Page 70 of When You Are Mine

She sat in numb silence, waiting for him to spew more venom. She saw his great hurt, the soul-deep laceration she had inflicted tonight. She saw the hard-won, rarely offered trust that Cam had been so stingy with all his life, laying in tatters around them. And she felt low and dirty and unworthy. She deserved his rage.

“You betrayed me.” Cam resumed his pacing in the wake of her guilty silence. “With my best friend. He was like a brother to me, and you’ve killed that.”

“I’m sorry.” She winced when he stopped right in front of her, grabbing the back of her neck, his fingers digging cruelly through her hair to find the fragile bones beneath.

“You’re sorry?” Seething anger bubbled up in the eyes running over her face. “You’re sorry,” he repeated, loosening his grip on her neck to lean in and nuzzle her, deceptively gentle. “Sorry that you cost me my best friend?” he whispered in her ear, sucking on the tender lobe before continuing.

“Are you sorry you deceived me?” He trailed furious kisses down the downy curve of her neck.

“I didn’t deceive you.” Kerris shuddered as Cam wove a cocoon of raging intimacy around them. “I made a mistake. It was thoughtless. I wish I could take it back, but it won’t happen again.”

“You’re damned right it won’t happen again.” Cam pulled the edge of her tunic back and tongued her collarbone. “You’re mine, Kerris.”

“Yes, I am.” Kerris was quick to agree. Eager to remind him of it. “Cam, please don’t forget that. I amyourwife. I chose you. I love you. We still have our family to build and our future together.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt we’ll have a future together, angel.” He laughed against the exposed skin of her neck. “I’ll never let you go, Kerris. You know that, right?”

“I don’t want to go.” She pulled back to look into the shadowed beauty of his face, still mottled with temper. “I want to stay with you.”

“Prove it.”

“How…what—”

“Take off your clothes.” His staccato words cut into the quiet of their bedroom, pelting her nerves.

“Cam, don’t do this.” She clutched the collar he had already pulled away. “Please don’t do this in anger.”

“I’m not angry anymore, Kerris.” His swiped his expression free of the fury she knew still boiled under his skin. “I’ve just discovered that seeing another man kissing my wife turns me on.”

Kerris gulped, willing to do anything to heal the hurt she saw behind his rage, but afraid he could do irreparable damage to their marriage, more even than what she had done. Sex had never been easy for her. Her twisted history with TJ had made it hard and complicated and scary, but she had overcome the pain of it, had given herself freely to her husband and could find some pleasure in the act.

Cam had always been gentle and considerate. She had told him the story of TJ on their wedding night. He had seen them as two broken spirits coming together to heal each other, finding each other and helping each other. He’d always been tender with her, but there was no tenderness in him now. He folded his arms across the lean muscles of his chest, waiting for her to strip. Wanting to reestablish himself as her husband in the most fundamental way a man could.

Kerris pursed her lips, blinking back tears of shame and hurt, knowing she would not refuse. She tugged at the hem of her tunic, pulling it over her head, exposing her simple black bra. She pulled off the leggings, feeling the greedy slide of his eyes over her nearly naked body. She reached up to the front clasp of the bra, ready to take the next step in this sexual battle of wills where Cam held every advantage. His fingers covered hers, a viperous grin on his too-handsome face.

“I’ll take it from here.”

He opened the clasp and ruthlessly fondled her nipples. He pushed her back against the coolness of their freshly washed sheets. Kerris closed her eyes, tears streaking her face, making a slow slide into the corners of her mouth and washing away the bittersweet traces of Walsh’s kiss.

* * *

“I can’t let you run this time, Walsh,” Jo said while Walsh tossed clothes into his suitcase with short, tight motions.

“Yeah, try and stop me.” He moved forward, ignoring the yawning hole in his chest, refusing to allow the aching emptiness to slow him down. “I gotta get out of Rivermont.”

“Walsh, what were you thinking?” Jo, not for the first time since they’d left the cottage, looked at him like he was the class dunce.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking.”

“Of course you were, only not with your head but with your dick.” Anger smelted Jo’s gray eyes to hot silver. She leaned forward to poke him in the chest when he strode by.

“Is that what you think?” He stopped, forcing himself to face her.

“That you’ve lusted after Kerris since day one? I know you have, and now Cam knows it, too.”

“Cam has known how I feel about Kerris for a long time.” Walsh shook his head, hindsight bringing everything into clear focus. “That’s why he rushed her to get married. The night they announced their engagement I was about to tell him how I felt. I should have. I knew this would happen.”

“Knew what? That you’d cheat with Kerris? Damn, Walsh, has it gone any further than a kiss?”

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