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Was that why Claire was letting her see her face so open and

unguarded? Because this was the last time she was going to

allow herself to do this?

“Claire,” Haley panted. She couldn’t stop her hips from

moving. Claire could have pushed inside, crooked her fingers,

and hit that spot deep inside Haley that would have thrown her

off the cliff, straight into an intense climax, but she didn’t. She

wasn’t going to make it easy. “Claire, please let me touch you.

Let’s go somewhere. Your room.”

Claire laughed, and this time, it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

Haley snapped her eyes back to Claire’s face and she could see

her shutting down. “You want me to lick your pussy, punish

your ass, and fill you with a toy again, my dirty girl?”

“No.” Haley’s voice was unrecognizable. Yes. Yes, dear

God, yes. “I want to be naked. Together. I want to make you

come. I want to pleasure you.”

Claire actually looked sad for a fleeting second. “You have

no idea how to do that. How to give the kind of pain I like.

You couldn’t come touching your body. I can’t come without

pain.”

She bit down on her lip right away, as if she hadn’t meant to

say that. As if she was trapping the rest of the words inside her

so that they wouldn’t spill out. Dangerous words because they

were far too revealing. She wasn’t just masking her face, she

was masking her heart. What had happened to wound her so

badly? It couldn’t have been what happened with the

restaurant all those year ago. There had to be something else.

Someone who had destroyed Claire.

Haley doubted very much that she could start to reassemble

the pieces of a person she didn’t understand, but she wanted to