Home…
The word spun through her mind, ricocheted through her body, and echoed through every limb.
He didn’t give her a chance to say no, and frankly, she didn’t want him to. His lips were firm and insistent. His scent, masculine and so familiar. And when she opened to him and he kissed her with that warm, wet tongue like he couldn’t get enough, every protest she knew she should voice slipped right out of her head.
She sank into the kiss, stroked her tongue against his, ran her fingers through her hair and stretched out against him. Warmth permeated her body, slithered through her chest, and heated the cold space around her heart she’d been living with since that awful night.
“Mm…” He pulled her over him, then rolled her to her side. His hand streaked down her neck, across her collarbone, and closed over her breast.
Electrical sensations shot from beneath her bra to her belly and lower. Simone moaned into his mouth and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he continued pushing her back into the mattress. He answered by kissing her deeper, by stroking her tongue harder. Spreading her legs to make room for him, she felt his arousal pushing into her, and her pulse picked up speed, knowing he still wanted her.
It wasn’t too late. She could fix everything she’d broken. All she needed to do was explain why she’d been ready to run.
“Mitch…” Her fingers toyed with his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I didn’t mean it.”
He groaned and moved fully on top of her. Sweet, heavenly bliss radiated outward from her pelvis where he rubbed against her, but the stab of something sharp in her shoulder made her pull back from his mouth and gasp. “Ouch. What’s that?”
His hand landed against the mattress near her head. He pushed away just enough to look down. He blinked several times, then his unfocused gaze slowly sharpened and held on her face. “Simone?”
“Something’s sticking into me.” She pushed up just enough so she could wiggle to the side. Reaching back, she grasped the small metal object stuck in the fabric of her shirt and looked down at it in her hand.
Darkness made it hard to see what the object was at first, but then she realized it was an earring. A long, dangly silver thing she’d never be caught dead wearing.
Mitch scrambled off her and pushed upright, swaying on his feet, looking more than a little dazed and seriously confused. “What the…? How did you…? What the hell are you doing in my bed?”
The accusation in his voice brought Simone’s gaze up. And the stark mixture of surprise and anger in his features told her he hadn’t been fully awake when he’d started kissing her.
“I—” She looked down at the earring in her hand, her mind flipping back and forth between a logical explanation and shock over what she’d found. “I came to talk to you.”
“That wasn’t talking.” Mitch grabbed his shirt from the floor and quickly tugged it on. “What kind of games are you playing? You haven’t fucked with my head enough for one week?”
Animosity radiated from him in waves, and Simone’s mouth fell open, an explanation hovering on her tongue. But then she looked down at the earring in her hand again. “I… What is this?”
His gaze snapped to her hand, and surprise flickered over his features, followed by a shot of guilt, which was quickly masked by a scowl. He rested his hands on his hips and glared at her. “Nothing that really concerns you, now does it?”
Everything inside Simone went cold. Ice cold. He’d fucked someone else, right here in this bed, hours—maybe even minutes—ago. Only two days after their breakup.
Her chest felt like it closed in on itself. Pinpricks of heat stabbed at every inch of her skin. She couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to feel. Shaking, she pushed quickly to her feet. “Well, it’s nice to know you’re not pining away for me. Clearly, you’ve already moved on.”
She dropped the earring on the floor and rushed for the hall. He stepped in the way of her path and braced his hand on the doorjamb, blocking her exit. “I moved on? I moved on? You’re the one who dumped me. And now I’m the one who’s supposed to feel guilty about that?”
She wasn’t thinking clearly. She knew that. Her emotions were way too hot for her to remain calm and rational. The reckless college girl who’d fallen into an affair with Steve, gotten pregnant, and given up her life on a whim was threatening what was left of her sanity. “Get out of my way.”
“Why?” His eyes narrowed to thin points, and a vehemence she’d never seen before reflected in their depths. “You came all the way over here in the middle of the night to tell me something. Go ahead and say it.”
Emotions bubbled up inside her—anger, heartache, disbelief—but the one that won out was betrayal, even if a tiny voice in the back of her head said she had no right to feel that way.
She whirled on him. “You have no idea what I was willing to do for you. You have no idea what I’ve been through. I came here to explain, but there’s no point now.”
She ducked under his arm and rushed down the hall toward the door and freedom. Somewhere deep inside, she knew she was being irrational. She’d broken things off with him. Whatever and whoever he’d done since had nothing to do with her, and yet even though her head understood that, her heart was having a really hard time accepting it. Because for her, things hadn’t been over. And she doubted they ever would be.
“Hold on. What you’ve done for me?” He grasped her by the arm and swung her around to face him in the entry hall. Moonlight spilled in through the sidelights by the front door, illuminating his enraged features and disbelieving eyes, the T-shirt molding to his muscular chest, the loose-fitting jeans and his gorgeous, bare feet against the hardwood floor. “You’re the one who ended things. You’re the one who said you didn’t care. As I recall, your exact words were, ‘I don’t love you.’ So why the fuck would I believe you’d do anything for me when I already know you just don’t give a shit?”
She wanted to lash out, to make him hurt the way she was hurting, to tell him he was right, that she really did no longer give a shit. But before she could get the words out, the glass in the far sidelight shattered, sending shards flying through the entryway.
Simone screamed. Mitch threw her to the ground face-first and covered her with his body. Pain echoed through her hipbones and hands and anywhere she hit the hardwood. But the sound of something small and hard digging into the siding, the door, shattering windows and pinging off metal echoed all through the house, distracting her from the pain.
She pushed against him, but he held her firmly to the ground. “Stay down,” he growled. “Those are bullets.”
Bullets? Simone’s adrenaline shot up. Bullets? Fear clamped a cold, hard hand around her throat and squeezed. Bullets meant...she’d been wrong. They had been following her.
The flight-or-fight response kicked in, and flight won out. By a landslide.
She struggled against Mitch, this time with every ounce of strength she had. “We have to get out of here. They found me. Move. Right now, move!”
She managed to shove him off her, pushed to her feet, and sprinted away from the gunfire, down the hallway toward the back of the house. Mitch muttered a curse but grasped her arm just as she reached the back door.
“Hold on. You don’t know who’s out there.” He pulled her tight against him and sank back into the shadows, peering over her head out the slider in the back room he used as his gym. Exercise equipment surrounded her. Gunshots still echoed from the front of the house, but through the glass, the backyard looked empty.