education, a house, and a business. I wasn’t grateful. I was miserable. And I was loyal to a man who didn’t give a shit about me. A man who had sucked out all my happiness to cover all his evil.
“Because I had to,” I said.
“And what do you want now?”
Speaking the word that was in my heart would make this so much harder. But how could I hide it? How could I live with more regret?
“You.”
The sound that came from him was a mix between a grunt and a laugh. And then came movement. His knees bent, and his hands moved behind him…even farther away from me.
Was I crazy to want this man? To crave what we had once almost had? To yearn for his coldness because it was better to feel that than nothing at all?
I couldn’t control my hands anymore. I reached forward and wrapped them around his calf. Even though his jeans were thick, the heat from his skin poured through the fabric.
His stare intensified.
I slid my hands up to his knee. “I have so many regrets, Garin. I can’t live with another.”
Everything was so dimly lit, like the cell, and a little chilly from the winter night. But touching him here felt different. The cold was different. The sensation under my fingers was different.
But the pounding in my chest was identical.
“Is this what you want, Kyle?” His hands were suddenly on my throat. His grip was tight. His skin felt like it was scorching mine. “You want to feel me?”
He knelt in front of me, pushing me onto my back. Once I was flat, he hovered over me.
I had a hard time breathing. “Yes,” I finally answered.
“That’s all you want?”
My mind took me back to the hallway outside the restroom, to the cement floor inside the cell when Garin was peeling off my clothes. The dream and my reality were overlapping, and I couldn’t stop it inside my brain. But here, on this beach, it was just us. Nobody walking by on their way to the bathroom, no Breath, no Beard. Just darkness with the feeling of the sand beneath me and the sound of the waves in front of me. His exhales filled me with his scent, his body almost covering me.
“I want more,” I said.
He came a little closer and sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, his teeth grinding into it. He’d done that in the cell. It had felt so good then; it felt even better now. “Can your body take more of a beating? Because I’ll hurt you, Kyle.”
“Hurt me.”
His other hand gripped the top of my tank, both hands now tightening in different spots, my breathing only getting worse. “I don’t know how to be gentle.”
“Then, don’t be,” I panted.
“I’ve wanted to fuck you for so long, to feel your cunt dripping over my cock. I almost want to punish you for making me wait all these years.”
He was as gritty as he had been inside the prison, as dirty, as feral. And I was as turned on as I’d ever been. I didn’t want to wait until we got back to my house where there was a cozy bed waiting for us. I wanted him here, on this beach, right now.
“The wait has been my punishment. Give me what I want, Garin.”
I heard the fabric rip as he shredded my tank top right down the center. Then, he unhooked the front clasp of my bra, stripping it off me.
“This body…how did you keep it away from me for so long?”
As I heard his voice from inside the cell, I moaned, “Garin…”
His hands left my body roughly to take off his shirt, yanking it over his head. When they returned, one of them squeezed my nipple while the other held my face still. From the way he was positioned, my arms were pinned down to my sides. I couldn’t drag him closer. I couldn’t use my fingers to emphasize what I wanted. I couldn’t touch him.
“Kiss me,” I demanded.
The moonlight streaked across his face, showing me that his eyes were locked with mine. I felt the need, the desire. And I felt his hesitation, as though he were battling something deep inside the same way I was.
“Kiss me—”
His lips crashed against mine before I even finished speaking, and I moaned again. I had his tongue in my mouth, his scent in my nose, his body on top of me. It caused the deepest, strongest, fiercest throbbing in my clit.
As he