to be true, too.” I wiped more tears, my throat aching with words that would only make this worse. “What, you need a reminder? That’s what he was doing, right? And now you smell like him. You probably taste like him. You should taste like me…”
He was on me before I could even catch my breath, his mouth bruising mine, and after that, breathing didn’t seem so important. Marc pressed me into the wall of the shed, his hands on either side of my shoulders. He kissed me like it had been years, rather than days. Like he was reminding us both.
My body responded without consulting my brain, and I clutched at him, pulling him closer. I’d missed him so much.
His lips trailed down my neck and his hands wandered beneath my shirt, claiming. Demanding. He pulled away just long enough to tug my tee over my head. My shirt hit the dusty shed floor, and my bra landed on top of it an instant later.
His mouth fed from mine, his tongue slid between my lips as his hands explored territory I’d thought abandoned. Then he dropped into a squat, leaving my mouth cold and empty, and lifted first my right foot, then my left, to pull my boots off. He dropped a trail of hot kisses down my stomach. I gasped when he tugged my jeans button free, but Marc was silent. Eager, but still angry.
I almost lost my balance when he shoved my pants and underwear down with both hands, then tugged them free and slid them across the floor with one foot. He unbuttoned his own pants and pushed them halfway down, then lifted me and held me against the cold wall with his own body.
He slid inside me completely with one stroke, and I had to wrap my arms around his neck for balance. This was not gentle, tender sex. This was desperate need and scorching lust, part revenge, part passion. This was him reclaiming what he thought he’d lost and giving what he thought I’d asked for.
Every thrust was fast and hard. Every stroke was deep and long. Friction burned between us, and my pleasure built too fast to be savored, too hot to be held. By the time he shuddered against me, within me, slamming me into the wall over and over, shaking the entire shed with our fierce union, my own intense, tight coil of pleasure had eclipsed all sight, smell, and sound that wasn’t Marc.
He collapsed against me, his shirt damp with my sweat and his. I clung to him, still throbbing around him, breathing hard as my heart pounded, stunned, and finally hopeful.
Then, without a word, he lifted me and stepped back, withdrawing in every sense of the word. He set my bare feet on the dirty floor and zipped his pants up. I stood there naked and in shock, staring after him as he shoved the door open and let in a frigid draft. “Maybe now you’ll remember.”
Then he was gone, and the world
