She’s staring at me. Her eyes are wide with fear. I’m sure it’s a scary thing to wake up to your boyfriend’s hand around your throat, but she should be lucky she’s not feeling what I’m feeling right now.

“Are you fucking him?”

It takes all the effort I have not to scream those words at her. Instead, my voice is calm and collected, unlike every other part of me. I’m not squeezing her throat with any significant force.

Yet.

I simply have my hand around it, so she should be answering me right now. She’s able to speak, but she’s not. The fucking whore is just staring at me like she just got caught.

“Sloan? Are you fucking Carter? Has he been inside you?”

Sloan immediately begins to shake her head. She presses her palms into the mattress and pushes herself up against the headboard. My hand doesn’t leave her throat.

“What are you talking about?” she says. “No. Of course not. God, no.”

She’s looking at me like I’m crazy. She’s very convincing.

My mother was convincing, too. Look where that landed her.

I tighten my grip, watching her face as it slowly turns a shade pinker. She winces and fists the sheet at her sides. Her eyes begin to fill with tears.

Good thing my father taught me not to let a woman’s tears fool me.

I lean in toward her until I’m a mere two inches from her. I scroll over her eyes, her mouth, every fucking lying part of her goddamn face. “You just said his name, Sloan. I had your fucking nipple in my mouth, trying to please you. But then you whispered his fucking name. You said Carter.”

Sloan shakes her head. She’s so adamant about it, shaking it with such intensity, I ease my grip around her throat so she can speak. After inhaling a gasp of air, she blurts out, “I didn’t say Carter, you fucking dipshit. I said harder. I was awake and could feel you kissing me. I wanted you to do it harder.”

I stare at her.

I let her words sink in.

I let her explanation massage the ache in my chest until I can breathe again.

I slowly slide my hand away from her throat, down her neck.

Fuck.

I’m being paranoid.

Why would I ever think she’d dream about another guy when she sleeps next to me? She wouldn’t cheat on me. She can’t. She has no one else. It would be the worst mistake she ever made and she knows it.

I need to get her out of this house. Away from all these people. I’m more certain now than I was ten minutes ago that I need to make her a mother. Make her a wife. Give her a place of our own where other men are never around to make me this fucking paranoid.

Sloan leans forward and reaches to the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head. She tosses it on the floor and then pushes me back against the headboard, sliding onto my lap.

And just like that, I’m hard again.

She presses her breast against my mouth and offers herself to me. I take her nipple in my mouth again and I give her what she wants. I suck her harder. So hard it hurts her. I want her to feel the ache my mouth left on her for the rest of the fucking day.

She wraps her hands in my hair, pulling me against her as she moans and says my name. She says, “Asa.”

She says it three times.

My name.

I grab her hips and lift her slightly until she’s positioned right over my dick. I bring her back down until I’m buried inside of her, almost certain I’ve never been this deep. God, she feels good. It feels so good when I don’t hate her.

I didn’t like how it felt to hate her.

“You’re mine, Sloan,” I say, dragging my lips up her neck and to her mouth.

She whispers, “Yours, Asa.”

I slide my tongue in her mouth until she moans, and then I pull away from her. I grip her throat again with my right hand and guide her hips up and down with my left. She winces a little when I squeeze her throat and it makes me wonder if I hurt her neck earlier. I move my hand and can already see a handprint. There’s even a little bruising.

Fuck. I did. I hurt her a lot more than I intended to.

I lean in and kiss her softly on the neck, giving her a silent apology. Then I look into her eyes as she rides me. “I want to marry you, Sloan. I want to make you mine forever.”

She doesn’t say anything right away. Her whole body stiffens and she stops moving against me. “What did you say?” she asks, her voice shaky.

I grin and rub my hands down her back, gripping her ass. “I said marry me, Baby. Be my wife.”

I lift her off of me and push her onto her back. I slide back inside of her, relishing the fact that I don’t have on a condom. I move in and out, savoring every sensation while she stares up at me, speechless.