The acrimony in his tone tore into her like knives and shredded her heart. “Why would you say something so mean?”
“Because it’s true. I always knew where I stood with him. He hated me from the moment I was born. But you…” His scarred voice carried the full weight of his disgust. “You made me believe a lie. And then you kicked me in my teeth and rammed it down my throat. When I needed you most, when I was being brutalized by the people I stupidly thought were my friends, I heard you laughing on the other side of the door every day with the same people who were torturing me. Every moment of that horror, I kept hoping and praying you would come in and help me. And every day you disappointed me until the only thing I could think about was ripping your callous heart out of your chest and eating it whole.”
Zarya wept at what he described.
But what hurt the most was what he hadn’t thrown in her face…
When she’d finally gone into that room, she’d slapped him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t you dare cry.”
“Fuck you, you sanctimonious bastard! At least I didn’t throw you away… twice!” She got up to leave again.
Once more, he cut her path off and stood between her and the door. “Aren’t you full of surprises? I’ve never heard you use profanity like that.”
He was lucky she wasn’t spewing even more at him. ’Cause right now, she wanted to verbally strike him as much as he’d struck her. And honestly, she wasn’t sure how she was keeping it all in. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know. I…”
Darling forgot what he was going to say as his gaze dropped to see the deep cleft between her breasts. She was so much shorter than him that he had a direct view all the way down to the fact that she didn’t have on any underwear.
His throat went dry.
He wanted to hate her. He needed to hate her and yet…
Memories of the past tortured him. In all of his life, she had been his only refuge. Her voice had guided him through hell and led him out the other side of it. No matter how bad things had been, she’d always made it better.
In her arms, he’d never known pain. Only comfort.
Pleasure…
She betrayed you.
He couldn’t allow himself to lose sight of that brutal fact. Yet right now, he felt himself slipping under her spell.
He was so confused. It was so easy to hate her when she wasn’t around.
But one whiff of her scent. One glimpse of her body. The sound of his name on her lips…
He was weakened and undone.
Don’t you dare think about forgiving her. He wanted to hang on to his anger and hatred with both hands. To wrap himself up in its protective coat so that no one could ever hurt him again.
And yet as he looked into her amber eyes…
He saw what no one else had ever given him.
Her heart.
God, help me. Please…
Zarya froze at the sight of his hunger for her. This was the man she knew. The one she wanted back at any cost.
But underneath that was a pain so profound it stole her breath. He was wounded so badly that it made her own heart ache for him. She couldn’t stand to see him like this. He looked lost and tormented.
Please come back to me. She needed what they’d had. Needed him to tell her everything would be okay and that he still loved her, no matter what.
Before he withdrew from her again, she rose up and captured his lips.
He wrapped his arms around her, fisting his hands behind her back as he kissed her senseless. Closing her eyes, she breathed him in. All of her emotions slammed into her. Her fear that he’d been killed. Her guilt over what they’d done to him. Her anger over the way he’d treated her.
But most of all was the love she despised feeling for him. Only he could destroy her.
Darling burned with a need to kill her. He did. The darkness inside wanted nothing from her except to feel her blood on his hands. But the man in him only wanted to lie in her arms until she drove the demons inside him straight back to hell where they belonged.
He needed the peace she alone gave him. Just for one moment, he wanted to feel secure again. Feel something other than this bitterness that ate at him until it drove him to murder the ones who caused it.
For so long now, he’d been lost. But as he tasted her, he remembered what it was like to be home. To feel welcomed…
And in this instant, that was what his battered soul craved most.
Growling, he picked her up and carried her over to his desk. With one arm, he sent everything on top of it to the floor. Then he set her down. His heart hammering, he stared at her, torn between the two things he wanted most.
To kill her and to love her…
She pulled the gown off, over her head.
His thoughts scattered as he saw the body that had haunted him since the moment he’d first touched her. She had the most beautiful breasts of any woman ever born. And as she arched her back, all the blood drained from his head and went straight to his groin.