My heart nearly stopped. That statement was too close to what he’d said in my nightmare while we were trapped in that tunnel. Part of me was scared he was right. The way he’d taken me tonight, forcing his cock in my ass…the residual pain of that pinged through my chest. Then to wake up to him choking me, really choking me as if he meant it and wouldn’t stop. As if he couldn’t stop. He’d spit out Cleft’s name while in the throes of his nightmare, all the while squeezing the life out of me. Those were the actions of a tortured man.

“After you left,” I began, hesitant because I wasn’t sure how receptive he would be to what I was about to say, “I started seeing a therapist. Maybe talking about what Cleft did will—”

“We’re not talking about the past. We’re moving forward.”

“This isn’t moving forward.”

“Leave it alone,” he warned, maneuvering until we were on our sides. He spooned me and grabbed my breast with one hand while the other wedged between my thighs.

“No,” I said, a challenge in my tone. “I won’t leave it alone. You can’t shove everything under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“You just broke the third rule, sweetheart.” He slid a leg between mine, opening me for his plundering touch. “If you break the rules, you get punished.”

Like the whore I was, I spread for him, despising myself for wishing he’d push that finger deeper. “This is your idea of punishment?”

“Yep,” he whispered, touching me more fully, his breath heating my ear. He forced his free hand between my lips and depressed my tongue until I gagged. “Fuck, you turn me on so much,” he said, thrusting devious fingers in and out of my pussy. “So fucking wet.” He pushed against my backside with a grunt.

I bucked into his hand, moaning my pleasure around the fingers that gagged me, drenching the fingers that fucked me. Shameless, I pleaded for him to let me come in muffled whines, inaudible whines, yet he somehow understood them.

Understood them enough to yank his touch from the wet, throbbing place that ached for release.

His fingers slipped from my mouth, and our torturous desire for each other blasted the room in shallow breaths. Tears wandered down my cheeks. Frustrated, angry tears. He wasn’t being fair. I moved against his thigh, sliding in my wet need, but he removed his leg. Gathering my wrists in one hand, he held them in front of me, far away from my throbbing pussy.

“Are you gonna tell me no again?”