His laugh is soft. Dark. Knowing. "No, sweetheart. You didn't."
I force myself to meet his eyes.
He's still half-dressed, shirt torn, belt undone, looking at me like I'm something precious he's finally caught. Something he's never going to let go.
I shove steel into my spine. Into my voice. Into every part of me that wants to crumble at his feet and beg him to do it again. "This was a mistake. It won't happen again."
"Yes." He tucks himself back in, buckles his belt, his eyes never leaving mine. "It will."
I don't argue. Can't argue.
Because some part of me—the treacherous, broken, wanting part I hate most—knows he's right.
I unlock the door and walk out without looking back.
The guest house is exactly where I left it. Same pretty curtains. Same soft bed. Same gilded cage dressed up as paradise.
I lock the door behind me.
Strip off clothes that smell like him, like sex, like the worst mistake of my life.
I turn the shower to scalding and stand under the spray, scrubbing at my skin until it's raw, trying to wash away what happened.
I can't.
I can still feel him inside me.
The stretch. The fullness. The devastating pressure of his cock hitting places no one has ever reached.
I can still hear my own voice—broken, desperate,his—begging him to make me come.
I can still feel the way my whole body lit up when he said my name.
The first sob catches me by surprise.
The second doesn't.
By the third, I'm sliding down the shower wall, curling into myself, water beating down on me like punishment.
I cry until I can't breathe. Until my ribs ache. Until there's nothing left inside me but hollow, echoing shame.
I told him I was his.
Imeantit.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I stay on the shower floor until the water runs cold, until I'm shivering so hard my teeth chatter.
Then I force myself up. Turn off the water. Wrap myself in a towel. I don't look in the mirror. I can't.
I sit on the edge of the bed and breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
Until the shaking stops.
Until I can force the broken pieces of myself into something that resembles human.