My heart hurts simply from the pain in his voice. “It’s okay,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Honestly, I don’t think I can. Not all of it. Not at once.”

I want to stand up and go to him. I want to touch him. But his back is still to me, and I don’t know if going to him would help, or would simply draw him back inside himself.

“It was the Woman,” he says. “It was only her. He may have watched, I don’t know. But she was the one who was there. Always there.”

“After I was gone?”

He turns from the window, and his eyes are full of pain. “Before, too, but it was more after.”

“When they took you away from me,” I say flatly. “You’d come back and be so distant for a while. I thought—I thought they were doing something horrible to you.”

“They were.” He draws a deep breath. “I was terrified they were doing—stuff—to you, too.”

“She tied me down. Arms and legs spread-eagled and then bound with those leather straps. And she’d strip me first so that I was naked.”

“Oh, baby. Like what they did to you that first week. You should have told me back then. You must have been so scared.”

I nod, hating the memory. Hating how afraid I’d been, but I hadn’t wanted to make it worse for Dallas. “She’d call me a slut. A whore. But it was all better when they shoved me back into the cell with you, so I never wanted to talk about it. I just wanted you. And she never touched me except to tie me down. Did she touch you?”

His laugh is harsh. “Yeah. You could say that.”

I swallow, because I don’t want to hear this. And at the same time, I do. I want to know because I want to help him heal.

For a second, I think it’s a moot point. He’s silent, and I think he may be done talking about it. Then he begins to speak, so softly I have to strain to hear. “The room was always dark, and she always wore a mask. But not the carnival style she would wear when we were together. This one kept her mouth free. She liked to use her mouth,” he adds harshly.

“The first time she made me get undressed, then strapped me to the wall. Bare cement. Metal hooks that held the straps. She bound my legs and ankles. She jerked me off until I came—and then she whipped my cock and my balls until I begged her to stop.”

His voice is flat. Toneless.

I realize that I am biting my fist.

“She’d start over again, and every time I came, she punished me.” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then opens them. When he looks at me, his expression is fierce. “That’s how it started.” I watch his throat move as he swallows. “Those were the easy days. The ones that came after . . .”

He breaks off with a shudder and I can no longer stay away. I move into his arms and hold him tight, tears streaming down my face. “Don’t think about it,” I order. “Just hold me.”

He does, and I cling to him, and suddenly I’m shaking with sobs. I can’t stop, and I’m choking as I try to catch my breath.

“Oh, sweetheart. Baby, it’s okay.”

I cling to him, letting him stroke my back until I can pull myself together, ashamed that I have lost control. “I should be the one comforting you,” I manage to say through my sniffles and sobs. I pull back so I can see him through the blur of my tears. “I’m so sorry.”

I reach out and cup his cheek, needing that connection. I know that he hasn’t told me everything—I could see the shadows in his eyes as he edited his words. But he has told me enough to know the truth. And the truth is horrific.

“You should have told me,” I said. “Back then. You should have told me what she was doing.”

“And bring that nightmare between us? Never? Even in that hell hole, being with you was perfect. No way was I going to spoil the bubble we’d built around us.”

I nod, because I understand. I do. In a small way, hadn’t I done the same?

“But afterward, when you were free? Why did you lie?” I ask. “Why have you always said you don’t remember?”

“It was too much,” he says. “Too hard. Too everything. And I couldn’t process it. And I didn’t want Mom and Dad to know. Or you,” he adds before I can ask. He takes my hand and we walk back to the bed. “I was ashamed, even though I knew none of it was my fault. And I think even back then I understood that it had changed me.”

“Changed you?”

He sits on the edge of the bed, his hand tight in mine. “I’m not the boy from the dark, Jane. The dark’s inside me now. The things she did. The things I do now.”

“You started to like it,” I say. I’m not horrified. I’m not shocked. I’m just numb.

“Like? I don’t know. But I started to need it.”

He rakes the fingers of his free hand through his hair. “When I told you I was broken, I meant it. I’m fucked up, baby. I do fucked-up things. And I never wanted to taint you with that.”

I shake my head. “Don’t do that. Don’t make it sound like I’m something you’re going to get dirty. Don’t put me on a pedestal, Dallas.”

“I’m not. But I also don’t want to take you down with me.”

“You mean kink, right?” I don’t tell him I know that he goes to The Cellar. That’s not a confidence I can break.

“That’s a nice, polite term for it,” he says, and a little frisson of excitement cuts through me.

“But maybe you need it,” I suggest. “Maybe you need the dark—the kink. Maybe it excites you. Maybe it gets you hard.” I squeeze his hand. “Maybe you need it to stay hard.”

He lifts our joined hands and brushes my knuckles over his lips. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Christ, I don’t want to have this conversation.”

I lick my lips. “What if I want it? Not the conversation,” I clarify, “but, well, what you do. Maybe I want to do it, too.”

He looks at me silently for a moment, and there’s an edge to his voice when he finally asks, “What are you saying?”

“Just that I’ll go there with you. You won’t taint me, Dallas. I want to. Whatever you need, I want to give it to you.”

His smile is sweet but a little sad. “I don’t think you understand what you’re offering.”

“Tonight was a little kinky,” I point out. “And it qualifies as one of the hottest nights of my life.”

“We played tonight, baby. That’s not the dark I’m talking about.” He brushes a strand of hair off my face as he looks into my eyes. “I don’t want sex with you to conjure ghosts. I don’t want what she did in my head when I’m with you.”

I shudder, just the mention of the Woman giving me chills. She knew what Dallas and I were to each other almost from the beginning. I didn’t realize it at first, and I never told Dallas. I was afraid if he knew we were being watched, then he would stop coming to me. Stop making love to me. And I needed it.

Even when the Woman would bring a whispered comment along with my food—“You little slut, you’re a whore, you’re cursed, you incestuous little bitch”—I said nothing to Dallas. But the Woman only spoke to me. Just words. Hurtful, yes, but not physically.

But god only knows what else she did when she had Dallas alone.

“You can talk about it with me, you know. Whenever you need to.”

The corner of his mouth rises in an ironic smile. “I thought I just did.”

“I mean about the rest.”

I see the haunted look in his eyes and know that he may never say a word to me.

“You don’t have to,” I assure him. “But I want you, Dallas—and I will take you however I can get you. Even so—and I’ll only say this once—I admit I want to feel you inside of me again. And I know you want it, too. So if going into the dark together is what you need, then I will. I’ll go in with you.”

I take a breath, because I’ve been talking too fast and the words are spilling out on top of each other. “You need to be in control, and I need to let go. And if this is what we need to do for us to be together, then I will stay in the dark with you.”

“Together,” he repeats. He doesn’t have to explain what he means. The truth is that we both know that for us together is a hell of a lot more complicated than working through sex. Together means secrets. Complications. Lies and misdirection.

And I will do all that and more if it means I can have Dallas. I will do anything. Everything.

I squeeze his hand and meet his eyes. “Together,” I confirm. “I’m not scared, Dallas. I’ll go in the dark with you. I’ll go anywhere with you. And I’ll stay for as long as we need.”

He looks at me, and for a second I think I see hope, even excitement, before it fades away.

I can’t deny that I’m disappointed. He’s afraid I can’t handle what he needs. That I’m some fragile thing that will run screaming if I see the truth.

Secrets, I think. All these damn secrets.

It’s stupid and frustrating, and I’m starting to think that I need to talk to Brody and get some tips on how to set up my room like a dungeon. Because other than going all-in with Dallas, I’m not sure how else I can convince him that I will go with him wherever he leads.

But then he pulls me to him and kisses me, and it’s so gentle and tender and filled with so much light, that it pushes every thought out of my head, so all that I am left with is warmth and love and Dallas.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have because when I wake the clock shows that it’s already after three. I blink sleepily, secure in the circle of Dallas’s arms.

I’m spooned against him, my back to his front and his cock nestled against my ass, and I like the way it feels. Intimate. Sweet. Sexual.

That’s when I realize that he’s naked against me. I don’t know when he took off the suit—and I really would’ve liked to have seen that show—but honestly, I don’t even care about that right now. Because he’s hard. Seriously hard, the head of his cock teasing my rear, making my mind spin out all sorts of nasty, wonderful scenarios.

And then I think . . . why not?

Slowly, I pull out of his embrace. He stirs, but he doesn’t wake, not even when I roll him over so that he is on his back, and I bite my lower lip because he hasn’t lost his erection. If anything he’s harder. And though I know that doesn’t mean anything—he told me he loses it when he tries to penetrate—I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe . . .

I straddle him, moving slowly because I don’t want to shift the bed and wake him. And, yeah, this feels kinky to me. And it feels a little like cheating. But I don’t care, because if he can fuck me in his sleep, then he can fuck me awake—we just have to figure out the key to get us there.

But first things first.

I’m still wet, but I want to be more so, and so I touch myself as I straddle him, imagining how it will feel with him inside me. Pretending that it’s his fingers playing with me, filling me, making me wet and so very ready.

And then I slowly lower myself, carefully positioning the tip and then slowly—so excruciatingly slowly, I start to thrust down. I bite my lip as I press against him, not wanting to hold his cock just in case that extra touch makes it all go away.

I can feel the pressure of entry, the way my body gives, and then he’s inside me. Just the head, but he’s inside me and it feels amazing and he’s still asleep, and I’m thinking this may work.

I’m excited enough—optimistic enough—that I go faster than I should, taking him all in with one single, hard motion. I know it’s a risk—I know he could go soft the moment I feel his balls against my rear—but even if it’s just for a nanosecond, I want to feel him inside me again.

But he doesn’t go soft—he’s hard as a rock and he’s filling me and I’m so incredibly turned on that I can’t hold back and I ride him, pounding myself down on him, filling myself, and absolutely glorying in the fact that—oh, god, yes—this is possible.

I explode, bursting apart at the seams, and as I do, he loses it, and I barely notice because I can’t do anything but break apart, and I can’t feel anything but this insane pleasure wafting through me.

But as soon as I’ve come down and sanity returns, I realize what has happened. More than that, I realize he’s awake, and I steel myself for his disappointment that he couldn’t finish. But then I look down, and it’s not frustration I see. Instead, there’s a small, satisfied smile playing at his mouth.

“We’re going to get there,” he says, his eyes burning into mine. “And think how much fun we’ll have trying.”