Page 44 of Breaking Blaze

“I take, boy…and I’ll take her, too….” His voice sneered, driving the truth deeper than the depths of his ruined soul.

“I’ll take her, too….”

Gasping, Blaze jolted awake, his chest burning. He slapped his hand against his chest, his heart racing beneath his palm.

It was a dream.

A dream that felt much too real. His guts twisted as the voice of his father—that motherfucking bastard—oozed through his mind.

The asshole was dead. Cirrhosis. A fitting death for a man who’d been rotten from the inside out. When the report of his death came through the admin office in Roda, he’d spent a full day numb, his emotions running riot. The hate, the fear, the anger he’d felt for more than twenty years, bashing up against the new sense of…relief. Of hope. With Ben Harris dead, Blaze was finally free. Wasn’t he?

I’ll never be free.

A soft moan shattered the moment as he remembered where he was…in his bed, with his Anna. His woman. The woman he’d loved for so long he couldn’t remember a moment when he hadn’t longed for her. He’d finally claimed her as he’d yearned to do for eight years. They’d claimed one another. After all the wanting and aching and heartbreaking and emptiness…he’d found his happiness.

But at what cost?

Tensing, he lifted his head to peer down at the woman curled up against him.

His heart was outside of his chest, warm and perfect beside him.

And he didn’t deserve her, wasn’t worthy of her. After all he’d done to her the last four years, how he’d hurt her over and over again…he hadn’t earned this moment with her. Hadn’t atoned.

You don’t deserve atonement. Or happiness, a haunting voice whispered. His voice.

Rapid fire—unstoppable and catastrophic—images from the last four years bombarded him. Flashes of him naked, buried inside other women, pleasuring other women…while imagining them as Anna. On hideous repeat, the images continued as more and more of his soul disintegrated. As more of his heart was torn from him, bloody and still pulsing.

Shame replaced satiation. Disgust replaced contentment. Self-hatred replaced every single sliver of hope his night with Anna had created. Hope for the future with the woman he loved splintered into a billion pieces—dying stars in the inky sky made of agony and sorrow.

Even as bitter tears flooded his eyes, he watched as his Anna slept, unaware that her greatest mistake was lying beside her, comprised of flesh and blood and crippling regrets.

Regret - hurting her.

Regret - promising what he shouldn’t have promised.

Regret - foolishly hoping for a life without…regret.

Blaze swallowed the pool of bile in his throat. He would never regret being with Anna—no matter how quickly their time together had flown. He would never regret finally experiencing what it felt like to be inside her, to feel her warm and wet and throbbing around his thick cock. He would never regret the pride he felt when making her come apart, exploding around him, screaming his name, moaning and writhing beneath him.

For as long as he lived, he would remember those moments.

Holding his breath, Blaze began the delicate task of slowly, achingly removing himself from Anna’s embrace. Like tearing each limb from his own body…then cutting his heart from his chest with a dull spoon.

Each millimeter of space between them was a chasm he would never be able to cross again—no matter how far he jumped or how many bridges he built. At last, slowly sliding his right leg from beneath Anna’s warm, soft, silky thigh, Blaze swung both legs from the bed, planting his feet into the carpet before bracing his elbows on his knees, his head in his shaking hands.

She would never forgive him for this.

“I’ll take her, too….”Words, spoken years ago, still carried the same toxicity, the same fatal consequence: he had to end things with Anna, even before they truly began.

Like a coward—a vulnerable, weak, unworthy, bastard asshole of a coward, Blaze stood, dressed quickly and quietly, and slunk from his own fucking apartment into the glowing embers burning in the sunrise sky. Leaving behind his very heart and soul sleeping comfortably in his bed…a smile on her face.

Anna came awake slowly, her body deliciously sore, her pussy still throbbing, the red marks from Blaze’s teeth and scruff on her breasts warm to the touch. Her eyes still closed, she moaned, flopping onto her back.

Flinging out her left arm, she knew she would find the bed empty beside her. From the light pouring in through the window, she knew she’d overslept, which meant Blaze was already gone. Construction was a crack of dawn profession.

She stretched, her core muscles twinging from the abuse of Blaze’s huge cock as he’d pounded into her the night before.

At that visceral memory, she moaned again, a spark of fire and want lighting up her insides. On fire, she writhed, her sensitive flesh brushing along the sheets as she moved. Her breath caught when the sheet rubbed against her hard nipples.

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