But the entire elevator ride, my insides squeeze with hurt even though I try to reason with myself that I have no right to feel this way.
Without really seeing anything ahead, I stare at our penthouse as we walk in. It’s our new home. Our hotel rooms have always been like home, but they’re not my home. My home is far away. My home is now this man. And I need to accept the fact that loving him might break me. Over and over, loving Remington is going to break me. When he’s fighting and takes more punches than I can bear, I will break. When he’s tender with me and gives me all the love I don’t feel I deserve, I will break. When he has an episode, where his eyes go black and he doesn’t remember things he said or did . . . I will break.
“You like the room, little firecracker?” His body heat envelops me as he comes up from behind and tucks me into his body with his arms. I feel warm. Protected. “Want to hit the running trail when it gets dark?”
His lips graze the curve between my neck and collarbone, and the feather-touch sends a painful little ripple to my heart. I feel as if I’ve swallowed the entire garden full of searing-hot cacti as I pull up the collar of my shirt and turn.
“Did you f**k other women?”
Our eyes meet, and a familiar shiver of awareness runs through me as I stare into his face. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what he’s thinking.
“I realize I have no right to ask you.” I search deep into his blue eyes, and they search me back with equal intensity. “We broke up, right? It was the end of it. But . . . did you?”
I wait, and his eyes begin to twinkle.
He. Is. Actually. Grinning!
“It matters to you?” he asks cockily, one eyebrow high. “If I slept with anyone?”
The rage and jealousy bubble up inside me so fast, I grab a couch pillow and slam it into his chest as I explode. “What do you think, you f**king jerk?”
He grabs the pillow and easily discards it. “Tell me how much it matters.” The sparkle of mischief in his eyes only makes me grit my teeth harder, and I shoot another pillow his way.
“Tell me!”
“Why?” He deflects the pillow and comes after me as I start backing off, his smile full of amusement. “You left me, little firecracker. You left me with a sweet letter telling me, very nicely, to go f**k myself and to have a nice life.”
“No! I left you with a letter that told you I loved you! Something you hadn’t told me until I came back to you and begged you to tell me.”
“You’re so f**king cute like this. Come here.” He grabs the back of my head and pulls me into his arms, and it takes all my force to yank free.
“Remington. You’re laughing at me!” I cry wretchedly.
“I said come here.” He gathers me back into his arms, and I twist my head and shudder as I try to squirm free.
“Remy, tell me! Please tell me, what did you do?” I beg.
He pins me to the wall and sets his forehead on mine, his gaze completely territorial. “I like that you’re jealous. Is it because you love me? Do you feel proprietary of me?”
“Let go,” I breathe angrily.
He lifts one large, tan hand and cups my face so, so gently, I could be glass. “I do. I feel completely proprietary of you. You’re mine. I’m not letting you go.”
“You said no to me,” I breathe, blazing with hurt inside. “For months and months. I was dying for you. I was going crazy. I . . . came . . . like a f**king idiot! On your f**king leg! You withheld yourself from me until I was . . . dying a little inside with wanting you. You’ve got more willpower than Zeus! But the first women they bring to your door . . . the moment I’m gone, the first whores they happened to bring you . . .”
His smile remains on his face, but the light in his eyes has dimmed, and now there’s a fierce intensity in his stare. “What would you have done if you were here? Stopped it?”
“Yes!”
“But where were you?”
My breath comes in jerks.
He lowers his head and looks deep into my eyes, now curious. “Where were you, Brooke?” One big, warm hand curls around my throat, and he strokes his thumb across my pulse point.
“I was broken,” I cry in a mix of anger and pain. “You broke me.”
“No. You. Your letter. Broke me.” The laughter has faded from his gaze as he runs the pad of his thumb up my throat then runs it, lovingly, along the curve of my jaw then finally trails it, like a feather, softly across my lips. “What does it matter if I had to kiss a thousand lips to forget these?”
There’s a knock on the door, but our warring energies are locked like missiles on their targets. He’s too busy caging me in with his arms, and I’m too busy having my heart broken inside me, loathing that I’m the actual wielder of the axe, because we’d broken up. I know he needs sex when he’s manic. I know I left. I had no right to Remington or anything he did or said.