His glare makes me want to cry. I’ve never seen him look so angry. Not since he’s come to St. Augustine and not before.

“Why are you torturing me with these questions? How many do you think?” he spits.

“None. I don’t think you’ve ever loved anyone but me.”

“Your thinking is correct. Unfortunately.” He heaves a sigh.

“Rafael, if we spend a month together, it’s going to destroy us. Your anger will destroy us.”

He shrugs and huffs out a laugh. “Too late. You destroyed me when you left. I can’t be any more damaged.”

“So you want to hurt me? Destroy me?” I turn away from him and walk to the kitchen’s café table, a black marble surface. My back to Rafa, I rest my palms on the cool stone to steady the shaking. Why can’t he understand what had happened between us? Hasn’t he matured any? My head droops, heavy, and I’m willing myself not to cry in front of him.

Rafa stands close behind me. If he’s any closer, I might shatter into a thousand shards. “Don’t come near me. Please. I can’t handle the fight-fuck thing.”

“That’s the problem, Justi. As much as I want to forget about you, I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about you, and the only thing I want to do when you’re around is touch you.”

“Then touch me. But do it with love. Please?”

I shiver from the feel of his warm breath on the back of my ear.

He wraps his hand around my ponytail and pulls my head back and to the side. His mouth finds the skin of my neck below my ear, and he kisses it, roughly, while one hand slides around my hips and roams up my loose dress, all the way up to my breast.

His breath is hot next to my ear. “Love? I don’t know what love is anymore. I blame you for that.”

I squirm. “Why do we have to be so complicated?”

His laugh is low and bitter. “I’m not sure. But I know one thing—you can’t punish me any more than you already have. Than you already are, right now. Your kisses are a punishment. Your touch is a punishment. It reminds me of everything I had and everything I lost.”

Rafa bites and roughly kisses my neck. At first I try to wriggle away, but he holds me firmly in place and I melt into him. I can’t resist his touch or his mouth, and I moan in desperation, wanting him more. It doesn’t make sense, my need for him. His anger doesn’t make sense, either.

“And you don’t think I lost everything as well?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer. With a precise push, he folds me forward over the table. He slides my short, black cotton dress up over my hips. I have on white, lacy bikini underwear and hear him inhale a long breath as he runs his fingers between my legs along the damp fabric. He grabs my ass with both hands and shoves my panties down to my ankles. I try to kick the underwear off and rise on my tiptoes, offering myself to him. My clit throbs.

I feel a familiar caress on one of my buttocks. Because my body has a memory for his touch, I know what’s coming. Rafael smacks me, hard, and I cry out from the sting but also from the pleasure. He hits me again.

“You still love that,” he growls.

I do, and I’m so wet right now. But I won’t give him the satisfaction of a verbal response. I haven’t been spanked in years—I’d tried to get Jared to do it, and he’d bestowed a few halfhearted whacks and giggled nervously. Nothing more of a mood-killer than man-giggles. The whole episode had been so disappointing I’d never asked to be spanked again. Of course, I’ve never been able to get Rafael’s particular brand of loving dominance out of my brain.

So you’d think I’d submit now in this kitchen. Instead, I want to taunt and torment him for more. I straighten a bit and twist my head, glancing over my shoulder.

“Are you going to fuck me, or are you going to just slap my ass?”

Rafa roughly folds me forward again. He laughs, a slow, wicked laugh, and I hear the rustling of fabric, the tearing of a condom wrapper, the sound of his shorts hitting the floor.

I feel his hard tip enter me. My hips tilt so that he sinks fully inside. Rafa lets out a long breath and rests his free hand on the small of my back. I feel his fingers skim up my spine. He grabs my ponytail again and yanks. The sting makes me moan.

“Hit me again, please?” I can’t help but beg for it.

He smacks me again on my right cheek, and I yelp. I’m shaking now.

“This is the only language we both understand, muñeca.”

He presses my head on the table, my cheek flat against the wood as he thrusts into me. My ass stings from another blow, and it all feels exquisite. Eyes closed, I crash into an orgasm. The pleasure’s so intense that I feel lost and floaty. He withdraws abruptly, and my eyes snap open.

“I can’t do it like this with you,” he whispers. “I need to see your face. Turn around and sit on the table.”

I turn slowly, and he picks me up, roughly parting my legs. I stare into his tortured eyes as he enters me, and then I scratch and pull at him. Our sex is like our relationship. Pushing. Pulling. I sink my teeth into the space where his neck meets his muscular shoulder.

“How can you ask me not to touch you?” he rasps.

I wrap my legs and arms around him, drawing him near. Now that I’ve orgasmed, now that he’s been rough with me, I want to be as close as possible to his body. My lips press into his neck and lick where I'd just bitten.

“How can you ask me not to care about you?” I murmur.

He pulls my hair, yanking the tie free from my ponytail and cupping my neck and chin so he can kiss me violently. He’s fucking me, hard, and I’m panting. My nipples are pointed, rubbing against the fabric of my dress, and I can only smell the spicy, windy scent of his cologne.

He rakes his teeth over the tender skin of my neck, then bites and laughs when I cry out. I pull his face up so he’s forced to stare into my eyes as he slams into me. This is rough, intense. I can't recall it being this angry between us before. While I’m holding his face, he shuts his eyes. I’m about to tell him to open them when I feel him grow fuller inside me.

He’s coming. He wrenches out of my hands and throws his head back and groans, a primal guttural noise. Then he slumps forward and rests his damp forehead on my shoulder. We smell like us, a familiar, musky smell.

He strokes my hair softly. “Justine?”

I kiss his neck. “Mmhmm?”

“Did you love him?”

Still wrapped around his body, I frown into his skin. “Huh? Love who?”

“Your ex-boyfriend.”

I shake my head. “Compared to what we had? No.”

He leans back and pulls out of me. “Then why—”

“Rafa. Don’t. Just don’t.” I can’t have this conversation with him now, not after that angry sex, possibly not ever. I squirm and straighten to standing, pulling my dress over my hips.

He steps away to remove the condom. He looks down at his cock. I do, too.

“Oh, Christ,” I whisper. The latex is in shreds. We’d been too caught up in the intensity of fucking to even notice that the condom had broken.

Rafael walks over to the garbage and evades my gaze as he opens the door to the garbage chute, deposits the condom, and slams it shut. The air is thick with everything that’s going unsaid. He turns to his wine and drinks. I continue gaping at him.

“Don’t give me that look. The condom broke, Justine. Surely you’re on the pill.”

I shake my head, mute.

He shuts his eyes and winces, which makes my throat close up with tears. “We can go to the doctor tomorrow and get you a morning-after pill.”

I blink at him with an open-mouthed incredulity. “Do you think after what happened to me—what happened to us—all those years ago, that I would take a morning-after pill if there was even a chance I was pregnant?”

He shrugs, and I pick up my wine glass and seriously contemplate throwing it at him. “If we just conceived a child, would you want me to take a morning-after pill?”

He glares at me. “Having a baby wasn’t part of my plan when I came here.”

“So what would we do if…?” My voice softens.

Rafael pauses and shrugs. “What would we do? One of two things. Either I would get full custody of the child because I have money and unlimited legal resources or…”

My God. He must loathe me. “Or what?”

“You’d have to come live in Miami near me.”

My grip on the wineglass tightens. “Near you? Not with you?”

He shrugs. “Plenty of kids grow up in separate households.”

“Bastard,” I hiss. He’s saying these things to hurt me. At least, I think he is. His hot-and-cold demeanor is pissing me off. I decide not to hurl the glass after all, then stalk out of the room.