Page 104 of Torched Spades

“Was paying a psychiatrist to convince her she was delusional for her? Is that part of unconditional paternal love I keep hearing about? Stop kidding yourself, old man. You did it to protect yourself.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“No. For some fucked-up reason, Becca’s misguided sense of loyalty refuses to expose you. Fortunately, I have none.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Correction—I know everything.”

By the time the recording stops, I’m destroyed. Holding my stomach, I let out a sharp cry, the tears of a broken little girl mixing with the ones of a tortured woman.

“Becca,” Johnny says, his rough hands the only thing keeping me upright. “Breathe,cara mia.”

But I don’t want to breathe. I want time to reverse and for Johnny Malone to still be the cocky man who hid in the shadows and refused to answer my questions. I want the truth to be a lie and his lies to be the truth.But most of all, I want him to set fire to this paralyzing nothingness that’s consuming me. I want everything he threatened that day in my office.

“All I’ve done is flick matches and imagine fucking you while the whole place burns around us.”

He doesn’t have to imagine anymore.

Everythingisburning all around us.

Tightening my hands in his shirt, I pull him against me and kiss him with as much hate as heart. I expect him to pull away, but his hands are just as demanding as mine, his lips just as hungry.

I collapse under the force of his touch.I want him. I want this.I need to feel something before it all disappears.

Because it will.

Nothing lasts forever. Eventually, every sin gets shoved behind glass and hung on the wall.

“Fuck me,” I groan against his mouth.

“Are you inviting the Devil inside, again, Doc?”

“He never left.”

Johnny’s eyes darken, and he pushes my back against the door. He jerks my shorts and panties down, barely giving me time to step out of them before he’s tearing at the button on his jeans, pushing them down just far enough to free his cock.

There’s a hum of silence, then Johnny and I come together like fire and ice. My arms coil around his neck as he lifts me up by my thighs, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist.

His mouth takes mine in a punishing kiss. It’s hate. It’s obsession. It’s pain. It’s loss. It’s everything we’re never meant to be.

“Mine,cara mia,” he growls in my ear as he guides his swollen cock toward my entrance. “Say it.”

“Yours.”

There’s no teasing. No touching. No whispered words.

I don’t need it. I’m slick with desire and dripping with torture. I rock against him, craving peace in a life that’s known only chaos.

“Please,” I beg, suspended between worlds.

He stares at me with a savage look in his eyes before bending his knees and driving into me with one hard thrust. I scream, his rough possession opening the floodgates to my pain. Each thrust wipes away all the black and white, replacing it with red, red, and more red.

“Say my name,” he demands, pumping hard as I cry.

“Johnny,” I rasp.

“Louder.”