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I would like to say that I’m not a petty, jealous man, especially over Lauren and the man who is now my boyfriend, but I’d be lying.
By the time Chris returns home over an hour later from a fifteen-minute round trip, there are still ten minutes on a chicken that was smelling damned good.
I meet him at the front door. “What the hell was that?”
I find myself slammed against the door with a hand around my throat. “That’s twice you said ‘I love you’ to her while she was here, boy.”
“You got me for the first time.”
“I’m talking upstairs. That’s three times, total.”
My eyes widen as I realize what he means. “You followed us upstairs and eavesdropped?”
He leans in. “What part of you are mine didn’t I make clear?”
“You realize this is veering into creepy abusive boyfriend territory, right?”
Just like that, his hand disappears and he steps back, hands on his hips.
I…actually miss the hand on my throat.
But this Christopher… It’s scary how fast he can flip back and forth between Sir and normal guy. “This is who I am. I’m not apologizing. Maybe if you’d grabbed Christopher version 1.0 from twenty years ago, I’d be a cuddle bunny right now. I watched you marry her and tell her you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her when you wouldn’t so much as send me a text, or an e-mail, or a goddamned Facebook message to at least say, ‘Hey, sorry, changed my mind, but thanks for a great week, man.’ Here I went falling in love with you and felt like the world’s biggest asshole for my trouble. So forgive me if I’m a little rough around the edges, but I have fucking trust issues with you.”
My face burns because yeah, I deserve that. Every bit of it.
And yeah, he did warn me. Besides, I can’t blame him for feeling like that when I spent the last two decades pining for him, too.
But he’s not done. “So tell me to stop now, and I’ll walk away.”
Ooooh, that hurts worse, though.
Way worse.
I shake my head.
“No, what, Kevin? No, you don’t want me to stop?”
I make myself say it, because I have to. For me. “No, I don’t want you to stop.”
He grabs me, spins me around, and pins me face-first against the door with a forearm across the back of my neck and my left arm again painfully wrenched behind my back, putting me up on the balls of my feet.
“Then this is me, Kev. No, I won’t be like this all the time, but I warned you I’d put you through hell at the start of this. I have some rage issues I’m going to work out so we can move forward. Besides, you like it when I get rough, don’t you? Yes, or no?”
I want to say no, except that would be a damned lie, and he knows it. “Yes.”
I let out a cry when he forces another bit of give out of a joint I’m pretty sure isn’t supposed to bend in that direction, and now I’m up on my toes.
“Yes, what?”
“Goddammit, yes, you asshole!”
He chuckles and licks the side of my face. “That’s yes, you asshole, Sir.”
I start laughing. I can’t help it—apparently I have zero self-preservation around this man. “Yes, you asshole, Sir.” I’m still laughing.
Without releasing my arm, he reaches around me with his other hand and palms my cock through my jeans.
Of course it’s fucking hard. I could cut sheet metal with the damn thing.
Then he kisses my cheek and releases my arm, rubbing it, bringing my palm up to his mouth, where he kisses it. “Pissed you off she was flirting with me, didn’t it?”
Oooh, the sadist is still in the house. I see it in the way his eyes are narrowed at the edges. “Yeah, it did,” I admit.
He grinned. “Then it’ll downright infuriate you I’m taking her out to dinner tomorrow night.” He releases my hand and heads for the kitchen.
DIGNITY (Determination Trilogy 1) – writing as Lesli Richardson