Page 12 of The Last Time You Break Me

As his gaze took in every inch of my naked skin, I remained frozen for a moment.

His eyes roamed slowly, almost like he was committing me to memory and when he licked his lips, they became wet under the languid taste as, despite my body reacting to the sight of him, the rest of me remained cold and detached.

He had his chance and he broke me.

I pulled the towel from where it hung and covered my body from his searing-hot sight, giving him my back. “What are you doing in here?” I questioned indifferently.

He didn’t answer. All I could hear in the space surrounding us was his heavy breathing and then he was there, pressed against my back, hands on my hips as he pulled me into him and stilled. The air around us changed, something intimate and forbidden was whispered with every labored breath. I wanted to live in that moment, to imprint his touch onto my soul.

But I was no longer the naive girl he rejected.

I had forged myself into a steel blade from the ruins of my broken soul.

It may not be pretty, shattered, and held together with blood and violence, but I was still standing.

On my own.

And I would continue to do so.

“Reggie, leave,” I commanded in an unwavering voice.

I stepped forward, but his hands held fast. “You’re killing me, Hellcat,” he whispered, the heat of his breath trailed across the skin at the nape of my neck.

“Yet you’re still breathing,” I replied, flatly if not unintentionally sultry, as I tried to keep everything even and cold toward him. I held all my cards close to my chest.

“Seeing you like this, bloody and sore. It makes me want to slaughter everything and everyone in your name. It makes me murderous, vicious girl. Do you understand that?”

His chin fell to my shoulder, resting in the crook of my neck.

I should walk away, shake him off and kick him out. But a deep rooted part of me needed to know what he would do in this quiet, steam-filled moment.

“You have so many lessons you must learn,” he rasped, hand wrapped around my throat as he tightened his grip while he pulled me into him more forcefully. One hand wrapped around my waist, palm spread flat across my stomach as I let out a sensual gasp at the sudden change. “So many things I must teach you.” He turned his head, thick lips pressed against my chilling skin as he kissed me tenderly. The rough scratch of his stubble scraped against me and I had to bite back a moan at the sensations this man could draw from my body.

I arched into him, straining my neck a little more to give him clear access as he feathered chafing kisses along the side of my throat before he bit down into my shoulder.

I moaned then, helpless not to rub my thighs together as my core grew wet and began to ache for more of his attention, more of his touch.

Then I remembered all of those hateful words he showered me with four years ago.

Then I remember what a hateful bitch I was who adored playing with fire, if only so I could feel the scorching heat against my flesh.

His teeth were still sunk into my throat, and my pussy was still heavily in need of some attention as I stepped forward more forcefully and broke the contact. I turned to stare at his wide and shock-filled eyes and I smirked wickedly at him as I tilted my head, taking in his aroused and disheveled appearance. The man who couldn’t be broken, the man who couldn’t be forced to show his emotions and yet here he stood, lost to his desires and coming undone just at the sight of me battered and bruised.

If only I knew it would be that easy.

I licked my split lip, eyes heavy with lust as I traced my delicate fingers across the heated spot he bit me. As I sauntered past, he followed my every move, right over to the dresser where I opened the top draw and pulled out some sapphire laced panties. I dropped my towel, knowing the only thing he could see right now was my rounded ass as I shimmied myself into my underwear.

“What makes you think that after all this time you have the right to walk into this room and touch me the way you just did? My father would slaughter you if he knew what you just did to me, what you just saw,” I asked in a deceitful kind of calm as I dragged my legs and flicked my toes across the plush black carpet, over to the steel pole in the corner of my bedroom.

Pole dancing is an amazing full body workout, not to mention I may have used it for a time or two for the family. You know, giving old assholes way past their reign a good show, right before I laced their drink and watched them drop dead in the name of whatever criminal scheme we were pulling next.

Ah, good times.

“Lara,” he sneered, the warning clear in his tone that made me only want to push him that much further.

As I wrapped my hand around the pole, I got a feel for it as I positioned my body and did my first swing. The carousel. I moved with sensual grace as I refused to lose eye contact with aman who was barely holding on to his control. His entire body stood tense and rigid. I could see the strain in his thick and hard muscles as they bulged under his pristine suit that he managed to pull off better than any man I’ve ever seen. Reg wasn’t a thin man, he was a wall built of muscle and unyielding strength. I’d seen him brutalize men like he was beating a slab of meat with a mallet. The way he tore bones from their body while they were still alive, just so he could crush them right in front of their very eyes, just hits a hell of a lot differently. Imagine that—the horror, the torment. It was a mind fuck if I had ever seen one.

The man was a menace, a psycho of his own creation and craved all the same things that I did.

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