I tunnel my fingers into his hair, nails scraping his scalp, and grip hard. He groans against me, bringing on the first wave of the pending orgasm, and my core pulses with aching need.

I cry out and bring my knee up against his jaw.

Alex curses and staggers back, planting a hand behind him to break his fall. He stares up at me with gritted teeth and hot anger searing the edges of his restrained desire. The sight of smeared blood along his lip pulls at some base craving within me.

We go for each other at the same time.

His hands clasp around my waist as my nails sink into his bare shoulders. Our mouths collide, all savage, vicious want, and the coppery tang of blood bleeds into the kiss, turning it brutal, punishing.

He smashes my back against the stall, and the weak panel finally gives completely. Alex brings my chest against his and deftly swivels me on top of his body as the divider crashes into the next stall, then slides to the floor.

All my weight bears down on him, our bodies fused together, but we’re too far gone to care about the wreckage around us. The need to tear through every barrier preventing us from touching, skin to skin, is shred in violent fury as he snaps my bra away and I work his jeans open.

We wrestle the rest of our clothing from our bodies while lashing into each other with intent to feel every kiss, bite, stroke, our hands and limbs tangling. As Alex kicks his pants down his legs, he breaks the kiss.

“Wait,” he says, breaths torn, chest expanding with each vital intake.

“No. Take off your pants,” I demand, the torturous idea of waiting any longer too painful. I can’t allow my mind to have time to think.

“Blakely, wait—” The urgency in his voice breaks through the hazy lust between us, and I pull back slowly.

With eyes sealed tight, he says, “Grayson did something…”

The way he chokes on the last syllable, panic flares inside my chest. I lift up to glance down at his crotch, fearful a deranged serial killer severed a certain body part—but no. I felt him, hard and long and pressed into me.

Did he cut off his balls?

Searching his body, I finally see what Alex is referring to, and all I can say is: “Huh. That’s…fitting.”

He sighs heavily beneath me. “He gave me a literal countdown until he comes for us.”

Tentatively, I reach behind me and run my fingers over the inflamed skin. “Jesus.” I carefully touch the wires fucking stitched into his flesh.

The glass face of an old pocket watch has been sewn into his calf. The secondhand jumps, counting down the minutes, and I can’t help but to observe the time.

We’ve lost all track of it while we’ve been inside this room, closed off from the world. And I realize that’s never happened before, not where Alex is concerned. Every moment at the cabin together, time was measured, recorded. Unescapable.

“I wasn’t awake,” he says, drawing my thoughts away from that dark place.

I face forward and stare down at him, planting my hands on his chest. “That’s too bad,” I say, lowering myself on top of him. “I was hoping you felt every painful stitch.”

He reaches up and threads his fingers into my hair, holding the side of my face reverently. “No one is capable of making me feel pain like you, Blakely Vaughn. You own that power alone.”

I take sadistic comfort in his confession.

As he holds my gaze, I move my hips, sliding over his cock painstakingly slow, drawing his thoughts away from clocks and time and threats.

A heavy sigh fans across my forehead, and he groans. “Fuck me or kill me…because I can’t not be inside you one second longer.”

His desperate admission races over my skin like wildfire, making our touches frenzied, and in the wake of urgent caresses and hungry kisses, he’s inside me. My body recognizes his. As he fills me, we fit together seamlessly. An ache blooms behind my eyes, the sensation in my chest crushing.

I ride him like that, slow and rhythmic, reacquainting our bodies and emotions. Listening to the desperate inhalations between us, an arrangement of harmonic sounds that strike my nerves like a tuning fork, the vibration an irresistible agony.

Every strum sparks an electric wave that threatens to crash over me as his hands roam from my breasts to my hips, mapping every plane of my body along the way, as if he’s furious he can’t touch all of me at once.

I know what he’s suffering, the need to have him deeper, harder. More violent. Pain is the only answer when what you crave is so elusive, you can’t physically grasp it.

My eyes drift open, and I catch sight of my hands circled around his neck. A fiery ember flickers beneath my skin, the lure to tighten my hold too seductive.

Alex watches me with a lurid mix of fear and awe. He bears down on the flare of my hips as he thrusts inside me, urging me to close my hands until I feel the rioting kick of his pulse against my fingers.

Some dark web of lust and wicked need grips me in a fit of madness, and I ride him hard, my movements salacious and wild, shamelessly abandoning any sense of morals and reservations. I can only see his pale-blue eyes, feel him hitting deep inside me—everything else falls away.

The raw emotion spiraling through me tears at reason until I feel the first peak of my climax. I cling to Alex, my hands strangling him to take life and fuse us together; just how I died on the cliff beneath him; I can’t stop until we reach that pinnacle together.

He slams into me, bucking from beneath to either bring me to orgasm or loosen my chokehold. But every fraught attempt drives the consuming throb in my core deeper.

“Oh, god… Alex… Please.”

I don’t know what I’m begging for, what I need—but as he ruts against me, taking me higher, I feel the rumble of his forced grunt against my palms and, when I look into his eyes, his features strained with demand for oxygen, I shatter.

My back arches as he sinks inside me. My inner walls contract to hold him within, and my whole body ignites in a final burst as the orgasm crests and drags me under. My hands fall away. I hear his gasp for air, and it sends an arousing current of pinpricks over my flesh.

“That’s it, goddess…take all of me.” Alex doesn’t relent. His forearm bands my lower back as he rises up, simultaneously crushing my hips to his. One hand braced behind him, he gains leverage to thrust inside me, rough and reckless, catching the fading wisp of my orgasm and fanning it.

My heart pounds at a dangerous rhythm. A sliver of fear slips beneath my rib cage, my chest wall threatening to crack. As my gaze locks with his, he understands; he senses my emotions firing out of control.

He runs a hand over my sweat-dampened hair, his mouth just touching my chin. “Don’t run away,” he says, “stay here. Let me take it for you.”

I can only nod, but it’s affirmation enough as Alex lifts me into his arms. He maneuverers me onto my back, then reaches off to the side. I close my eyes for a brief moment and breathe through the onslaught as I feel his body cover mine, then he shoves my hands above my head.

My eyes snap open as I feel the cool press of leather wrap my wrists.

Fear is a living force inside me. “Alex—”

He pulls the belt tight, binding my wrists together. Muscles aching, I struggle to bring my arms down between us, but he locks his hand around the knotted leather, trapping me against the stall.

Words fail as I stare into his eyes, a panicked quake rolling through my body as Alex pushes between my thighs.

“I can’t do this—”

“Trust me,” he says, swallowing the remainder of my plea as his mouth seals over mine, stealing the last dregs of my breath.

As he enters me, he grips the belt tighter, the sharp edges biting into my skin, reminiscent of the cuffs he used to restrain me during his electroshock treatment. It was the first time in my life I ever felt a complete and helpless loss of control.