As soon as Dex was gone I exhaled, feeling as if all the air in my lungs had been trapped.

My heart fluttered wildly as I took a few deep breaths.

Unlike Dex, who’d slept like a baby, I tossed and turned, staring at the ceiling for most of the night.

One thing about me...I needed my sleep.

I turned into a monster without adequate shut-eye.

I mean, sleep was the most important thing for your brain.

And right now I was operating on precious little of it, making rational thought difficult.

For example, my sleep-deprived brain was telling me to punch Dex in the face for putting me over his knee like a child.

But a different part of my brain was whispering shamefully disgusting things, like, how can I get him to do it again?

I was not into that stuff.

At least I didn’t think I was.

The magazine in my hands dropped to my lap. Was I into that stuff? I’d gotten pretty wet and slippery in my downtown area.

And my skin had been super sensitive, even the softest touch was agonizingly sensual.

He hadn’t hurt me, per se.

I had a few small bruises on my behind but nothing that wouldn’t fade in a day or two.

What the hell was I thinking about? Dex, spank me, baby?

Oh, please. No.

I totally wasn’t asking Dex to throw me into his red room of pain.

And there was no way in hell I was wearing a ball gag.

Or a dog collar.

But...being restrained was kinda hot.

I’m just being honest!

I’d die before I admitted this stuff to Dex but there’d been something super hot about being helpless to stop him, even though I knew in my heart Dex would never do anything I didn’t truly want.

That man would suffer the bluest of balls before pushing me to do something I wasn’t ready for.

It was baffling how well I knew Dex without actually knowing anything about him.

Maybe this was delusional thinking from the Stockholm Syndrome-affected part of my brain.

The part that kept trying to screech, “He cares about me!” instead of looking at the facts.

Fairytales didn’t exist.

Ergo, knights on white horses doubly didn’t exist.

The cold, hard facts as I knew them — Dex had been hired to kill me, changed his mind, and now we were both on the run.

My virginity was an inconsequential part of the puzzle.

Like box fuzz — something you swept aside before getting started.

Everyone wanted to feel special.

I’d spent my entire life wishing I’d been important to someone so it wasn’t so hard to connect the dots between my feelings for Dex and the situation.

It was easy to attribute these love-sick feelings to the fact that Dex had saved my life by not taking it.

Again, Stockholm Syndrome!

Thank you, Mr. Killer for not murdering me. You’re so sexy...will you marry me so we can have delightfully adorable babies who may or may not inherit your questionable morals and bankrupt ethics?

I rubbed at my forehead.

Babies.

I’d never worried about pregnancy before.

Or STDs.

Arguably the two strongest points in celibacy’s favor.

I tried not to picture the biological explosion that happened at the moment of conception.

Such an incredible feat of engineering happening unbeknownst to either party until six weeks later when Aunt Flo missed her monthly visit.

No period for nine months was the one bright spot that I could think of if Dex’s super sperm had managed to knock me up.

An unwelcome shiver raced my spine.

Too bad it wasn’t a shiver of revulsion.

No, actually, the shiver was accompanied with a tingle, which was a bad sign.

Carrying Dex’s baby would be...precious...

No.

Correction: horrifying, life-ending, worst decision ever, completely stupid, and guaranteed to bring endless heartache.

But, imagine a baby with my hair and his eyes.

I allowed a tiny swoon to wash over me.

Yes, he would make beautiful babies.

What the hell are you doing? Mooning over a fictitious child?

Get your head on straight.

I closed the magazine and tossed it to the scarred wooden end table.

I wandered to the kitchen and opened the cupboards. More MREs.

Where did Dex shop? The Army Supply store?

If Dex survived on a steady diet of these calorie bricks, it was a wonder he wasn’t four hundred pounds.

But Dex looked like a fitness model.

A deadly fitness model, that is.

There were worse ways to lose your virginity than being with a hot assassin who was built like a Roman god.

And for being a cold-blooded murderer, he was surprisingly interested in knowing what made me squirm.

Not that I had a whole lot of experience with men or killers in general but I always heard my female coworkers complaining about their sex lives, about how their partners just wanted to jackhammer them to death and then call it a night.

Dex was nothing like that.

I think if I’d let him, he’d happily camp out in my pants.

He seemed genuinely turned on by my taste.

A flush heated my cheeks as a small smile tugged at my lips.

Okay, what could I say? That was hot.

I grabbed a granola bar that was probably a hundred years old and wolfed it down.

Yep. A bit stale.

I sucked the remaining granola from my teeth, my gaze wandering the small house.

It was a lot like the first house — small, easy to defend — one story.

Fully furnished by someone in the ’70s and never updated.

I couldn’t even say it was charming without grimacing.

I’d never considered myself a snob but maybe being unwittingly surrounded by wealth had affected me in ways that were only just now surfacing.

Even my apartment, though small and cramped, was still boho-chic.

God, I felt like such an idiot for never questioning a single oddity in my life.

“Mom, you could’ve done me a solid and told me the truth about who I am, at the very least,” I muttered to the empty kitchen. “Maybe then, I’d know who was trying to kill me.”

I needed to relax and just let my brain shut down before I went insane.

Unlike the last house, this place had one feature that was worth the hassle of driving to the middle of nowhere.

An ivory clawfoot tub.

Everything else in this place was shit except for that tub.

If there was some way I could bring it with me, I would.

But seeing as that wasn’t possible, I was going to soak in it until my fingers pruned up and I looked like an old lady.

With a plan in place, I headed straight for the bathroom.

I quickly swished the dust out of the massive old tub and then, began filling it with tepid water.

I would’ve rather enjoyed a hot bath but seeing as it was summertime and already becoming sticky hot in the small house, a tepid bath was the only option.

I doubted I’d find anything resembling bubble bath but I looked anyway.

As expected, nothing but a roll of toilet paper remained under the sink.

Dex wasn’t big on toiletries, it seemed.

Oh well, I’d just have to make due.

Once the tub was filled, I stripped and gleefully sank into the water, sighing on pure bliss as the water lapped my chest and rose up to my neck.

I used a rolled up towel to cushion the back of my neck and then I closed my eyes, ready to just let the water take all my tension.

Someday, I will have a tub just like this, I promised.

But I won’t forget the bubble bath.

And pretty much that’s how I fell asleep and almost drowned.