Chapter Seventy-Five
Helios
Her head whipped around, and she looked up at me with bullshit shock.
“Yeah.” I saw that. “I see you, woman.”
Her throat moved with a hard swallow, then she barely fucking whispered, “I’m not angry.”
“You’re so damn angry, you can’t even say that shit out loud.”
“I’m not angry,” she repeated in that soft voice of hers.
I raised an eyebrow.
She lowered her shit even more. “I’m not.”
“Yeah, I can fucking see that,” I deadpanned.
Her nostrils flared with an inhale. “I said I’m not angry.”
“You expect to be heard when you fucking mumble?”
The taunt worked.
She raised her voice. “I’m not angry.”
I raised the other eyebrow.
She held her stare.
I smirked, and she finally fucking showed up for the conversation.
“YOU THREW ME OUT OF AN AIRPLANE.”
I yelled back. “Yes, I fucking did!”
“Then you left me!”
“I fucking know! But I love you!”
Her chest heaving, her face red, she fisted her hands. Then her tone came down. “Don’t yell that at me.”
“I needed you to fucking hear it.”
“Stop swearing.”
“Start living.”
Fire lit up her face. “Is this what you call living? Yelling and swearing at each other?”
“Beats the alternative.” Hell, it beat every other bullshit thing in this life. Short of fucking her, I’d take this over the past few days of silence every damn day of the week.
“As in death? That’s the measure of your foundation for a relationship? We’re not dead, so anything else beats the alternative?”
When you’d been to war, yeah. “Pretty much.”
“Pretty much,” she repeated like I was insane.
“Fucking beats all of it.” Her telling me she loved me back might top it.
The fire in her cheeks drained to fuck-me-pale, and she turned her back on me again. “I’m done talking.”
“Because you don’t want to talk about sex, or because you don’t want to acknowledge what I said?” I knew the damn answer, but I needed her participation, and this was the fastest way to cut through the bullshit with her.
Her voice went south, right along with all the fire I’d riled. “Stop it, Helios.”
“Stop what? Making you uncomfortable? Pretty fucking sure me breathing in the same room as you right now already accomplishes that.” She destroyed the bed we’d fucked on.
“Please, leave.”
Hell fucking no. “I’m not making that mistake twice.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“No god’s gonna have this conversation for you, woman.”
She turned back to face me. “Do you know why I stepped away from you?”
“Yeah.” Because of her bullshit shame.
“No. You don’t.” Her chest rose, she inhaled fucking fire, then Haven let me have it.
“I stepped away from you because you didn’t respect what we’d shared or the newness of it.
You just blatantly grabbed me, putting our intimacy out there for anyone to see.
That was ours. That was sacred to me. That was how you—you touched me when you were inside me.
And you just used it. Like it was nothing. ”
I fucking stared at my woman for two goddam beats. Then I caught the hell up. “You’ve got a problem with PDA.”
“That was not a public display of affection. That was you showing everyone how you touch me.”
Fuck me, I smiled. “You’re territorial.” My woman didn’t want to fucking hide us. She was goddamn territorial.
“I am not territorial!”
She was so goddamn territorial, she couldn’t fucking see straight, and I got it. Boundary. Hers. Respect it. Or fucking decimate it. But later. Because fuck me, my cock was hard as hell, my woman was fucking feral, and all I was thinking about now was possession.
Mine.
This woman wanted me all to herself, and she was fucking mine.
I reached for my Haven.