Page 89 of Double Bucked

I peel away from her and get out of bed. I need distance. It’s the only way I’m going to be able to think.

“I can’t do this,” I say.

Claire sits up in bed. Her hair is a wild tangle. Her robe hangs off one shoulder, small breast exposed, pink nipple peaked. My ache tightens, and I pace.

“What are you saying?”

I shake my head. “This ain’t right. You don’t want me. You just want to punish him.”

Her mouth twists into a scowl. “Jesus Christ, of all times not to think with your dick, Ransom.”

I pull my fingers through my hair. “Trust me, both my dick and my heart are screaming at me right now.”

“What are they saying? Ransom, you’re an idiot?”

I stop pacing at the foot of the bed. I wrap my hands around both posts and look Claire dead in the eyes. “They’re saying…when you love a woman that hard, you can do better by her.”

Claire stares at me. Her nostrils flare and then subside.

She whips herself out of bed, yanking her robe around her chest. “Go to hell.”

My mouth tastes like metal. “Classic Claire. The second I open up, you shut down.”

“You don’t get to use those words with me.”

“What? I love you? Well, I do! I loved you back then, and I love you just as hard now. Trust me, I tried to get you out of my system. I tried it on every goddamn woman in Belleflower. But no one could hold a lick of a candle to you.”

She gets in my face and snaps, “Then why is it that every time you say I love you, it sounds like I win?”

“Claire?”

“What?”

Her eyes are blazing, her cheeks flushed with pink fire.

I tell her, “You win.”

This time, when she kisses me, she’s all mine.

He may have her heart. Her ring finger. The last few years of her life.

But, goddammit, I’ve always had her anger.

I yank the tie on her robe. It hisses as it comes free. I pull her in my arms and we both fall to our knees, and then I push her down so her back hits the floor. Her breath catches, splayed out on the rug underneath me, her eyes wide and wanting.

I wrap the tie around my fist. “You want me, princess?”

Her thighs part. “Yes.”

I get low, my knees around her hips. I take her hand. With my gaze on hers, I suck her ring finger into my mouth. Her diamond catches around my teeth, and I slide it free from her hand.

I spit it out. The metal hits the carpet.

“Then show me your hands.”

She knows what I want. She puts both her wrists together, holding them up for me. I take the tie from her robe and wrap it around, crossing the satin, binding her in a tight, clean knot.

Her tied wrists fall back above her head. I stand up over her. I drop my robe. Claire’s eyes drop to my briefs. There’s a dark patch where I’ve leaked, and she wets her lips. “What a mess you’ve made already,” she says, goading.

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