He takes a few seconds to respond, but his hand spreads possessively across my breastbone, thumb sweeping up to the hollow of my throat. “She knows we’re done. But I’m not going to pretend like it was an easy breakup. It hasn’t been easy for her to know you’re here with me.”

There’s a softness in his voice I can’t handle right now, some sympathy for her and what she’s going through that makes me feel insane. Somewhere in my rational brain I’m glad he cares how this is for her; it means he’s not a complete ass**le. It means he’s a good guy. But really, he f**ked up so enormously, I don’t have the bandwidth to admire him while I’m still this angry.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much, I’m pretty sure she came out with the upper hand tonight.” I push him away when he reaches for me.

“Mia, that’s not—”

“Just stop.”

He grabs my arm when I begin to walk away and spins me, pressing my back to the wall and staring me down with a look so intense it causes goose bumps to rise along my skin. “I don’t want this to be hard on either of you,” he says in a deliberately patient voice, “and I know the way I’ve handled it was all wrong.”

I close my eyes, pressing my lips together to quell the vibrating hum I feel at his firm touch. I want to shove him, pull his hair, feel the weight of him pinning me down.

“I followed you out of the apartment,” he reminds me, bending to kiss my jaw. “I know it isn’t my job to make sure she’s okay anymore. But if what she feels for me is even a fraction of what I feel for you, I want to be careful with her heart, because I can’t imagine what I would do if you left me.”

It seems impossible that words alone could make me feel like my chest is caving in.

He licks my earlobe, murmuring, “It would wreck me. I need to know that you’re okay right now.”

His hands grow busy on my body in a tight, desperate sort of way. Maybe to distract me, maybe to reassure himself. He works his way down my front, over my thighs, bunching my skirt in his fist as he pulls it up over my hips.

“Ansel . . .” I warn, but even as I turn my head away from his lips, I tilt my pelvis into his touch. My hands form fists at my sides, wanting more, and rougher. Needing reassurance.

“Are you okay?” he asks, kissing my ear.

I don’t turn away when he kisses my chin again, and not even when he moves higher, eyes wide and careful as he kisses my mouth. But when his hand moves between my legs, and he growls, “I’m going to make you so wet,” as his fingers slip beneath my underwear, I find the resolve to push his arm away.

“You can’t fix this with sex.”

He pulls back, eyes wide in confusion. “What?”

I’m incredulous. “You think you can just calm me down by making me come?”

He looks baffled, nearly angry for the first time. “If it calms you down, if it makes you feel better, then who the hell cares how it happens?” His cheeks bloom with a heated blush. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all this time? Finding a way to be married, to be intimate even when things are scary or new or just too f**king surreal to process?”

I’m thrown, because he’s right. It’s exactly what we’ve been doing, and I do want to be pulled out of this moment. Distraction, coping, muddling through—whatever it is, I want it. I want to stop talking about all of this. I want him to push away all the doubts in my head and give me the part of him that only I get to see now.

“Fine. Distract me,” I dare him, teeth clenched. “Let’s see if you can make me forget how mad I am.”

It takes him a moment to process what I’ve said before he leans in again, teeth grazing my jaw. I exhale through my nose before my head falls back against the wall and I give in. His hands return to my waist, rougher now, yanking my shirt up and over my head before he works my skirt down my hips and into a puddle on the floor.

But even as he cups me in his hand, sucking in a jagged breath through his teeth and whispering, “Tu es parfaite,” I can’t touch him back with any sort of tenderness. I feel punitive and selfish and still so angry. The combination pulls a tight choking sound from my mouth and his hand stills where he’d been pushing my underwear aside.

“Be angry,” he rasps. “Show me what angry looks like.”

It’s a beat before the words bubble up, but when they come growling out, it doesn’t sound like me: “Your mouth.”

I unleash the girl who lets herself feel anger, who can punish. I shove his chest hard, both palms flat to pectorals, and he stumbles back, lips parted and eyes wide with thrill. I push him again, and his knees meet the edge of the bed and he crumples backward, scooting up to the headboard and watching me stalk him, climb on him until my hips are level with his face and I can reach down and grab a fistful of his hair.

“I’m not okay,” I tell him, holding him back as he tries to push forward, to kiss me, lick me, maybe even bite me.

“I know,” he says, eyes dark and urgent. “I know.”

I lower my hips and hear a primitive cry tear from my throat as his open mouth makes contact with my clit and he sucks, lifting his arms and wrapping them in tight bands around my hips. He’s wild and hungry, letting out perfect pleading growls and satisfied moans when I begin to rock and ride him, my fist in his hair.

His mouth is both soft and strong, but he’s letting me control everything—the speed and pressure and it’s so good but God, I want you in me so deep I feel you in my throat.