Looking up the expanse of her stunning body, I almost gave in to the dark urges inside me. The hisses to take her like others had taken me. Not to care about her wants or needs because no one had taken care of mine.

I wanted her so. Fucking. Bad.

I needed to be inside her, not wedging my cock into the dirt.

But I gritted my teeth and ignored it. I wanted to make this right between us more than I wanted to take her. If she accepted my apology, then she’d have no choice but to let me fuck her again. We would no longer be enemies.

“Forgive me for hurting you.” My mouth settled over her pussy. I swiped with my tongue, finding her entrance and working my way back to her clit.

Her legs trembled around my ears.

Her hands tightened to fists in the grass.

I licked her again, dipping inside her and tasting everything I’d been denied.

“Let me apologize,” I murmured into her wetness. “Let me show you what I’ve learned from being a slave.”

She moaned again as I plunged my tongue inside her, no longer soft or sedate. Her legs tried to snap together, catching me around the ears and adding a ringing to my already throbbing head.

With my vision spinning, I closed my eyes and nipped at her clit. She was my anchor in the chaos inside my mind. She was the only thing I needed to get well again.

“Gemma...” I licked her. I clutched her hips with my hands, splaying her wider. Her inner muscles clenched around my tongue.

She was reactive. Pliable. I could make her come in a few seconds if I chose.

Burying my nose against her clit, I prepared to shove her into an explosive release. But...I stopped.

My tongue slipped from her body.

I had the unbearable need to kiss her mouth instead.

If I gave her a dream orgasm, who the hell would she see? What man from her past would give her bliss while I’d only brought her pain?

No.

No fucking way.

If I was going to make her come, then she would know exactly who worshipped her. And she would be grateful. And she would moan my name as she came in my mouth, not someone else’s.

I was done being used.

I was done being nothing.

Swooping up her body, I lay beside her in the grass and cupped her cheek.

“Dream of me, you frustrating fool.”

My mouth crushed hers.

I kissed her hard.

For a second, she froze beneath me. Her lips thinned. Her neck tensed to turn away. But then she sighed, she surrendered, she kissed me back.

And that shattered the rest of my self-control.

I rolled on top of her.

My hips settled between hers, my cock frantic to plunge inside her.

Her mouth opened wide, her tongue lashed mine. The delicious abandonment of a dirty, deep kiss was suddenly shattered as her eyes flew wide and a scream sliced through my faulty ears.

“What the hell are you doing?!” She turned wild beneath me. Her legs scissored together, shoving me out of the cradle formed by her body. “Get off me!” Shoving me to the side, she scrambled to her ass and scurried backward, her hair full of grass seeds and late afternoon sunshine. “How dare you!” She wiped her mouth with a shaking hand. “How dare you!” Tripping to her feet, she didn’t seem to notice she was bare as she shoved a finger in my direction, hissing, “I was asleep, you bastard. You strangled me and now you try to rape me?! Argh, when will I learn? God! When will I accept that you truly are the biggest asshole alive!”

“Stop yelling.”

“I’ll yell as much as I damn well want!” She stomped around, pacing with a manic look on her face. “I can’t...I literally can’t understand it. You tried to fuck me—when I was sleeping no less, after I explicitly told you you’d never be welcome to any part of me again!” She threw her hands up. “Wow. I mean...why the hell am I surprised? You’d think I’d have accepted this by now. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been anything but a monster to me. Why do I keep expecting a sliver of good from you, huh? God, why haven’t I learned?”

Her livid gaze fell to her ankle and the chain smugly linking us together again. And all her anger just fizzled into despair. She shrugged with a choked laugh. “And you’ve tethered me again. Of course, you have.”

Our eyes locked, and her misery drove a pickax into my heart.

With a despondent nod, she turned away. She gave me her back and her perfectly toned ass as she looked longingly at the cliff. At the escape she hadn’t taken. “I should’ve run. I should’ve ignored all my safety training and climbed naked and barefoot up that stupid cliff and taken my chances with the forest. I should’ve done something, anything, to be free of you.” She buried her face into her hands and screamed.

It was muffled and morose, and I couldn’t fucking stand it.

“I’m sorry, okay?” I spoke quietly and slowly, cursing my pounding head. I stayed where I was, sitting by the river, grimacing against the ringing in my ears. “It’s not what you think—”

“Not what I think?” She spun and laughed icily. “It’s exactly what I think. Your cock was almost inside me!”

“I was trying to apologize!” I glowered at her.

“Apologize? Hah, I’ve never heard of rape being used as an apology tactic before!”

“I was focusing on your pleasure. I was going to do whatever you wanted. I was going to be yours...to use however you wanted.”

She stiffened, understanding what I’d offered her even though it cost most of her hate. “I didn’t ask you for anything. I didn’t want anything.”

“And I didn’t want you to keep hating me for doing something I didn’t mean to do.”

She bit her cheek, her eyes narrowing. “What are you saying?”

I sighed, running a hand over my face before I looked back up at her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you...in the river.”

Silence.

Stagnant, pregnant silence.

Slowly, she crossed her arms against her stomach, not bothering to cover herself up, either still too angry or too far removed from needing clothes at this point. “Why?”

I frowned. “Why what?”

“Why did you then? If it was an accident?”

I shook my head, bracing against the memories swarming thanks to her question. The answer was there, waiting for me to open the door and allow the nasty recollection back into my comprehension.

But that was the thing.

I didn’t want to remember.

I knew I’d recalled something sick. Something that a guest had done to me or some punishment that’d drawn my blood. The problem was, there was not a thing on this godforsaken earth that would make me willingly drag that memory back again and let it have free rein inside my head.

No way.

“Doesn’t matter.” I shifted on the ground, preparing to gather my balance and stand. “What does matter is I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

I pushed up, swaying a little as I locked my knees and stood tall. “No.”

“If you want me to forgive you, you’ll tell me what you remembered.”

I smiled thinly. “I guess my apology is moot then because I refuse to go back there.”

She sighed heavily as if she was used to me deflecting, as if she knew me better than I knew myself. “Have you read The Cost of You? It’s a psychological text in the library. While you were unconscious, I read a lot. I skimmed every book I could that might help you.”

It was my turn to cross my arms. “I have.” My cock still hadn’t deflated and the urge to snatch her around the waist and finish what I’d started hummed in my blood. “I’ve been here a lot longer than you, remember.”

She nodded as if pleased I knew the book she was referring to. Frankly, it was text-heavy snooze-fest about patients who moaned about their problems. It was men with lots of doctorates and monikers to their names, professing their professional opinion on how to help people with trauma. There’d even been a workbook in the back to help the reader get over their own trauma, to see if the author’s method of treatment could work.