Page 17 of Under His Embrace

I’m so sorry that I ran?

Please fuck me again because it makes me feel better?

Don’t hate me, but can I please leave again?

Nothing would work. They were all lame platitudes that wouldn’t help this situation.

“I’m sorry.”

I blinked at his simple words, direct, blunt, and sincere. He wasn’t talking out of his ass, but I didn’t understand how he thoughtheshould be the one apologizing here.

“I’m sorry I was so…” He scowled, seeming mad and disappointed with himself as he gestured at me. “I’m sorry I was so rough.”

I wiped the last of my tears away and fought the hysterical urge to laugh. “Toorough?” It was just right. Perfect. So good that I wanted him again despite all the reasons I definitely shouldn’t.

“I shouldn’t have been that hard and?—”

I swung my legs off the bed. “Franco, it’s…” I couldn’t say it was all right. If I was reduced to tears, so blindsided by how good it felt to have him deep inside me and kissing me so possessively again, nothing was all right.

“Come here.” He held out his hand, helping me stand. Once I was on my feet, he pulled me into a tender hug. It wasn’t an excuse to cop a feel, but an embrace of security. “Let me at least clean you up.”

I smiled, touched that he could be so soft and careful with me. Maybe that was it. He spent so much of his anger and frustration with so-called rough sex that he only had the energy to be delicate and tender now.

He led me to the bathroom, and after he turned on the water, I followed him into the stall. Hot water pounded down and massaged my body. It felt so good that I couldn’t hold in a moan of pleasure. I never had a luxury like this, only affording lousyapartments with pathetic bathrooms and even lousier water tank pressure.

“See?” he said, slightly teasing. “I was too rough with you.”

I smirked, keeping my eyes closed as I lifted my face to the spray of water. “Not too rough.”

He rubbed his thumb over the marks he had left on me from taking me so hard. “I didn’t expect to do that.”

I nodded. “Me neither.”

He grunted a laugh. “What do you mean?”

“Well. Seeing that you killed that man who was chasing after me, I think it’s not farfetched to think that you and Liam saved me back there. And that what we did in the other room could be mistaken as some weird form of gratitude.”

He cleaned up, letting me start on my head. This was the first time I could clean up since the A&J Deli shift that I never finished, and I wanted to purr at the chance to do so. I hated that I felt like I was washing away the evidence of what Franco and I did, but with him in the shower, cleaning up alongside me, I didn’t suffer his absence.

“I meant that I didn’t come into the room to question you to the point that we’d fuck like that.”

I sighed. “But you let Romeo interrogate me first.”

“I needed a moment, Chloe. Seeing you again threw me off balance.”

I know exactly what you mean.

“I won’t apologize for what we just did.”

Me neither.“I… I wanted it too, Franco.”

“But that wasn’t why I came into the room.”

“It just happened,” I finished for him, owning up to my part of the spontaneity of it all.

“I trust that Romeo got all the answers that he could out of you, anyway.” He looked at me seriously, as though he wastrying to grapple with this situation of seeing each other in the last way either of us could ever have imagined.

“Will I be a hostage here?” I asked.

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