“Yes, Shelly. I did it. Now come.”

“No.” I anchored myself against the wall as if it would really save me from him. Keenan was stronger and in control. How could I compete against that?

“The water isn’t hot.”

“Why should I trust you? What you did was sick.” With a careless shrug, he forced me up from the floor.

“It was necessary.”

“You have no right to be jealous of someone who doesn’t exist,” I snapped and prayed that he didn’t hear the lie in my voice.

“Jealous? I’m merely taking back what’s mine. How can I be jealous of that?”

He pushed me a little harder than necessary inside the bathroom. My attention was so fixated on the tub that I didn’t notice his silence behind me until his next words made my blood turn cold.

“You had my name removed,” he growled.

I whirled around to face him. Not only did the hatred in his voice make my spine feel as if it retreated to my body, but he was also blocking the exit.

The fire dancing within his dark irises should have made me back down, but Keenan would know the moment I did and then he would pounce.

The smile that graced my face couldn’t be stopped even if I wanted. Never mind the fact that I stood before an angry Keenan in my birthday suit. No, it wasn’t enough. I had to bait him. “Yeah. So?”

“Why?”

“I may be stuck in this hell hole with you, but that doesn’t mean I answer to you anymore.”

“Wrong, Shelly. You never stopped answering to me. That’s why you could never seal the deal with your golden boy, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He spoke as if he knew about Eric, but I knew there could be no way unless Lake told him, and I made her promise not to ever tell.

“Oh, I know plenty. I know when you’re hot and ready to fuck and, baby, you were always ready to fuck. But when you look at him, I bet there was no passion and there was no lust. I bet he has never even tasted your pretty little pussy, has he?” His hand slid up my leg slowly and softly. So softly that had I not been so in tune with his touch even four years later, I might not have noticed. “I remember how much you liked that.”

“I don’t want you to touch me.”

“Then why are your thighs quaking?”

I tried to still the trembling of my legs and fight the memory of how he would wrap them around his neck and spending what felt like hours tasting me… but all that was tarnished by the reminder of the cruel, sadistic person he had become.

“If you beg me, I’ll do it for you, right here and now. But if you don’t…”

He stopped speaking to lead me to the tub with a tight grip on my wrist.

“If I don’t?” I hated that my voice sounded breathless and my body responded to the pure unadulterated promise of sex. Knowing he wouldn’t go easy on me didn’t make me want him less. Knowing what he could and would do made me want him more.

“I’ll do it anyway. At least, if you beg, you will feel like you have a choice.”

Because I was left without a choice, I lifted and lowered my foot into the water, which was shockingly cool and served as a balm to my skin. I was more grateful that the water would hide my true reaction to his promise.

“You can do what you want to me, but I won’t be begging.”

He lowered to his knee until he was eye level with me. The heat in his dark eyes was unmistakable. “Beg now or beg later, but you will beg.” Without warning, he stole my lips but not to kiss. He clamped down on my upper lip until I cried out. When he retreated, I lifted a tentative hand to my lip just before I tasted a drop of blood.

“I think I like the taste of your blood just as much as your pussy,” he chuckled before rising to his feet to tower over me.

At the same time, I shuddered with revulsion, my tongue unconsciously flicked over my lips, curious of the taste. When I recognized the familiar copper tang of blood, I glared up at him.

“What do you want from me?”

“Right now, I just want you to bathe and then I want you to sleep.”

“I can sleep at home.”

“Why? What’s waiting for you there but an empty apartment?”

“It’s not empty.” The temperature in the room seemed to drop a hundred degrees when he froze from picking up my clothes. “My daughter is everywhere in that apartment,” I clarified. “It’s where she took her first steps and learned to talk. Every smell and surface belonged to her. We have so many memories there, and I just want to be there with her.”

I was begging, and I didn’t even care. For her, I’d beg. For her, I’d give up anything. But it wasn’t the Keenan who came back to me that I was pleading to—I pleaded to the Keenan who was still running away. I knew he could hear me. The evidence was in the emotion hidden behind the anger. It was right there in his eyes for the world to see. You just had to know what to look for.

His gaze was locked with mine for the longest time, and for a minute, I thought I’d gotten through. He made a quick turn on his heel and tossed over his shoulder, “You have ten minutes to be done.”

* * * * *

Keenan had taken off but not before cuffing my hands together and locking me in his bedroom, only saying that he would be back before retreating. It was more of a warning than the reassurance it should have been.

I wondered when he’d changed the locks on the door because he had never been able to lock the door with a key in the past.

He planned this.

I drifted off to sleep before I could figure out why he would go to the trouble of keeping me against my will.

I awoke sometime later to the feeling of his long fingers circling my wrist. He unlocked one cuff and then the other before silently turning away. I ignored the dull ache in my wrists as I sat up and fought away the remains of sleep.

“Anything?”

His face remained impassive as he spoke. “We went back to the house in Camden, but there was no one there. I don’t think anyone has lived there for years.”

“How did you get in?” Instead of answering, he sent me a look that said I needed to use my head.

“You broke in.”

“Yes.”

I silently sat back and tried not to let the slump in my shoulders be visible. Our leads were dropping like dead flies, and each day, it seemed less possible that I would ever see Kennedy’s face again or hear her voice.

“Are you ready to tell me who you’ve been seeing?”

“You are unbelievable. How could my dating life possibly help us find her?”

“Use your fucking head, Shelly. It could have been anyone. We need to explore every option.”

“Isn’t that what the FBI is for?”

“We haven’t heard anything from them in days. They know less than we do. How long before this case goes cold for them?”

I didn’t want to think about that. “There is no one. I told you that.”

His eyes narrowed as his jaw hardened. “If I find out you are lying to me, I will make you pay, and you will never see her again.”

“You can’t keep my daughter from me.”

His hand flashed out to grip my ponytail, pulling my head back until my neck felt as if it would snap. “I can if you’re dead so think hard about who you really need to protect.”

With that, he released my hair and stormed from the room.

There was no reason to put Eric in that kind of danger. The consequences of revealing his name were far too deadly. Eric had never even met Kennedy. I never talked about her to him. I’d always been careful. A part of me never wanted her to mistake anyone as her father and the biggest part was the maternal instinct to protect her. What kind of mother would I be if I brought someone in her life at such a tender age? I wasn’t in love with Eric, and deep down, I knew I never would be.

I had no reason to feel guilty.

I wanted to find her more than I wanted to breathe, but finding her shouldn’t mean the innocent life of another, should it?

I cried myself to sleep thinking about everything I had lost and everything I would still have to sacrifice.