Page 109 of The Retaliation You Deliver

He laughs at me, running his hand through his hair. “I can take you any day, Dunn, and you know it.”

“Not worth it,” Macie breathes, and I can’t help but agree with her. “Work up a sweat with me instead.”

“Now that sounds like an offer I can’t refuse.”

Without sparing him another glance, I press my hand into the small of Macie’s back and guide her up the stairs before me, my eyes locked on her ass in her skinny jeans as she moves.

“I’m going for a piss,” I tell her, moving toward my bathroom. “When I get back, I want you in my bed in nothing but my jersey.”

Her chin drops at my demand but it doesn’t stop her from toeing off her shoes and lifting both my jersey and her hoodie up her stomach.

I bolt for the bathroom before I forget my need and focus on her instead.

* * *

“This is nice,” Macie says, digging her spoon back into the tub of ice cream that I stole from Peyton knowing that it would make her smile.

“It is. I never thought I could have so much fun in bed with a girl without being inside her.”

“You’re a dog,” she chastises, swatting my bare stomach.

“I’m your dog,” I say, snatching her wrist and pushing her hand down under the covers and into my boxers.

We haven’t fooled around other than a bit of making out when I first found her in my bed having done exactly what I ordered.

That doesn’t mean I’m not beyond ready to sink back inside her, but I’m aware that she’s probably sore from me taking her earlier, and I don’t want to break her, not any more at least. Now, I fully intend on keeping and making her happy.

Her delicate fingers wrap around my steel length as she continues pretending like she’s watching the movie that’s playing on the TV.

I haven’t focused on a second of it, preferring to watch her and all her little reactions to whatever has been happening, committing them to memory and finally allowing myself to accept that she’s it for me.

I might’ve gone after Macie with the need to ruin her, but in the end, it seems that she was the one who ruined me, because I already know that I’m never going to be the same ever again.

She’s taken my darkness and wrapped it in her sweetness, her acceptance, her understanding.

My anger and hate might still be within me, it probably always will be to a point, but she makes it bearable. No, it’s more than that. She makes it almost forgettable. Especially when she’s beside me, touching me… loving me.

Love.

I let that one word repeat over and over in my mind as she slowly works me.

Is that what this is? Is this what it feels like?

I’ve always wondered. As I watched Luca and Peyton fall in love as kids, and then Letty and Kane recently.

Is that what they feel? This contentment, happiness, the constant burning need to claim her, mark her, make her mine.

Suddenly, everything I watched Letty go through, and Luca and Peyton over the years, it all makes sense.

It’s why Macie is laying here with me right now.

It’s why she’s forgiven me. Why she hasn’t judged me.

“I love you,” I whisper so quietly that there’s no chance of her hearing me.

Or so I think.

It takes a second but she drags her eyes from the TV and looks up at me.