He’d never lost control. Not once.

You told me I was your world.

“It wasn’t me. I was an animal.” My heart pounded. My cheeks burned.

You never wanted it to end.

“Why are you being such a jackass, slamming me in the face with my own humiliation?”

Humiliation? That’s what you call this? He forced a more detailed reminder on me.

I swallowed. Yes, I certainly remembered that. “I was out of my mind. I’d never have done it otherwise.”

Really, his dark eyes mocked, and in them I was demanding more, telling him I wanted it to always be this way.

I remembered what he’d replied: that one day I would wonder if it was possible to hate him more.

“I had no awareness. No choice.” I searched for words to drive my point home. “It was every bit as much rape as what the Unseelie Princes did to me.”

His glittering gaze went flat black, opaque as mud, the images died. Beneath his left eye, a tiny muscle contracted, smoothed, contracted again. That minute betrayal was Barrons’ equivalent of a normal person having a hissy fit. “Rape isn’t something—”

“You walk away from,” I cut him off. “I know. I get it now. Okay?”

“You crawl. You were crawling when I found you.”

“Your point?”

“You walked away from me. Stronger for it.”

“Point?” I gritted. I was tired, impatient, and I wanted the bottom line.

“Making sure we’re on the same page,” he clipped. His eyes were dangerous.

“You did what you had to do, right?”

He inclined his head. It was neither nod nor negation, and it pissed me off. I was sick of nonanswers from him.

I pressed. “You made me capable of walking again the only way you could. It had nothing to do with me. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

He stared at me, and I had the feeling our conversation had taken a wrong turn somewhere, that it could have gone a completely different way, but I couldn’t think of how it might have or where it had strayed.

He brought his head down, completing the nod. “Right.”

“Then we’re on the same page. Same paragraph, same sentence,” I snapped.

“Same bloody word,” he agreed flatly.

I felt like crying and hated myself for it. Why couldn’t he have said something nice? Something that wasn’t about sex. Something about me. Why had he come in here all stalking and shoving in my face that we’d been in each other’s skin? Would it have killed him to show a little kindness, some compassion? Where was the man who’d painted my nails? The one who had papered the room with pictures of Alina and me? The one who had danced with me?

Means to an end. That was all it had been for him.

The silence lengthened. I searched his eyes. There wasn’t a single word to be found in them.

Finally, he gave me a faint smile. “Ms. Lane,” he said coolly, and those two words spoke volumes. He was offering me formality. Distance. A return to the way things had been, as if nothing else had ever passed between us. A façade of civility that made us able to work together when we had to.

I’d be a fool not to accept it.

“Barrons.” I sealed the deal. Had I ever told this enigmatic, cold man that he was my world? Had he really demanded I say it, over and over? “Why are you here? What do you want?” I was exhausted, and our little run-in was swiftly depleting my last stores of energy.

“You might start by thanking me.” There was that dangerous look in his eyes again, as if he felt taken advantage of. He felt taken advantage of? I was the one who’d been at her weakest, not him.

“For what? For finding something else that was so important to do that it took you all the way from midnight on Samhain ‘til four days later to come for me? I’m not going to thank you for saving me from something you failed to save me from to begin with.” I’d asked Dani on the way back to the abbey when he and his men had broken me out. She’d said late in the evening on November 4. Why? Where had he been, and why not with me?

He lifted a shoulder, shrugged, grace and power in an elegant Armani suit. “You look fine to me. In fact, you’re better than fine, aren’t you? You walked right through my wards, without a word. Didn’t even leave a note by the bedside. Really,” he mocked, “after all we shared, Ms. Lane.” He gave me a wolf smile, all teeth and promise of blood. “But do I get any thanks for doing the impossible and bringing you back from being Pri-ya? No. What do I get?” He eyed me coldly. “You steal my guns.”

“You snooped in my bus!” I said indignantly.

“I’ll snoop anywhere I damned well please, Ms. Lane. I’ll snoop inside your skin if I feel like it.”

“You just try,” I said, eyes narrowing.

He moved forward in one swift, violent lunge but caught himself and locked down hard.

I mirrored the move, without conscious thought at all, as if our bodies were connected by puppet strings. Lunged forward, froze. Fisted my hands at my sides. They wanted to touch him. I looked down. His hands were fisted, too.

I uncurled my hands and crossed my arms.

He crossed his at exactly the same moment.

We both practically flung them down at our sides.

We stared at each other.

The silence lengthened.

“Why did you take my guns?” he said finally.

His question snapped me fully awake again. I was dangerously tired. “I needed them. Figured it was the least you could give up after all the sex you got,” I added, with flippancy I didn’t feel.

“You think you can steal from me? You’re out of control, Rainbow Girl.”

“Don’t call me that!” She was dead. And if she wasn’t, I’d have killed her myself.

“And you know it.”

“You’re the one who’s out of control,” I said, just to irritate him.

“I’m never out of control.”

“Are, too.”

“Am—” He broke off and looked away. Then, disbelievingly, “Bloody hell, have you learned nothing?”

“What was I supposed to learn, Barrons?” I demanded. My temper, already a frayed rope, snapped. “That it’s a sucky world out there? That people will take everything from you that matters, if you let them? That if you want something, you’d better hurry and get it, because odds are somebody else wants it, too, and if they can beat you to it they will? Or was I supposed to learn that it’s not only okay to kill but sometimes it can be downright fun? That was a real kicker to find inside your head. Want to talk about it? Share a little intimacy with me? No? Didn’t think so. How about this: The more weapons, knowledge, and power you can get your hands on, any way you can, the better. Lie, cheat, or steal, it all comes out in the wash. Isn’t that what you think? That emotion is weakness and cunning priceless? Wasn’t I supposed to become like you? Wasn’t that the point?” I was shouting, but I didn’t care. I was furious.

“That was never the point,” he snarled, moving toward me.

“Then what was it? What the bloody hell was the point? Tell me there was some kind of point to all this!” I snarled back, stepping toward him.

We charged each other like bulls.

An instant before we collided, I shouted, “Did you help the LM turn me Pri-ya just to make me stronger?”

His head snapped back, and he stopped so suddenly that I slammed into him, bounced off, and sprawled on my ass. On the floor. Again.

He stared down at me, and for a split second I saw a completely unguarded look in his eyes. No. He hadn’t. Not only hadn’t he, this … man, for lack of a better word … who enjoyed killing, was horrified by the thought of it.

A terrible tension inside me eased. Breath came more easily.

I stayed on the floor, too drained to get back up. There was another of those long, strained silences.

I sighed.

He took a deep breath. Released it.

“I would have given you the guns,” he said finally.