It ought to have summoned my temper. To have me cursing her very presence.

Instead, it granted a strange kind of kinship. She might not wear anyone’s ring. She might be tied in my rope. But in some sick way, I now belonged to her. She’d been the first in a decade to brand me. And, for the first time, seeing her punishment still embedded in my flesh filled me with lust instead of horror.

“I’m sorry...by the way.”

Her soft voice wrenched my head up. Her hazel stare on my cock only made my belly clench harder.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, unwrapping her chosen meal and taking a huge bite.

Christ, yes, it hurts.

Hurts for you, goddammit.

“No,” I snapped.

“To be fair, I wouldn’t have had to hurt you if you didn’t have such a fascination with wrapping your fingers around my throat.”

“If you stopped being such a menace, perhaps I’d stop trying to kill you.”

“I’m the menace?” She pointed at herself with the half-eaten Snickers. “I think if others were watching this twisted relationship of ours, they would disagree.”

“If others were watching, I’d tear out their eyes for seeing you bare.” I dragged my gaze down her mud-filthy beauty. “I’m debating between torturing myself watching you eat that chocolate bar or demanding you get on your knees.”

She inhaled sharply. Her hands shook, wrapped around her chocolate.

The small space of the car switched from awareness into lust-laced senselessness. The air was tiny fireworks, the oxygen we breathed electricity, and the carbon dioxide we exhaled a drug slowly drowning us.

Ever so slowly, she took another bite.

Her tongue licked her lips, her teeth bit down, her throat worked as she chewed.

And I almost came.

I throbbed, wanting inside her mouth, wanting to be the chocolate bar as she swallowed and devoured.

Turned out, giving a woman to a sexually repressed, starving man was not a good idea.

Snatching the half-full water bottle I’d drank from, I leaped from the vehicle and into the rain.

“What are you—?” Her confused question halted as I tipped the bottle over my cock and gritted my teeth against the grotesque sensation of touching myself.

I performed a perfunctory cleaning. That was all. Wrapping my hand around my hardness, washing away the dirt and mud from rolling around in the storm.

A crest of sickness tried to push up through my guts, shoving aside cocoa and sugar, replacing good with bad, tainting everything with sordid reminders.

I tore my hand away, tipping the rest of the bottle over my length, letting droplets trail to my balls.

The second I was clean, I tossed the bottle to the side, crawled into the tailgate, and didn’t stop until I kneeled before her. Kneeled with trembling muscles and rapid heartbeats. Kneeled with desperation and a shitload of pain.

I kneeled before her.

Now, it’s her turn.

My voice had gotten lost in the darkness inside me, echoing through my chest as I growled, “Kneel.”

She froze. Her chocolate bar fell from her bound hands. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you.”

I merely shook my head. “You’re wrong. I’m already inside you.”

She gasped.

For the longest second, we stared at each other. I physically felt as if her eyes were chains, slinking around me, holding me immobile as locks snapped into place. Padlocks with no keys, chains with no weaknesses, a cage of knots and fastenings that would never be undone.

I couldn’t catch a breath as heat filled my heart.

A heat filled with knowing that she was right about our connection. That it burned bright, despite our war. That it was more powerful than the both of us.

The longer we stayed together, the harder it would be to undo. Even now, pieces of me were being erased—for good this time, not just behind a wall I hastily erected. It erased fragments of the cruelty inside me, the distrust, the violence, the heavily conditioned boy who knew death better than he knew living.

For a single heartbeat, everything felt right.

Easy.

Peaceful.

God...peace.

She gave me peace after a lifetime of distress.

She gave me the silence I sought every second that I was awake. I didn’t need to run around the valley. I didn’t need to absorb myself in a book. I didn’t need to hide from the mania inside my mind.

All I had to do was look at her.

Be with her.

Sink inside her.

A sudden pain struck me in the temples, making me wince. My vision blacked out for a second, the weird vertigo I’d suffered from her striking me with the shovel returning.

The worst headache I’d ever felt came then faded, leaving me swaying and turned upside down.

What...what had I been thinking about?

I’d been...happy.

Something had made happiness grow in my heart.

But it was fading.

Popping.

Turning black and cold.

“Hey...are you alright?” Her touch landed on my thigh. A hesitant, wary touch from someone who recognized the man in front of her wasn’t entirely sane. “You blacked out for a second—”

“You concussed me,” I bit out. “I’ve had a headache ever since you hit me.”

She stiffened and turned prickly. “I wouldn’t have had to hit you if—” Inhaling hard, she forced herself to stay kind, giving me things I didn’t deserve. “Maybe sit back down. Have another chocolate—”

“Quiet.”

There was magic in this woman. Viperish magic that’d somehow twined around me while we’d been sitting in this car. I didn’t know how she’d done it, but she’d made me soft, made me vulnerable.

Never again.

Never again would I be taken advantage of.

She needed to be reminded of that.

Immediately.

Shutting my heart down, embracing the man I’d become after losing everything, I snarled, “Are you deliberately disobeying me? I said, kneel.” Grabbing the rope around her wrists, I jerked her forward.

“What? Stop! I was trying to help you—”

“I don’t need your help. I need your body. I need you to obey.”

“I’ll never obey a madman.”

I chuckled as she tumbled to the side. “I’m not mad, Gemma Ashford.” I manhandled her hips, twisting her until she landed on all fours. “I’m just not available for others to use anymore.”

“I’m not using you, you monster. You’re the one using me!”

“And you’re even more delicious than chocolate.”

I drank in the sight of her, falling forward onto her elbows, wrists locked together, her bare ass beckoning me. Her pussy still glistened from when I’d eaten her in the rain. The orgasms she’d denied both of us would still be there, waiting for me to finish.

She would give that to me.

It’s mine.

I ran a fingertip down her spine.

She quivered, a pained groan spilling from her lips. “Please...”

Her plea did terrible things to me.

I’d never wanted anyone so badly.

It gave me a dose of the power I’d briefly tasted.

“Tell me what you want.”

She scoffed. “What I want is the right to say no.”

“Truly?” Gently, ever so gently, I ran my fingers down the crack in her ass.

She shot forward, trying to get away. “Yes, truly!”

“Why do you want to say no to something you yourself admitted is out of our control?” Down, down, I slid my touch to her pussy, rubbing the wetness around her folds, dipping lower to her clit. “Doesn’t it burn when I touch you? Doesn’t your belly cramp and body clench for more?”

“Don’t throw my words back at me,” she groaned. Her back bowed. Her head fell forward, pressing against the rough carpet of the car. “Please...don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t admit that I can’t breathe without wanting to fuck you? Don’t confess that you’re doing things to me that I can’t seem to stop? Doesn’t that make you happy? Knowing that you’re not the only one screwed up by all of this?”