Page 106 of Stealing Blinds

No, I don’t want to keep it casual. I want to share the best part of me with you. But it’s buried under so much pain; I can’t seem to find it. And I can’t ask you to stick around while I do.

That’s a lot, so I turn to face him and paraphrase. “I don’t want to lose you and your family because we put expectations on this that we shouldn’t.”

“So, casual?” he muses, hands in his pockets. “Like we see other people? Fuck other people?”

My brain gets foggy with that horrid suggestion, so I mutter nonsense. “Well, it’s not really polite to talk about …” I huff in frustration. “That’s not what I meant. I want …”

I can’t seem to summon a logical response. Because I’m upset and angry, whether it’s rational or not.

Because every time I’m reminded of what a fool I was, I feel weak and stupid. And I can’t bear for Cash to see me that way.

Because he felt like mine, but he could’ve been hers. Even though my world is closing in on me, being his was enough to get me through.

He fumes, leering at me, his teeth grinding and agony swimming in his beautiful ocean eyes—pain I put there.

“I can fuck whoever I want, whenever I want, and you won’t say a damn thing about it?” He tilts his head in that daring stance he takes, and then he cages me against the wall.

I don’t answer. I can’t. A tear escapes and trickles down my cheek.

He gathers it on his thumb and deposits it on his tongue, his eyes glued to mine. “The only tears I want to see you shed are when I fuck your throat. I’m assuming I can shove my cock into any mouth I want too, right, Sly?”

In one swift move, he rips my pants down with a growl.

CASH

Ryker was right. This is fucking karma.

What are the goddamn chances that the one woman I’ve gone on and on about—for no other reason than to beat others to the punch, which, admittedly, was an asshole endeavor for me to undertake—was her sister, who she has a sordid past with?

Although maybe those voodoo pianists were on my side after all because thank fuck Flora turned me down. I never thought I’d see the day when I loathed who I was, when I regretted living the life handed to me. But the sight of Sylvie hurting is excruciating. And the thought of losing her is the equivalent of death. Or worse.

Even so, my patience is thinning.

My gaze rakes over her lacy white thong and her tiny bandeau top. I curl my palm around her throat, showing all my cards—my lust, my fury, my desperation. “This is my answer to how we’ll keep things casual.”

Because she’s fierce, she can’t help but push back even though I catch a flicker of hope, her amber beauties bouncing all over my face with her sass. “Choking is your definition of casual?”

“This is my fucking definition of forever, Sylv, of having enough of you waiting for me to fail, like a goddamn brat.”

Her pupils dilate with that, like they do with her nickname sometimes. She yearns to spar, and she craves a rush.

Squeezing the sides of her throat just enough to give her alluring pressure, I use my other hand to unfasten the zipper on her top, so it spills down her frame and puddles at her feet. “You could give me free rein of the whole planet, and I’d still choose you. That’s what I meant when I called you mine—a word I’d never used for a woman before. There is no world or realm or life where I exist and you aren’t the axis. You can push me away, but I’ve got a long fucking reach. I am here to stay.”

Her pain streams down her cheeks, dripping onto my hand and wrist, and she grimaces at the sight—irritated by that level of emotion. “I don’t want to push you away. I’m just so pissed.”

I’m sure she is. She’s been through hell and back for years, betrayed by the people she should’ve been able to trust, and this probably felt like revisiting the flames. But I am not the demon in her story.

“Then fight,” I demand, ripping the string of her panties so they fall to join her top.

She gasps, but fails to see the correlation. “What?”

“Fucking fight,” I growl, ready to come out of my goddamn skin. I bend so my face is closer to hers, our lips a hair’s breadth from one another’s. “For what you want.”

What I don’t say is that I need her to fight for me like I’ve been fighting for her, that it took thirty-two years for me to imagine really giving myself to someone and I will not survive her penchant for bolting at the first sign of trouble, that the mere notion of her walking out that door is like never waking up from the nightmare that haunts me.

I’m not great at expressing feelings, so I hope she can read all that in my eyes when I issue my order. “Get on your knees.”

Even naked, with my hand adorning her throat, she’s feisty. She lifts her chin, but then she searches my face, aptly reading much of what I hoped she’d find there, before she sucks in a breath. And drops to my feet.