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“Yes.” My voice doesn't sound like mine. “Don't stop. Please don't stop.”

He doesn't stop.

He builds a rhythm of perfection, in and out, thrusting gently at first. As he moves, the pain subsides, and pleasure takes its place. Then I feel it. Every time he draws back, something catches, hard and deliberate, sending a wave of pleasure through me. It happens again. And again. Always the same place.

Ahhh. That's what it's for. I understand now.

At some point, my wrists come free. I don't know when he untied them, but my hands find his shoulders, his back, and the nape of his neck. He says my name once, in a voice I haven't heard before, low and wrecked. That's what does it. Not his hands or his mouth or the weight of him. Just my name in his voice like that.

I come with my face pressed into his shoulder, his hand in my hair, the sound of the sea through the window. He follows, spilling into me with a low groan of satisfaction.

As we lie there, I run my hand across his back, tracing the ink. “Where’d this scar come from?” I ask quietly. His head is on my chest, his eyes closed.

“Bloke broke a beer bottle across my back the night I went to prison.”

It’s a white semicircle. I trace it with the tip of my finger. “I bet he deserved whatever he got.”

He smiles, his eyes still closed. “Aye, lass. Do you have any scars?”

“No.” I frown. “My mother did.”

He doesn’t speak at first, but he moves his hand to find mine in the dark. “Did she?”

I love the quiet way he has about him, how he asks just enough to give me space to tell him more.

I let out a ragged breath. “My father slapped her for talking back to him. She fell and hit her head on the corner of a side table. God, you wouldn’t believe how much it bled. I was only ten. I threw my shoe at him. Later, he hit me for intervening.”

“Did he.” This time, it isn’t a question. “Fucking coward.”

“Mmmm.”

I don’t know why I’m telling him any of this. I’ve never told anyone. He stays where he is, his breathing evening out against my breasts.

His hand moves slowly up and down my side. “You alright?” His voice is rough.

I nod. “Mm-hmm.”

He rolls to his back, pulls the blanket up, and tucks it around me. I should say something. I don't.

My eyes are closing.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” he whispers as my eyes flutter closed. “No one will hurt you again.”

Sleep comes. I let it.

Chapter Twenty-Two

TORIN

I wake the next morning after a solid night’s sleep, her hair tangled in the stubble on my jaw, her head on my chest. And I remember last night. Her trust, the sweetness, the way we moved beyond captive and captor.

I know our time is coming to an end. It has to. Doesn’t mean I like it.

When my phone buzzes with a text, she stirs. One leg is outside the blanket, hitched up onto me, her arm thrown haphazardly across my chest. I don’t want to answer the phone. I don’t want to wake her up. I don’t want to move.

Then it buzzes again. And again. And again.

“Tell them to shut the fuck up,” she mumbles onto my chest. One eye opens, and she blinks, as if coming to. Her gaze settles on my chest under her cheek, her own hand wrapped around me, her leg nearly entwined with mine, and her eyes go very wide.