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My eyes burn, and not with my pain. With his. “That’s why you feel familiar. It’s a bond of shared experience you knew we had, but I didn’t.” I reach for his cheek, but he grabs my hand, holding it between us.

“Every time you touch me,” he says, his voice laden with some unidentifiable emotion, “I forget you don’t know who you are or what you want.”

“You said yourself that a name doesn’t define me. I know who I am. And I know what I want, and that’s you and whatever this is between us.”

“I’m not a hero, Ella. But I’m not the asshole who is going to take advantage of you, either.”

“Whiplash again, Kayden. One minute it’s ‘I’ll fuck you until you don’t know your name.’ The next, it’s this.”

“You know damn well what that was about. You thought I was him, and it pissed me off.”

He pushes off the counter and takes a step back, running a rough hand through his hair and leaving it a tousled, sexy mess. “I’m going out for a while.” He doesn’t wait for a response. I blink and he’s gone. And I am suddenly cold and painfully alone.

twelve

I linger in the kitchen for a long while, finishing off my coffee and inspecting the contents of cabinets and the refrigerator, and in general killing time while hoping Kayden will return, but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. I’m here and he’s wherever he is, forgetting I’m here, and I have no right to care. He’s helping me. He’s not obligated to me.

Finally, I accept that I’m going to bed alone, and do so with foolish stamped all over my heart that shouldn’t even be involved. I dim the lights in the kitchen to a glow, and then do the same in the living area before walking the chilly hallway. It’s a path that comes with plenty of creaks and moans of the castle, and who knows, maybe a ghost or two is watching, considering this place has to be three centuries or more old, but I have far more to fear in my own head right now to worry about such things.

I open the door to my room, finding it colder than I remember despite leaving the fireplace running. Bigger and emptier, too. Shutting myself inside, I don’t lock the door when there’s no one to keep out anyway. I go straight to the tub and run another bath¸ eager to sink into the warmth. Soon, bubbles surround me as I replay my encounter with Kayden. It doesn’t take me long to decide his pain is too raw to be about the death of his family when he was ten. There’s more.

Leaning into the bath pillow, I close my eyes and intend to keep my thoughts on Kayden, looking for answers. Instead, I keep seeing myself naked and tied up on that damn bed, and then sitting in front of that drawer, staring at that gun. Frustrated, I stand up, grabbing a towel, not sure why my mind keeps showing me the same thing over and over instead of the complete picture. I hate it. I hate it so much.

I dry off and pat on honeysuckle lotion before slipping on a silk button-up sleep shirt in a soft pink, and brushing my hair. Walking into the bedroom, I stare at the journal on the nightstand, and I want to throw it out the one window in the corner. I don’t want all of these pieces of the puzzle. I want the completed story. My story. And I want Kayden’s, too, neither of which appears willing to be explored.

Grimacing, I stop resisting and grab the stupid journal, sinking down on the floor and opening it. I have no idea why, but I start drawing a butterfly. A butterfly, of all things! It’s just odd and I have no real thought to drive the action. I finish an elementary image and give it a disapproving eye. “You are definitely not going to make your fame and fortune as an artist, Ella.” I shut the journal and leave it on the floor, pushing to my feet to glance at the clock. How did it get to be midnight?

Feeling claustrophobic, I need out of this room and my own head. Deciding to go make a shopping list for Marabella, I hunt for a robe I don’t find, and settle for slippers and a zip-up hoodie I wear over the top of my silk nightshirt. Opening the door, I listen, and I’m not really sure for what, but all I hear are more creaks and moans, disappointment filling me when there are no lights or any other sign of Kayden’s return.

I enter the hall and hurry toward the archway to the living area and kitchen, and when I reach it I end up staring toward Kayden’s room. I bite my lip, telling myself to go the other direction, but I think of him standing at that window, at the torment rolling off him, and I’m not sure if it’s me who needs him or him who needs me. Somehow my feet are moving toward his door. He’s not even here, so it won’t matter anyway. Still, my heart races, thundering in my chest, and it’s pure adrenaline that pushes me to his door. I stop and look at it, but I can’t seem to get myself to knock. I shouldn’t knock. Or maybe I should. No. I shouldn’t.

“Ella.”

At the sound of Kayden’s voice I whirl around to find him standing only a few feet away, his light brown hair tousled, his dark jeans and T-shirt paired with black boots and a sleek black leather jacket that confirms he’s been gone, somewhere, perhaps with someone.

“Is there something wrong?” he asks, an air of the rebel about him, of danger, that I perhaps find far too sexy.

My fingers twist together in front of me and I drop them, afraid I look as nervous as I feel. “Nothing is wrong. Or not really. I just wanted to talk to you.”

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?”

And as he had when we entered the castle, I have this sense of him asking for my trust, but also demanding control. “Yes,” I whisper, amazingly unafraid and willing to give him what he wants, needing him to prove he deserves it. “I understand.”

He is pleased with my answer, his eyes darkening, his gaze sweeping low again, lingering, and heating my skin before he looks at me and declares, “You are the one who is beautiful, and I promise you, I fully intend to show you just how beautiful.” He lowers his head, his teeth scraping my shoulder, his fingers giving a gentle flick to my nipple. I bite my lip at the sensations rolling through me and his palm flattens tantalizingly on my belly, caressing lower, one finger traveling the line above my panties.

“Kayden,” I pant, pleading for some unknown something I’m desperate for him to give me.

“The minute you stepped into my room,” he murmurs, nibbling at my neck, “you became mine tonight. Mine to tease. Mine to please. Mine to fuck how I want.” His breath teases my ear. “Say it.”

“Yes.”

“Mine to fuck how I want,” he states, the boldness of his words, of the words he wants me to speak, shivering through me.

I wait for fear to replace shock, for the past to attack me, but there is only desire, and the clenching of my sex. “Yours to fuck how you want,” I say, sounding breathless. Feeling breathless.

He leans back, letting me see the satisfaction light his eyes, and his reply is not words, or a kiss, but ripping the silk between my legs from my body. I’ve barely recovered from a gasp when he’s exploring the slick, wet heat of my sex, stroking, teasing, two fingers sliding inside me. Filling me, stretching me, and promising soon he will be there, inside me, fucking me the way he promised.

I moan with the sensations spiraling through me, clinging to the post when I want to hold onto him, but I know he meant what he said. He’ll stop touching me if I let go and I cannot bear the idea. My lashes lower, fingers digging into the unmovable wood, breasts thrust in the air, and I want him to touch them and me. One of his hands flattens in the crevice between them, teasing me with how close he is to giving me what I want, the other intimately caressing the ache swelling in my sex, and he leans in, his breath warm on my ear as he murmurs, “I’m not going to let you come yet.”

My eyes pop open. “What?”

“You heard me.” His fingers leave my sex, and before I can recover, he turns me to face the post, forcing me to catch myself on the wooden surface. He pins me between it and him, his powerful hips bracing mine, and his hands slide around me, cupping my breasts, caressing my waist, my backside. Everywhere but that sweet spot between my thighs where he left me burning, and not for his fingers anymore, but for him.

“Don’t move,” he orders. “Not until I tell you to.”

But I do. I try to turn and he flattens his hand on my back. “Wait for me, sweetheart. Trust me.”

Trust me. Those are the words that undo me and slam me with realization. I need someone to trust and he needs to be trusted. I know why this is true for me but I do not know why it is true for him. “I do,” I whisper, meaning it. Right or wrong, I’ve gone too far with him to question what comes next.

He doesn’t immediately move away, and I can almost feel him riding a stormy wave of emotions, each one crashing against the walls he tries to erect to protect himself. Seconds tick by and his hand slowly glides down my back and disappears, leaving my skin tingling in its wake. The air shifts and he is no longer behind me, but I feel him everywhere, inside and out. His body. His lust. His heartache. I want to turn, but not because I do not trust him. Because pain cuts him deeply, and he bleeds, and bleeds some more. Suddenly, I am far less worried about what haunts me and more about what haunts him, and I want desperately, if only for tonight, to drive away his memories, his enemies.

There is a shuffle of clothing, and a promise of him undressing, followed by a tear of paper, a condom wrapper, and unbidden, no matter what I desire, what haunts me will not let go, thrusting into the past. I am stepping out of a giant sunken tub in a bathroom of cream and blue tiles. The bath was an escape, a way of comforting myself, and I don’t know why. I try to pull myself out of the memory, trying to just be with Kayden, but I go deeper instead.

The door opens and he bursts inside, stalking angrily toward me. He grabs my arm, the towel falling to my feet as he yanks my wet body against his perfect suit-clad body. “You disobeyed me again.”

Fear shoots through me. He knows. How does he know? “No. I—”

He turns me to face the tub and grabs my hands, wrapping them with some kind of rope. “What are you doing?”

I whirl around to face Kayden at the same moment he returns, naked, beautiful, everything about him power and sex. And safety. He is safe. My hands flatten on his chest. “I . . . trust you. I do. I just . . . waiting made my mind crazy and—”

His hands cover mine, concern darkening his stare. “A flashback?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, and I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of wilting flower you have to be careful with. I’m not, but—”

His fingers tangle in my hair, roughly, erotically. “You are the furthest thing from a wilting flower,” he declares, his mouth closing down on mine, and his kiss is not gentle. He does not treat me like that wilting flower. He is demanding. He is the wolf. And this is the part of him I want to know, the part he tames, but I want set free. And I am free with him.

I touch him, everywhere, anywhere, indulging in the best of the sins I can wish to commit tonight, his thick erection at my hip. And I do not hold back. I reach down and wrap it with my hand, feeling the pulse against my palm. He presses me against the post again, cupping my backside and lifting me. “I need to be inside you,” he rasps against my lips.

“Yes. Please.”

He balances me, pressing the thick head of his erection into my slick heat, and I feel the sweet stretch of my body as he enters me and pulls me down on top of him. And with him buried inside me, we are steady, unmoving, savoring the moment as our gazes connect in a collision of raw, dark emotions, one part mine and one part his. His arm wraps around me, hand flattening on my back, and he lifts me off the post, holding my weight, holding me. He molds me close, breathing with me, long seconds passing before we start to move. Slowly at first and then faster, he is pumping into me and I am grasping his shoulders, driving against him. Driving everything away but the feeling of him inside me. And he answers every need I have. Pumping harder. Faster. Giving me more when I want more. More of this. More of him. More of the escape.

And oh God, I can feel the ache in my sex, the promise of release. I do not want to come. Not yet. But Kayden feels so good, and I bury my face in his shoulder, holding on, barely aware of the moment he presses my back onto the mattress, the sweet weight of him settling over me. His hands cup my head and the pause comes, the moment when we don’t move, and just breathe together. And I can breathe again. Because of him.

“Kayden,” I whisper, asking for some indescribable something only he can give me.

His lips brush mine, the soft, sensual caress touching every nerve ending I own. He cups my breast, squeezing it, a rough, erotic sensation that has me arching into him, a moan slipping from my lips. He swallows it, kissing me, a deep stroke of his tongue and we start to move again, and this time it’s a slow, sensual dance. The music I’d forgotten invades the moment, the same song on replay. And I swear to God I’ll find myself in the end. But here, now, with him, I lose myself. He is the burn in my belly that moves lower and lower, and I stiffen with the tight ball of pressure in my sex, unable to move.

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.”

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 573