Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
I wake much the same way I did after our night together in Vegas, with Lenox asleep behind me and the soft light of dawn hitting me through the window.
Only now, I’m focused on three things. One, the rose on the bed beside my hand.
Two, the rose that’s still in the vase since he never got the chance to swap it out last night.
And three, the rose tattoo on Lenox’s left ring finger.
He must have done it himself this week, but when exactly, I’m not sure.
I don’t know what to think about it. I don’t know what to think about him or the roses or any of it.
He said this changes everything, but what does that even mean?
Is that what I want? Do I want to go down this road again with him?
Not really if I’m being honest, and yet yes, one hundred percent I do.
It’s the split between my body and my mind. My body craves him, and my mind remembers all he did to my heart.
He’s twisting me up, playing with things I haven’t given him permission to. Things that no longer belong to him and never should have. I’ve isolated myself this past week, especially from him .
On Tuesday, I handled the Monroe business.
I am the official majority shareholder of Monroe Securities, and all of my father’s assets are now mine.
But I didn’t pick up my phone when my mom called or even when Zax or Grey called.
The only people I’ve spoken to are Fallon and Aurelia, because those bitches are persistent and wouldn’t allow me to shelter in place.
I wanted this week. A week of not a whole lot.
I went on hikes with Alice and explored every inch of Lenox’s house, with the exception of his cave. I’ve read and cried and worked out a lot of what I want my next steps to be.
It's been cathartic, and I’m grateful for having that time for myself.
But today I want to go into town. I want to check out the yoga studio, the coffee shop, and maybe the library. I’m afraid to try and navigate through the fence thing and the forest on my own, so I had planned to bite the bullet and ask Lenox if I could ride with him.
But now…
You’re wrong. It changes everything between us.
I pinch my eyes shut, listening to his deep, even breathing, feeling the heat and size of his body as he cocoons me. Lenox always held me like I was the most precious thing in the world to him when I slept. The comfort and tenderness were so cruelly misleading.
But… could he have changed? Could what he wants from me be different now?
Ugh. Shut up, Georgia! Don’t you dare start that shit again.
My eyes flash open, narrowing in on the rose tattoo, and I reach over, hovering my finger above it, only to be swooped around, somehow landing on top of Lenox.
Planting my hands into his chest, I push myself up until I’m straddling him and peer down, not even caring that it’s bright as fuck in here and I’m completely naked and exposed to him.
He cares, though. He cares a lot as I feel his cock thicken beneath my ass while his dark, smoldering eyes rake in every inch of me.
I fold my arms, partially covering my breasts. “Care to explain that?” I raise an eyebrow and pointedly zip my gaze down at his left hand that’s inching up my thigh.
“I’m about to use it to make my wife come.”
I shake my head, ignoring the way I get a tickly tingle in my body every time the bastard calls me his wife. “Don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Roses are beautiful, just like my wife is.”
“Argh! Shut up!”
He chuckles and shoves my hands out of the way so he can cup my breasts. “Come on, Georgie, this is supposed to be our honeymoon phase.”
“I don’t think most wives want to kill their husbands the way I want to kill you.”
He pinches my nipple, making my breath hitch. “Sure, they do. That’s why they call it makeup sex.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
He treats me to a rare, charming smile, and my belly does a stupid cartwheel. Does he have to be so damn gorgeous? And playful right now? It’s annoyingly disarming. Especially because the man is rarely, if ever, playful.
“I hate you,” I mutter.
“You may think you do, baby, but your body doesn’t agree.” He slides me back and forth over his hard cock, over his piercings, much the way he did last night, and holy mother of kittens, does that feel so flipping good.
“I can hate you and fuck you.” At least that’s what I keep telling myself. “Your wonder dick has never been connected to your brain or your heart. Why should now be any different?”
“I already told you everything is different.”
He grinds up into me, pumping against my pussy, practically slipping in each time, and I want him to just fuck me already. I don’t want him to talk or say perfect things or look at me like this. Like I’m all he sees. Like this time, it really is different.
The weight of his eyes holds me in their possession, and the knowing grin that passes his lips simply pisses me off.
“You’re not getting my pussy. ”
He laughs. Rubs me until my clit glides over his barbells. Then he reaches up and yanks on my hair until my face is forced down, and my lips connect with his. “The mistake you make is thinking this is your pussy when it’s actually mine.”
He shifts me, and with a harsh breath and a deep thrust, he plunges inside me, all the while keeping my face right with his.
Daring me to deny it. To deny him. He knows I can’t.
Lenox Moore has always been my weakness.
It’s the thing I hate most about myself.
It’s why I’ve kept my distance all these years.
It’s most definitely why I didn’t want to move in with him.
Part of me knew we’d eventually end up here.
“Don’t fight it,” he growls when I hold my body still.
“Let me fuck you. Or better yet, you fuck me. Use me, Georgia. Make yourself come using my cock. Do it,” he commands when I still don’t move.
“Punish me the way you want to punish me. The way I deserve for you to. Take out all your anger, pain, and aggression on me. Make me feel all that I’ve done to you. ”
“You want me to hate fuck you?”
He bites my bottom lip before he sucks it into his mouth and then slowly releases it. “Whatever it’ll take to get it out of your system.”
Whatever it’ll take to get it out of my system? What? Hating him? My scorn?
You’re wrong. It changes everything between us.
There’s more to this with him. I know there is. I can practically taste it on his lips as he bites and licks at my mouth. But with him inside of me like this, with how full I am of him, it’s impossible to tease it out. He wants me to punish him? To fuck all my anger, aggression, and pain out?
I roll my hips and grind my pussy against him, using his pelvic bone and the base of his cock to rub my clit.
He smirks triumphantly, but I’m about to use him like he’s my sex toy, and my toy is only a giver of pleasure and never a receiver of it.
The nice thing about Lenox is that he’s a good boy and never ever comes before I do.
He starts kissing my neck, and I pull back because his mouth on me isn’t just sex.
It’s mind-twistingly incredible, and right now, I’m trying to hate fuck him.
Only I’m not good at it because I’m moving slowly, grinding, undulating, and his hands are on my tits, rolling and pinching my nipples, squeezing them as he stares up at me in wonder.
His eyes are dark and hungry, and I can see he wants to take over, to control this, but he’s not.
He’s letting me fuck him any way I want to.
And the power in that is heady.
This is on my terms. It’s all about me and not about him.
And before, so much of our—whatever you want to call it—that we had was about him.
He’d call or text, and I’d drop everything to be with him.
We’d fuck on his terms in his way, and that was that.
He never took me out for dinner, and he never spent a ton of extra time with me.
It was sex and only sex to him, and I was young and stupid and in love with him.
Then he broke my heart, and I hated him for the woman I had allowed him to turn me into. I swore I’d never do that to myself again. Not ever, and now here I am, fucking him again. Only… this time I’m in control. I have the power between the two of us.
That’s what he’s telling me. That’s what he’s showing me.
“So good,” he praises. “You ride me so good. And fuck, you are so goddamn beautiful as you do it.”
I shake my head and close my eyes so I don’t have to look at him and pick up my pace. I start to bounce so I can take his cock deeper while I force myself to think of him as nothing more than a vehicle to get me off.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Georgia,” he says, and I gasp, biting into my lip as a flare of emotion swells up within me. “I’m so fucking sorry. I never ever wanted to do that to you, and I was wrong, so fucking wrong for how I treated you and the things I did.”
“Shut up, Lenox!” I scream, but I’m also starting to cry, and I can’t stand it. His apology when he’s inside of me is too much. I twist my body until I’m in a reverse cowgirl, and my back is to him and his stupid, fucktastic piercings are rubbing against my G-spot.
Only that’s not good enough for him. He sits up, his chest pressing to my back, his mouth by my ear. One hand goes to my clit, rubbing it, helping me along, and his other bands around my body, cradling me to him.
“I didn’t deserve you,” he hums into my ear. “I knew it then. I knew it all along, but I didn’t know how to give you up. I couldn’t make myself walk away. I wanted you like nothing and no one else, Georgia, but I was too broken to be any good to you.”
My heart clenches, stealing my breath and making my eyes burn with more tears. “Please stop. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t fucking want to hear it.”