His eyes narrow sharply, his displeasure with my answer slicing through the air, and I don’t know why. What is wrong with talking? He advances on me, a predator closing in on his prey, his anger a live wire that has me backing up until I hit the door. He stops in front of me, towering above me, his big body a wall between me and the rest of the world.

“You wanted to talk?” he demands, his voice low, fierce. “In your nightgown?”

My defenses bristle. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was wearing.”

“In your nightgown, Ella.”

“Yes. I’m in my nightgown because I couldn’t sleep. I meant to go to the kitchen and then I ended up here because I wanted . . .” His reaction cuts like his anger. “Just never mind.” I try to move around him but his hands press to the wall beside me, caging me, and now I’m angry. “Are we doing this again? Don’t bully me. My stupid flashbacks are doing a fine job of that on their own. I said I’m sorry. Just let me go back to my room.”

“You wanted what?”

“I wanted you to do what you swore you could,” I blurt, having nothing to lose when everything is already gone. “Only I don’t want you to fuck me until I can’t remember my name. I want you to fuck me until I stop thinking about that man and the gun. Because you were right. Memories are the enemies that never die. But I know you don’t want—”

His hand slides under my hair and he drags me to him, my hand flattening on the hard wall of his chest. “I do want. So fucking bad it’s killing me.”

My palm is directly over his heart, and I can feel it racing, the air around us crackling with barely contained passion. “I don’t need a hero to save my virtue tonight. I need you. So please. Fuck me and then fuck with my head so no one else can. Let me choose my own sins.”

He is stone, unmoving, his body steel, his expression unreadable, the sexual tension crackling between us. “You want sin, sweetheart,” he says. “I’ll give you sin.” His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue licking into my mouth, wicked with demand, and I can taste his hunger, his need. A deep, aching need I want to fill. This is what I’ve sensed in him, a pain that runs deeper than that of a ten-year-old boy, raw and open, carving him inside out. This is what brought me to his door. I wrap my arms around him, sinking into the kiss, the hard lines of his body absorbing my softer ones, a shelter and escape from the storm raging inside me.

But just as I am lost in the kiss, in the man, he tears his mouth from mine, jolting me back to reality and staring down at me, shadows etching those blue eyes. I don’t know what he searches for but I do not blink, holding his stare, letting him see that I have no hesitation in me. And he must get the message, because he turns me to face the door, his big body hot and hard against my backside as he reaches around me and opens it.

“Go inside,” he orders softly, and a shiver of pure feminine arousal runs through me. It’s an order, but also a choice, and that choice is to be taken, controlled, and possessed. And beyond reason, and in defiance of anything I know of my past, that is exactly what I want and need.

I step forward, entering the dimly lit room that is identical to mine but for the darker, heavier furnishings, and it is warm and luxurious, decorated in brown and cream, while I am already burning hot. So very hot. But it’s the centerpiece of the room, the massive four-poster bed, his bed, that stays my footsteps and sends an eruption of nerves to my belly. Kayden’s boots scrape the floor behind me, the door shutting with a heavy, final thud. I glance over my shoulder to find him shrugging out of his jacket, readying himself to come for me, and I dart forward, rounding the bed. I don’t stop until I’m at the edge of the thick brown rug in front of the fireplace, kicking off my slippers to step onto the soft tread.

Music starts to play, “The Story” by 30 Seconds to Mars, and I close my eyes, letting the words roll through me. I’ve been thinking of everything, of me, of you and me. The words rip through me, speaking to the darkness inside me. But I don’t like the story of my life, and his. His hurts him.

I feel Kayden’s approach rather than hear it, certain he’s removed his boots, and then he is behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his touch somehow leaving me a little less lost than moments before. He leans into me, his big body cradling mine, and I think he inhales my scent, his breath a warm whisper on my neck that sends a shiver down my spine. He affects me. He speaks to me in ways that are far beyond sex or my understanding of where I’ve been or where I’m going. I relax into him, and his fingers flex where they hold me and for long moments there is just us and the song, two people lost in the stories of our lives, of our pasts. And I swear to God I’ll find myself in the end.

He inches back, his hands caressing my jacket down my arms, dragging it away and tossing it who knows where, his fingers teasing my skin and leaving goose bumps in their wake. I face him, this man who has come into my life and taken it by storm, yet still sheltered me from the storm of my past. My self-appointed protector with motivations I do not understand any more than my need to be here with him, but I do not fear these things or him. His hand slides under my hair, warm and strong, wrapping the back of my neck, dragging my mouth to his, where I want it to be. “I fully intended to find another woman tonight, to bury every thought of you I had in her. One who didn’t give a shit that I was using her.”

His words ripple through me, and deliver an unexpected slice of pain I shouldn’t feel but I do. “If you’re telling me this is just sex—”

“I don’t know what the hell this is. I just know that she, whoever she might have been, wasn’t you, and that made her not good enough. No one else was good enough. Nor would I have tasted her without tasting you.” He kisses me then, his mouth closing down on mine, and it’s a punishing kiss, hot and hard, as if he isn’t pleased that I have such control over him, and it’s unforgiving in its demand. And when I moan with the effect, it’s as if I set off a trigger.

He rotates me to press my back to the wide span of a bedpost, tearing his mouth from mine, and the mix of dark passion and haunting shadows in the depths of his eyes steals my breath. He doesn’t speak. I don’t speak. But there are things unspoken between us, an understanding that we are alike in ways few others ever will be. His eyes darken, filling with intent I do not understand, until he reaches up and closes his hands around the two sides of my silk shirt at my collarbones. A challenge flickers in his eyes that runs deeper than his quest to undress me, to a place not yet realized, but I want to know it and him. He waits a beat, then two, and he yanks the shirt open, buttons popping and flying here and there. I am panting, aroused in ways I am not sure I have ever felt before, a feeling that defies my absent memory, as does my understanding that I want to touch him, but I shouldn’t. Not yet.

His gaze drops to my breasts for a sizzling inspection that has my nipples puckering and my sex clenching, and I ache for the touch that he doesn’t give me. Instead, he tears his shirt over his head and tosses it on the bed, muscles rippling with the action. I reach for him, my hands finding his chest, the light brown, almost blond hair teasing my fingers. He reaches up and under the silk of my shirt, caressing it away, silk pooling at my feet, the chill of the room touching my skin, while the heat of this man warms me inside and out.

He surprises me then, pressing my hands to the post behind me. “Move them and I stop touching you,” he orders, his fingers splaying on my back, and as if delivering motivation for me to comply, he cradles my naked body, molding it to his, his eyes probing mine, his expression hard, intense. “Understand?”