ache for him and bring me to the point of no return only to leave me there on the precipice. It was humiliating. But as I picked up my clothes, I found myself pitying him. Because he was his own worst nightmare and he didn’t even realise it. If I was a prisoner to Saint Memphis, it was nothing to the captive he made of himself.
I stood surrounded by the shattered remains of my bathroom shelf and all the broken bottles of wash products which were slowly leaking across the tiles. Aftershave meeting with perfume, toothpaste and mouthwash and filling the small room with the unpleasantly overwhelming combined scent.
I was shaking. Every muscle in my body trembling with need and hurt and a fucking pain that was rooted so deep within me that it felt like something was tearing apart within my damn soul.
I tipped my head back and bellowed to the ceiling as I fought to vent some of this anger in me, but it only seemed to grow and fester and push harder at the confines of my skin with a desperate need to break free.
I whirled on the mirror, hating the sight of myself falling to ruin as it taunted me from the depths of the silvery surface. The words scrawled across the dark skin of my chest mocking me as they were reflected back in reverse. The days are long, but the nights are dark. And I was staring down the barrel of another night sent to torture me. To make it worse she was mine tonight, due to sleep in my bed and fucking fool that I was, I'd been looking forward to having her that close, even though I'd known it would equal me aching for her all night long. But I was always aching for her these days and it was a wound that was only getting deeper, burrowing beneath my skin and taking all of my attention like an itch that burned with the desperate need to be scratched.
I yelled out as I slammed my fist into the mirror, the whole thing shattering as shards of glass were driven into my knuckles. Blood flew and a spike of pure agony raced through the bone of my freshly healed arm.
I was shaking even harder now, the finely tuned restraints I’d tied on my mind snapping one after another as I fought against the animal in me who wanted to race back down those stairs and find Tatum Rivers. I just didn't know if wanted to punish her so severely that she would never look at me with lust in her eyes ever again or rip what little remained of her clothes off and fuck her until the beast in me had taken as much from her flesh as I could possibly take. Either way, with the last of my control burning away into less than nothing, I was sure she would hate me for whichever choice I made.
I took a furious step towards the shower then changed my mind and spun away from it. My cock was hard and aching in my pants, even the small friction caused by walking making me groan as I imagined fucking my little siren until she couldn't see straight and she forgot all about Kyan and Blake and any other man who had ever touched her.
I wanted to brand myself all over her body inside and out, mark her as mine so clearly that all that anyone saw when they looked at her was a huge flashing sign saying Property of Saint Memphis. I'd tattoo it on that pretty face of hers if I could bear to see her tarnished that way and I’d certainly fuck it into her so deeply that she'd never forget it again.
But I couldn't do that. I couldn't even think about doing it. Because she wasn't mine. Not mine alone. She was Kyan's and Blake’s and Monroe's too. If she was fucking one of us then she should have been fucking all of us. But she shouldn't have been fucking any of us. Because those were the rules.
I threw the bathroom door open with such fury that it slammed into the wall and carved a dent into the plaster with the door handle.
The list of rules we'd all agreed to were still clutched in my left hand and they needed some fucking work done on them if I was going to have any hope of stopping them from getting destroyed.
I kneeled down