Kayden pumps into me, deeper, harder, and I explode, spasming around him, clinging to him, as he drives once, twice, and on three his body shudders and shakes. Time swirls in and out, and the muscles in my body ease, in his too. “What are you doing to me, woman?” he whispers near my ear, nipping my earlobe. “Don’t go away.” He pulls out of me and rolls to his side, and, I think, takes care of the condom. Before I can figure it out, he’s returned and he’s pulling me against him, my back to his front, the warmth of the fire and his body sending me into a deep, drugged state of satisfaction. “You tried to take my gun when you felt trapped. You aren’t a wilting flower.”

My chest tightens. “I might be a little too comfortable with guns.”

He rolls me onto my back and pulls me around to face him, grabbing a blanket and draping it over us, his hand settling possessively on my hip. “Any idea how you know how to shoot?”

My mind flickers to that image of myself at a gun range. “I remember going to a gun range. I was younger, so I think I learned young.”

“So maybe your parents were in law enforcement?”

My mind produces an image of a man in a uniform. “Military,” I say. “I think my father was, or is, military. I’m not sure if he’s alive or dead.” There’s an image of a woman in my mind with red hair like mine, and the idea of her hurts my heart. “My mother’s dead.”

“You’re sure?”

My eyes pinch. “Yes. Thinking of her makes me sad. And my father feels distant. Out of my life or dead.” I swallow hard. “I’m alone. That’s why no one came looking for me.”

His hands settle on my face. “You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

“I might be a killer. You sure you want to keep me around?”

“You are not a killer.”

“I know what I remember.”

“Which isn’t killing someone, unless you’ve remembered something you haven’t told me.”

“No. No, I haven’t, but Kayden—”

“You aren’t a killer, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t kill him. Surviving is human nature.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, and an image of me naked and tied to that bed flickers in my mind. “I was trying to survive.”

His finger slides under my chin and I look at him. “Can you talk about it?” he prods softly.

My chest tightens again and I roll to my back, facing the ceiling. “I know I lost my passport and money. I met him and I have no idea where or how. I just remember he let me stay with him. He gave me my own room and I ended up in his.”

“I do not like how familiar that sounds.”

I roll to face him again, curling my fingers at his jaw. “It’s not. I mean, it is, but different. You’re different. What is between us, whatever it is, isn’t like what I had with him. I’m not infatuated with you and you don’t treat me like you’re on a pedestal looking down on me or that I’m your subject who should be so very pleased to have your good graces. You’re real in a way he never was, and I know that I’m real with you in a way I couldn’t be with him. Maybe . . . I’m able to be real because I don’t know what to hide.”

“We all hide from things.”

“Including you?”

“Yes. Including me.” I want him to go on, to explain the torment I sense in him, but he doesn’t. He draws my hand in his and asks, “When I turned your back to me, you had a flashback. What was it?”

I press my hand to my face, the demons of my past clawing at my mind.

“If you don’t want to tell me—”

“I do,” I say, dropping my hand to look at him. “He wins if I hide from this. And he can’t win.” I draw in a breath for courage. “He started out like a Prince Charming, until he wasn’t. You know he offered me a place to stay. I thought it was a fairy tale. But I remember the day it changed. I went out when he told me not to. When he returned home he was displeased. He stripped me naked and tied me to the bed and just left me there for hours. When we were . . . when you turned me around, I remembered another time when he turned me around and tied my hands behind my back.”

He drags me closer, his leg twining with mine. “I’m sorry,” he says, his hand slipping under my hair, at my neck. “I won’t—”

“Don’t say you won’t. Please. He wins again if you treat me like a delicate flower. And you’ll make me feel like I can’t tell you what I remember. You have to be you with me. That’s what I respond to. That’s what feels right. I mean, assuming you want—”

“I do. Very much, Ella. I think you know that, and I won’t coddle you, but you have to promise me you’ll tell me if I hit a trigger.”

“I did tonight. I will. I promise. Kayden, when he tied me up, he said it was punishment for not listening to him, but also said that he is very powerful and that his enemies would kill me because I was his. He sounds like Niccolo, doesn’t he?”

“There are many men who have money and power. Just know this. Whoever he is, he’s not ever going to touch you again. You have my word.”

For just a moment I’m back in that alleyway, and he’s leaning over me, the only good thing in the midst of the pain, with his spicy raw scent and those blue eyes. Don’t leave me, I’d whispered.

“I remember you that night in the alleyway,” I whisper.

“What about that night?”

“I begged you not to leave me. You promised you wouldn’t.”

“Yes. You did, and I did.” He brushes hair from my eyes, the touch tender. “And won’t. We’ll figure this all out together.”

“I may never get to be Ella again.”

“You are Ella.”

“Ella lived in San Francisco, and I fear I will never fully remember her unless I return. But more so, I fear returning and putting others, like my friend Sara, in danger.”

“If we need to go back for answers, we can do it without anyone knowing you’re there.”

“We?”

“I told you. We’ll figure this out together.”

You are not alone, he’d said, and I think . . . I think he’s been alone a long time and I want to know why. “Where were you from before you moved here?”

“Houston.”

“Do you remember it?”

“I remember it. I’ve been back. But mostly I remember my father. He is Houston to me.”

“Your dad was a Hunter, you said?”

“Yes. That’s how I started.” He gives a sad laugh. “And a regular cowboy. Boots. Jeans and pickup trucks. I still listen to country music.”

“What country music?”

“Jason Aldean. Luke Bryan. Keith Urban.”

“Those people are fairly new on the scene. Well, not Keith Urban, but Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan.”

“You know your country music.”

My brow furrows. “I guess I do. Hmmm.” An image of my father working on a pickup truck, with music playing in the background, comes to me. “My father liked it, I think.” I shake off the thought that for some illogical reason makes me uncomfortable. It’s just music. I happily, eagerly refocus on Kayden. “We were talking about you. You’re more biker than cowboy.”

“Biker.” His lips quirk sexily at the corners. “A few motorcycles does not make me a ‘biker.’ ”

“Okay, maybe that was the wrong choice of words. Rebel is more like it. Or wild card. Very dangerous.”

“Dangerous? Is that what you still think of me?”

“Your own words.”

“Yes,” he agrees, his voice tight. “My own words.”

I wait for him to explain. He doesn’t, but nor do I sense the wall between us as I have in the past, so I cautiously push for more. “And your mother. What did she do?”

“Music teacher.”

“Music teacher?” I whisper, a shadow of a memory stirring in my mind.

“Memory?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“You don’t sound certain.”

“I get feelings sometimes but I don’t know what they mean.” I refocus on him. “I don’t know why, but I’m afraid to ask the next question.”

“You want to know about my sister?”

“Yes.”

“She was eight. We’d had a fight right before they were murdered.”

“All siblings fight, and you were kids.”

“But most of them don’t have to remember that as the last moment the other was alive.” He shuts his eyes a moment, the lines of his face harder now, tighter, and when he looks at me again, he’s done talking. “Let’s go to sleep.”