He took it and without hesitation, f**k him, he went for more.

“So, a man gets outta prison, he gets himself a new wife, he brings her home, takes care of business by findin’ a job to provide for her, his first day off, his wife does not go to the garden center to buy plants in an asinine effort to put her stamp on a house. She stays home with her husband while he f**ks her brains out.”

He watched the color hit her cheeks and her eyes flare and he liked it. It wasn’t that Lexie light but it was something. Something more than confusion and impatience and he took it too.

Then he watched her straighten her shoulders before she returned, “You’re right, Ty. A man who just got out of prison with a new wife, I can see this. I can also see him returning home right after work and getting his workout not at a gym but, as you put it, by f**king his wife’s brains out. But you haven’t been doing that. Even this morning,” she threw a hand out toward the door, “you didn’t engage in morning nookie with your wife but went for a run. You’ve established the pattern so, clearly, I’m not behaving outside the norm.”

“Maybe I didn’t f**k my wife this morning because I tired her out last night,” he replied and watched her hands shoot up in the air and drop as she lost patience.

There it was. He went for it. He got it. More.

“Well, you didn’t tire her out last night. You slept on the f**king couch!” she snapped.

“You drew that line, Lexie,” he shot back.

That’s when she lost it and how she lost it, she shredded the already frayed hold he had on his control. Frayed because she’d been picking at it from the moment he saw her standing beside the Charger outside in the hot as f**k southern California sun and, after she’d shut down, he’d kept picking at it.

“No, Ty, you drew it when one second you had your tongue in my mouth, your hands on me and me on my back in your bed and swear to God, swear to God, that was all you had to do, I was this close,” she lifted a hand and held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart, “to cl**ax just with that and the next second you took it all away from me. All of it and you f**king know exactly what I’m talking about because the next second I was standing on my feet, you were two feet away but you might as well still have been in f**king California and then I watched you shut down.”

At her words, he felt his lungs seize but he managed to force out, “What?”

“You heard me,” she bit off and whirled saying, “Now I’m going. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Oh no she f**king wouldn’t.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Walker growled.

She didn’t respond but she did keep walking away from him.

That was when Walker moved.

She was two steps down when he caught her around the waist and hauled her right back up. The back of her body slammed into his, he wrapped his other arm tight around her chest, turned, set her on her feet and marched her forward, his mouth to her ear.

“I said, don’t walk away from me.”

“Ty,” she whispered, now he had breathiness, surprise, maybe even shock and he’d take those too. Fuck him, he’d known her just over a week and he’d take anything from her.

Her hand came up and wrapped around his forearm at her chest.

He let her go at the waist, pulled her purse off her shoulder, dumped it to the floor and curled his arm back around her stomach, moving her the whole time, stopping her by the couch.

“Why’d you throw away your wedding bouquet?” he rumbled in her ear, she didn’t respond, he gave her a careful shake with both arms and clipped, “Why?”

“It’s just flowers,” she whispered.

“It wasn’t just flowers.”

“Ty –”

“Why?”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked quietly.

He gave her another careful shake. “Answer me, Lexie. Why’d you throw your bouquet away?”

“It was just flowers.”

“It wasn’t.”

“No, you’re right. It wasn’t,” she told him softly. “Then, after you put me in my place, it was.”

He closed his eyes and shoved his face in her neck.

He couldn’t do this. For two days he told himself he could, this was better, this was safer, not for him, for her. He’d let her in, wanted her to come in and she did. Then he saw the error of his ways. Then, being a dick, he’d pushed her back over the line he’d drawn to keep her safe from his shit, from him and he’d made it clear she should stay there. She got his message, she couldn’t miss it.

But Christ, he couldn’t do it.

He had to have her light back.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

“No.”

“Let me go.”

He moved his lips to her ear and whispered, “I hurt you, baby.”

Her body went still in his arms and she whispered back, “Don’t.”

“I was a dick; I f**ked up and hurt you.”

“Stop it.”

He tightened his arms and pressed his temple into her hair.

It was soft as well as thick and smelled f**king great. He wanted his hands in it. He wanted to feel it on his skin. He wanted to feel it all around as her mouth worked his cock.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, Lexie,” he murmured into her hair.

“Please stop it.”

He slid his hand from her arm, up her shoulder to wrap it around the side of her neck as he slid his temple down her hair so his lips were at the other side of her neck.

“You honest to God nearly came with only my mouth on yours?”

She gave a jerk at his change of subject but he didn’t let her go, instead, he held her closer.

“Let me go,” she demanded.

“Answer me,” he ordered in return. “All it took was my mouth?”

“Ty –”

“Answer,” he growled into her skin.

“No,” she hissed. “There was your tongue and your leg was tangled in mine and you also ran your hand down my side.”

That was nothing. That was just Lexie, giving everything, taking nothing.

He smiled into her skin instead of groaned.

“That’s all?”

“Can you let me go?”

“No,” he answered. “I wanna see what it takes.”

Her body stilled again. She read him. She read him clear.

“Ty –” she breathed.

He lifted his lips to her ear and whispered, “You gonna let me in there?”