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He gripped her wrist and pulled her toward him. “Nothing about me is tiny.”

She smiled. “No.” Then she kissed his cheek. “Thank you, for defending me. No one has ever done that before. Not like that. Not in any way. It’s only ever been you. Always you.”

He felt like he was standing on scorched earth, and she was expecting grass to grow around his feet. But he liked it. And he didn’t want her to stop.

He wrapped his hand around the back of her head and kissed her, pulling her in hard. She whimpered. He reached down and pulled her shirt up over her head, unhooked her bra with one deft hand. Then he guided her so that she was standing up, so that he could get her jeans off. So that he could lift her down into the tub, fit her right over him.

Everything in him was on fire. His arousal was rampant, his whole body on high alert. Because those walls were knocked down. And there was nothing left. There was no resistance; there was no protection. There was nothing. Nothing but this. Nothing but her.

He wanted her.

For just one moment, he wanted her, without control, without boundaries, without anything. He didn’t know what this was. This extreme riot of need that was assaulting him mercilessly. It wasn’t anything he’d ever felt before. Wasn’t anything he’d ever known. And any other time, at any other moment, he would’ve pushed it away. But not now. Not now.

His soul felt raw. Everything felt exposed. Every dark, deep part of him. All of the things that he had tried to disguise. All of the things that he had tried to push down.

It was her. It had been, from the moment they’d met. It had been inevitable, this. The ending of all his control. The ending of everything he had tried to construct himself to be.

She hadn’t taken the brick and smashed his face, but she might as well have. She had smashed the man that he had fashioned himself into. The idol that he had built of himself. Dead, unfeeling. Not real.

But... what was the alternative?

The alternative was the man that had been out there today.

Uncontrolled. Unashamed.

All good when it was directed at protecting somebody, but what if it wasn’t?

Because things could get twisted. That was the thing. He had felt conviction on that level when he had been out doing errands with his father.

He had been the one to inflict physical punishment sometime. He could remember that. Punching a man. Over and over again until he agreed to pay. Hurting someone physically and feeling justified because they’d had a deal, and they knew the terms.

And that was the real problem.

Not what he had done today, but it was the path that this kind of behavior led down.

But he couldn’t think about it right now. He didn’t have the strength to think about it.

Because she was with him, over him, kissing him until neither of them could breathe. Because he could feel her molten, slick center against his arousal, and he wanted nothing more than to sink inside of her.

He wanted her. He moved his hands down her back, down to cup her ass, and brought her hard against his body. She gasped, arching against him, bringing her breasts up to the same level as his mouth. He took onebreast between his lips and sucked her hard. Made her cry out with need. Then he did the same to the other one.

Bix.

It would always be her.

And she would always make this thing inside of him come to life.

If he were a different man...

If he were a different man, then it would be fine. But he wasn’t. It wasn’t. And all they had was right now, so he was going to give everything. Everything.

She had said that there was a time limit on this. It was going to have to be sooner. Sooner than he wanted it to be. Sooner than they had imagined.

But this had brought everything out into the open. Every ugly, bad thing.

And he couldn’t ignore that. He just couldn’t.

He shifted, and that brought the head of his arousal to the entrance of her body.