hold it back. The poor girl had been burned after all. Her delicate flesh seared and singed. She needed comfort. She needed softness.
But fuck that. My fury was too big. It was a monster inside me.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, taunting the bear. She didn’t want to know what I was really thinking.
“Why didn’t you take me up on my offer?” I asked, trying to control the anger that nearly blanketed every single syllable of my question.
“Offer?”
“I offered you the money you wanted so you wouldn’t have to get the brand.”
She darted her eyes away from mine and then took a deep breath. “And I told you there was more to this than money. If you’d just be a little more patient, I could—”
But the boiling fury inside of me finally bubbled over. “Patient? You fucking branded yourself! You did it to yourself! Are you so much a whore you can’t even see the madness of what you did?”
Her mouth dropped open in shock, and then the same fire from the end of that fucking branding iron entered her eyes. Finally, fucking finally.
“Back to calling me a whore huh?” she snapped, eyes afire. “Call me what you want, but if it weren’t for me, we both would have failed the Initiation tonight. Your weak ass couldn’t handle it!”
Weak? I was the only one standing up to those twisted bastards.
“Who gives a fuck?” I shouted, jumping up from the bed and pacing the room like a caged tiger. “Who fucking cares? There are some things in life that—”
“No!” she shouted from the bed. “Quitting is not an option. Do you hear me? We. Can’t. Quit.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and concentrated on breathing. I needed a fucking drink. I need a hate fuck. I needed to run from this place and never return. I needed escape from my reality, from my past, and from my fucking future.
But only one of those options was possible.
I was going to fuck the greedy whore locked in this room with me.
Not asking. Not waiting. Not hesitating in the slightest, I charged the bed and began tearing her clothes off in a wild fury.
She could have screamed. She could have said no. She could have tried to fight.
Not that any of that would have helped.
But instead, she met my rage, my aggression, my fury head on.
“I’m going to fuck you until you cry out,” I growled, getting her naked with every word.
“Good,” she said.
“I’m going to make it hurt.”
“Good,” she growled furiously back at me.
“I’m going to treat you like the whore you are.”
“As long as that means you won’t act like the coward you are,” she countered.
Fucking bitch.
Seeing red, I flipped her onto her stomach and licked my palm as it would be the only lube she’d be getting. “You better finger yourself, play with your clit, do whatever you need to get that pussy wet. I’m going to fuck this ass of yours until you scream for mercy.”
“Make it hurt,” she mumbled against the pillows on the bed.
I swiped my licked palm along her pussy and collected the juices that were already there to lubricate her anus with her own arousal. My whore liked it rough, it seemed.
And just as I took hold of my shaft and placed it at her puckered hole, I froze.
I wasn’t this man.
I wasn’t my father. He would fuck a woman in the ass with no care in the world. He would call a woman a whore. He would be an aggressive asshole with no control.
I was not my father.
I was not my fucking father!
Hopping off the bed, I struggled to untangle myself in all the partially discarded clothing, hating myself for what I’d just been about to do.
“Wait,” Portia cried out. She sounded confused, half-pissed, half-vulnerable. “Don’t go.”
“I have to,” I said, pulling up my pants. “I don’t trust myself around you right now. I can’t control the rage I have. I feel so fucking out of control.” If I didn’t leave, I was going to punch my fist through a goddamn wall.
She reached out for my hand. “Take that rage out on me. I want you to. I want you to fuck my ass. I want you to get every piece of anger out of you. I want this.” She tugged me to the bed. I dared lift my eyes to meet hers, and I felt it straight through to my fucking spine when she said, “I need this just as much as you.”
I