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Heat stung her cheeks as she confessed, “I scream when I have bad nightmares. One of the many reasons I’m not in a relationship with anyone. Most guys can’t handle a girlfriend who starts fighting him in the middle of the night because she thinks he’s there to kill her. They don’t understand when she punches out and screams and begs to live.”

Wow. She’d just revealed more to him than she’d told her last therapist.

Hunter didn’t say a word. So much for his interest.

“It’s a turnoff,” she mumbled. Then she squared her shoulders. “Fine, you want to stay, then stay. Sleep on the couch. But, again, just because you hear me screaming, it doesn’t mean you have to rush up the stairs. And it might happen multiple times. The screaming, that is.” Wasn’t this why she’d tried to get him to leave? The world had this picture of her being some brave survivor, but the truth was that terror claimed her far too often. Nightmares. Panic attacks.

The fear that I sent the wrong man to death row.

The story didn’t stop when the trial was over. The murders haunted her.

“Nothing about you could be a turnoff.” Low. Deep.

Her chest felt tight. And not from a panic attack. At least, she didn’t think so.

“And I’ll rush up the stairs. I’d do it over and over again, gladly.”

He was really making her want to lunge at him. Lunge, grab, hold tightly to him. Because no man had ever handled things with her this way. No man had made her feel this way. All wound up. Needy. Yearning.

He didn’t move to close the distance between them.

She didn’t move from her position. Her feet seemed locked to the floor. At that moment, she wanted to kiss him. But that would be such a mistake, wouldn’t it? “Do you, um, have some rule about not getting involved with clients?”

“No.” His dark gaze heated.

Shelby found herself leaning forward. Maybe⁠—

“But I do have a rule about not taking advantage of someone who has been shot and has to be on the verge of an adrenaline crash. I want you to know that you can count on me. I don’t want you to think I’m just trying to fuck you.”

Her forward lean stopped.

“I’m not looking for a casual fuck,” Hunter said.

But what if I am? Would that be so terrible? Because Hunter seemed like someone she might be able to trust. And definitely like someone she wanted to fuck.

“I don’t want you waking up with regrets in the morning.” A brisk nod from Hunter. “I’ll go and spread out on the couch. If I hear those screams, then I will come running.” He spun and headed out of the door.

His hands had been clenched when he left. His voice rough. His body stiff.

He’d left before she’d been able to say that she would have no regrets. And that she would very much like to try that casual fucking with him.

Chapter Five

It was always loud in hell.

The guards had called lights out at least ten minutes ago, but the shouts and cat calls still lingered. The lumpy, smelly mattress poked into his back, and Nate Shiloh glared at the dark ceiling above him.

He had a new neighbor, one in the cell right next to his. A chatty sonofabitch who’d rolled in late that evening. Nate’s last cell neighbor had left not even two days before…

In a body bag.

The prisoners on death row were housed separately from everyone else. They stayed in their damn cells nearly all the time. The six-by-nine-foot cell. They had TVs. Radios. They could write letters. They could exercise. They got an hour to walk in the yard.

The same endless routine. Over and over again.

Until you die.

The orange shirt he wore scratched against Nate’s skin. All death row inmates wore the orange shirts. Orange shirts, but the same blue pants the other prisoners were given. The orange was to distinguish them. To let everyone know who the hell they were. Death row bastards.