The light of midday assaulted me when I cracked open my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that it felt like I hadn’t actually been sleeping. The next was that it was really hard to breathe. I snorted hard and swallowed down the thick, bitter sludge that had collected in the back of my throat.

I’d never felt so bad in all my life, and not just physically. I felt like I was smothering under a blanket of sadness, and I didn’t have the energy to claw my way out.

There were images in my mind, as if I’d woken from the middle of a dream when the memory was still fresh and accessible. There were flashes of faces. Theo with his lion’s mane of blond hair shot through with silver, looking at me like he thought I was someone else. Two boys, nearly identical in every way, with dark brown hair and pink pouty lips. And Jamie, fierce in anger, tormented with tears, and so damn beautiful it made my heart ache.

I remembered his hand against my back. His fingers running through my hair. His frantic shouts. Kage, answer me! Are you okay?

More memories threatened to break through the fog in my brain, but the thoughts were ugly, and I tried to push them away. To force them back into the haze where I couldn’t see them anymore. To look at them would bring more shame, and I already felt enough of that.

God, I’d fucked up. Even without details, I knew that much, and the vague awareness was all I could face right now.

I turned my head and found Jamie’s side of the bed empty. He’d probably left me. He should have left me.

I wanted to call out to him, but that would bring me closer to confirming that he was gone, so I kept my mouth shut and my body still. I didn’t want to move again. Not ever. I wanted to lie unmoving in this spot until I died from shame and lack of water. A gun would be quicker, and lord knows I had enough of those now, but I didn’t want to expend the energy to shoot myself. I wanted to die just like this. Still.

Already halfway there.

I closed my eyes and slipped back into blissful unawareness, and the next time I opened them it was nearly dark outside. Night was coming, and with it an unbearable ache in my soul. I didn’t want to feel it, so I closed my eyes again.

I woke sometime later to the sound of the blender. Morning light streamed into the room, not yet bright enough to be obnoxious, but I blinked against it just the same. It seemed I was in the same position I’d been each time I woke. I hoped I hadn’t moved. I needed to be still. To die this way.

“You’re awake.” Jamie’s voice came from the doorway. Not exactly cheerful, but…kind. Like him.

My heart responded with a gentle throb, but my body remained still. I didn’t look at him, and when he came closer to stand over me, I closed my eyes. Maybe if I couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want him to see the shameful wreck I had become.

He lowered himself onto the bed beside me. “I made you a shake. You haven’t had anything to eat or drink for two days.”

Two days? I’d thought it was one. Two days was better. Closer to death.

“Kage, you’re dehydrated. Open your eyes and let me help you drink this. Or at least have some of this water.” He squeezed a water bottle, and I winced at the annoying cracking sounds of plastic collapsing in his grip.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t move. I wanted him to go away and find someone more deserving of his love, because I was tainted now.

“If you don’t open your eyes and drink some of this, I’m going to try to pour it down your throat. I hadn’t planned on waterboarding you back into the land of the living, but I’m getting desperate here.”

Part of me wanted to laugh, but that part was buried beneath the blanket of sadness.

Jamie sighed loudly. “I called a doctor, and he said it’s normal for you to feel depressed after all of the cocaine you ingested. Especially since you mixed it with alcohol.”

I didn’t respond.

Jamie’s voice got louder. “The doctor is on his way over here to see you.”

My eyes flew open. “What?” God, was that even my voice? It sounded like I was gargling marbles. “I don’t want a doctor here. Too risky.”

“What do you think they’re going to do, call the UFC and tell them you did coke?”

I ran a hand through my hair, shuddering at the film of oil and sweat that coated it. Then I groaned, belatedly realizing I had moved. And spoken. Now I would have to start all over again with the dying.

“Tell you what,” Jamie said. “Sit up and drink some of this water and take a few swallows of the shake. Then I’ll call the doctor and tell him not to come. But you need to hurry so I can catch him before he leaves.”

I growled, but I sat up halfway in bed. Jamie set the drinks on the bedside table and propped some pillows behind my back. Then he handed me the water bottle.

The water was cold, but not so cold that it was a shock to my system. I appreciated that because it made it go down easier. After I took a few swallows, Jamie handed me the shake. It was too thick to be palatable, and it tasted different than it normally did since my taste buds were hibernating, but I took as many swallows as I could stand. Then I chased it with more water and handed both containers back to Jamie.

“We good now?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’re good. Thank you.”

“Just call that damn doctor.”

He winced. “Actually, there’s no doctor coming. I just said that to get you to drink.”

“So you lied to me.”

He shrugged. “I told you I was desperate. You can lie back down if you want, or if you’d rather get up, I can run a shower for you.”

“I don’t want a shower. I just want to sleep.” And to die.

He raised a brow at me. “You may not want a shower, but you need one. I’m considering sleeping on the sofa tonight.”

I growled and threw the covers back. “Fine. I’ll get in the goddamn shower. But for the record, it’s against my will.”

“I’m fine with that,” Jamie said, hurrying off to run the shower.

I hated him nursing me when I didn’t deserve it. After the things I suspected I’d done—the things I couldn’t quite remember and didn’t want to remember—he should have been gone. Letting him do things for me made me an even shittier human being than I already was. But I got in the shower because he wanted me to, and because I didn’t want him to have to sleep on the sofa.

When I got out of the shower and brushed my teeth, I actually felt a little better physically, though emotionally I was still all kinds of messed up. Jamie had changed the sheets in my absence, and he had fallen asleep on the fresh bedding. I wondered how much sleep he’d managed to get. I doubted it was much, because it seemed like every time I’d opened my eyes his side of the bed had been empty.

I pushed an errant lock of hair back from his forehead and replaced it with a soft kiss. Then I snuggled under the covers beside him and slept again.

The next time I woke, it was to the sensation of fingers ghosting over my skin. A gentle, tickling touch that started at my hip and traced down the side of my thigh and around to the front. The fingers swirled circles in the crisp hair at the front of my thigh, then followed an invisible trail around to the back of my thigh and up to my ass cheek, lingering there to grasp lightly at the swell of my cheek.

Jamie. I would know that touch anywhere. There was no motivation behind it other than worshiping the thing that he loved, and no one had ever touched me that way but him.

I groaned, feeling a stirring between my legs as my dick responded to the gentle caress. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you like me.”

“Maybe a little,” he said, his voice soft and vulnerable at my back. He trailed his fingers along the curve of my side until he hit a ticklish spot.

I jerked involuntarily and grunted. “Then again, you might be a really talented torture artist sent to discover all of my secrets.”

“I don’t know if anyone would be up to that task.” He hit the ticklish spot again, on purpose, making me squirm. Then he dragged a fingertip tortuously down the crack of my ass until he was right…there. “But I’m willing to give it my best shot.”

My dick was hard now, and getting harder with every passing second. He wiggled his finger into the warm space between my thighs and pressed up firmly against my flesh, sending a pulse of sensation up and into my body.

“That magic button,” I groaned, my dick pulsing in anticipation.

“Mmm hmmm… Looks like it’s working.”

I made a move to turn toward him, but he pressed his body up against my back firmly enough to let me know he wanted me to stay just like I was. I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he smiled sweetly, so I settled back down to let him play.

He moved slightly away, and there was a vague shuffling behind me. Then something thick and wet pressing up between my cheeks. Jamie’s dick, lubed up and hard as a rock. I shuddered and bent my knee to give him better access, and he pushed into me, sheathing his entire length in one firm stroke.

I hissed as the burn tore through me, the sudden stretch all but cleaving me in two, but my quiet conqueror gave no quarter as he claimed my ass. I surrendered, pressing back onto him even as I winced against the pain. Even with no words exchanged to spell it out, I think we both understood what this was. Jamie was taking back what I’d stolen from him—his power and his dignity. And I wanted him to take it. I owed him my surrender and so much more.

If it had been me in his position, I would have taken him with the force of an army, violently and without thought for his comfort. I would have battered his body and demanded his submission, forced every grunt and ripped out every moan until he was begging for mercy. And for forgiveness.

But Jamie wasn’t me. He wasn’t the cold creature I had been raised to be. He was kind, and he was loving, and he was innocent in a way I would never be. And in being so, he wielded a special kind of power over me. He held the ability to bring me to my knees the way no amount of violence ever could.

He conquered me with love.

“Put your hands over your head,” he coaxed, pulling swiftly out of me as I reached up and grabbed onto the edge of the headboard. I sucked in a breath and then let it out as a deep groan as he wrapped his arm tightly around my waist and plunged back in. At this new angle, his dick glanced off my prostate and sent a wave of ecstasy through me.

“God, yeah, that’s the spot.” My fingers clenched until I was white-knuckling the headboard. “Don’t stop, Jamie. Please don’t stop.”

He tightened his arm around my waist and cinched his body to mine, kissing my back over and over with soft lips that made my skin tingle everywhere they touched. He started moving steadily in and out of me in an unhurried rhythm, massaging my inner walls with the most delicious slow friction I’d ever felt. Now that he’d found my G-spot, he didn’t let up on it, dragging the head of his cock over it until I was panting. The rhythm was excruciating, building the pleasure steadily until it seemed too much to endure. Marching me toward a climax that promised to be everything and more if only… I could… get there.

“Ahhh…” My balls tightened, and I started to crest, gritting my teeth against the overwhelming sensation. Jamie groaned and stopped his movements, then snatched out of me and started huffing breaths against my back so fast I thought he would hyperventilate.

“I’m close,” he whispered, dropping more kisses onto my back. “Your ass gripping my cock feels so… fucking… right.” He pressed the length of his body tightly against mine, the pounding of his heartbeat mingling with my own until the two were indistinguishable. “It’s been a long time since I fucked you.”

“Too long,” I said, dropping my hands from the headboard and reaching back to rub his hip. I’d nearly rallied and caught my own breath by this time, and I was ready to feel him again. I rocked my ass back against him in a silent plea for him to finish what he’d started.

He didn’t seem to be in any hurry as he rolled me over and pushed my legs apart. He looked down at me, eyes blazing with affection and lust, before pushing his cock back into me. I spread my legs even farther apart, giving him complete access to pound me into oblivion. But he didn’t. Not yet. Instead, he hovered over me, a sad little smile curving his lips.

“I love you, Kage. You know that, right?” He started moving inside me, driving me wild with that same rhythmic friction, drawing out my pleasure like a rubber band stretched too tightly.

I bucked my hips up, begging for more, but he just kept up that maddening pace, grazing my prostate on nearly every inward plunge. Then he rested his weight on me and brought his soft lips to mine.

Our kiss was slow, just like the fucking. Tentative touches of lips, nudges with the tips of our tongues. Every now and then Jamie would dip his tongue deep into my mouth and plunder until I was breathless, and then he would pull back and continue with sanity-stealing gentle licks.

A few more minutes of relentless teasing, and I was mad with desire, writhing beneath him pleading for him to pound me hard. “Baby, please. I need to get off.”

Jamie sat up and grinned. “Well, I’m not ready yet. And since I’m the one in charge, I guess you’ll have to wait.”

“You are definitely trying to torture me.” I bit my lip, giving him a very deliberate fuck-me look, and wiggled my hips.

Jamie pounded a couple of hard thrusts into me, then stopped again, poking his bottom lip out in that beguiling pout that made me want to fuck his mouth raw. “Don’t you think you deserve to be tortured?”

I swallowed, my throat constricted with a tangled mass of guilt and lust. “I do. And I’m ready and willing to take any torture you and that hot dick of yours feel inclined to dish out. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to beg for relief.”

“Beg all you want,” he said, leaning forward and latching onto my neck with his teeth.

I groaned as he clamped down hard on my throat and sucked, pounding stroke after stroke into my ass in time with his merciless sucking. When I cried out, he let go and moved his mouth down to my nipple, biting and sucking it just as hard as he had my throat. He was a man possessed, intent on devouring me piece by piece.

I let out an anguished cry that would have disturbed the neighbors if I’d had any. “Oh, God yeah. God… Jamie.”

He moved to the other nipple and tortured it even more than the first until I had to grit my teeth against the cries. My dick was so hard I thought I would explode, especially when he leaned back and drove up into my prostate enough times to make my toes curl and my balls ache.

“Fucking… yeah! Jesus.” I reached down and stroked my cock when I realized that my orgasm was mounting no matter how much I wanted to hold off and please him. I needed to come, and I needed to do it now.

He pulled completely out of me and lowered his head to my cock, sucking the head into his mouth and working it hard while I stroked the shaft. God, it felt so good with both of us stimulating me.

“I’m about to come, Jamie. I can’t—”

He pulled his mouth off of me and rammed back into me, grunting every time be bottomed out. I drew my legs up, stretching myself open for him and let out a broken cry as I shot my load, striping my bruised and sweaty chest with thick ropes of semen. Finally. Glorious relief washed over me, and I melted into the bed. I barely noticed through my fucked-out daze when Jamie ground to a stuttering halt and buried his dick deep inside me to unload.

Then he collapsed on top of me, our skin slicking together with sweat and semen. When had it gotten so hot in the room? With trembling hands, I coaxed his head up and his mouth onto mine for a sloppy kiss, our tongues tangling lazily.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling this incredibly sated after sex, it wasn’t just the orgasm-induced feeling that my muscles had turned to jelly. This was something deeper—the profound sense of peace that Jamie’s forgiveness left in its wake. It was the closest thing to a religious experience I’d ever had. Mere hours before, I had been ready to die. But now… I couldn’t imagine leaving a single minute on the table of life. Not if it was a minute I could have spent being loved like this.

I’d heard of unconditional love, but I’d always believed it was a fairy tale. The love of my mother was something I would never be privileged enough to feel, because whatever feelings she may or may not have had for me died before I was old enough to comprehend them. If my father was still alive, his love had not been strong enough for him to stick around in the face of tragedy. And my uncle’s love? Well, as far as I was concerned, it had never existed. For whatever reason, his heart had been dead before I came along. I was certain the key to what had changed him was hidden in the bedside drawer—in the pages of his journals—but for now, I could only speculate and wish for what had never been.

But Jamie…

He had shown a level of compassion for me over the past days that bordered on insanity. If my fractured memories of the ill-fated party I’d hosted on Saturday night were anything close to the reality of what happened, he should have left me that night. Should have turned around in the doorway and never come back. But he didn’t. He stuck around and nursed me through my debilitating hangover and the depression that accompanied it. If that wasn’t unconditional love, then I couldn’t imagine what was.

I didn’t deserve love like that. I knew it all the way down to the darkest corners of my soul. And yet what happened next still knocked the wind out of me.

Jamie ran a lazy circle over my chest and sighed. “Are you good now?”

“Huh?” I asked, still dazed and running on about a quarter of my brain cells.

“You’ve been pretty wrecked since Saturday night. Are you feeling better?”

“Hell, yeah.” I wrapped my arms around his trim body and squeezed, marveling for the millionth time at how perfectly we fit together.

“Thank God.” He squirmed out of my grip and rolled to his side of the bed, then sat up on the edge and went completely still. “You know, I was really worried about you. I thought you would never snap out of that funk you were in. When you didn’t move or react for so long, all I could think of was that time you went catatonic, and Dr. Tanner had to shoot you full of drugs to try to bring you back. And then the hypnosis…” He shuddered. “That was so fucking awful.”

“Good thing I had you there to take care of me.” I stretched my arm out and ran my index finger down his spine, loving the little shiver my touch drew out of him.

“Yeah, it was,” he said. “And this time… If I hadn’t shown up, that crazy bastard Theo might have pumped enough drugs in you to put you in the hospital.” He paused. “No, I’m sorry. He would have killed you, judging from the fact that he advised me not to take you to a hospital.”

“I was okay,” I said, more from embarrassment than anything else. I hated Jamie thinking I was weak.

Jamie choked out a laugh. “You were crawling around on the carpet trying to snort up spilled coke. You had your fucking pants around your ankles and some bubbleheaded twink on his knees—” The last word wavered and got hung in his throat. “You were not okay. You’re not okay.”

“I won’t ever do that again,” I said, a distinct note of pleading in my voice. I rolled onto my side and massaged one of the adorable dimples above his ass with my thumb, trying to reassure him with a touch. It was all I had to work with. “I swear, Jamie. I won’t do any more drugs. I was just trying to get him to trust me.”

“Yeah? And what’s next on your list of trust exercises? Letting him fuck you? Because I assure you he would jump at the chance. The way he was looking at you gave me chills, Kage. And not in a normal way. I don’t know how to describe it, but the name Hannibal Lecter comes to mind. Are you going to keep trying to get him to trust you until he invites to over for dinner?”

I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me with his back turned. “As long as he doesn’t serve fava beans and Chianti I should be safe.”

“That’s not funny,” he spat, standing up and whirling around to face me. “I can’t believe you’re making jokes.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “You started it. Calm down.”

“No, I will not calm down.” But he did calm down. He took a few deep breaths, and when he spoke again, his voice was even. “The fact is you are putting yourself in danger by continuing to try to get in that monster’s good graces, and I can’t stand by and watch it happen.”

I swallowed and stared blankly at him. “What are you saying?”

He paced to the door and back again, then crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve made plans to stay with Steve for a while. He’s got an extra bedroom, and he won’t charge me rent until I get some more revenue coming in from the blog and my YouTube channel. But I’m going to need to borrow a little more money from you to get some video equipment. I’ll eventually need an assistant, but I can start out small.”

I continued to stare blankly, my mouth hanging ajar. I tried to say something logical, to present an argument that would allay his fears, but all that came out was, “Please don’t go.”

He glared at me. “A few days ago, you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

“I was trying to keep you out of all of this. To protect you.”

“And suddenly I don’t need protection any more?”

“No, you do, but—” I searched for words in my addled brain. Anything that would make a fucking lick of sense. “I don’t know how I can do this without you. And you said you didn’t want to go.”

He dropped his head and stared at the floor as if he couldn’t look at me when he said the next words. “I changed my mind. I can’t walk in on another scene like the one I came home to Saturday night. I’m not strong enough to stand by and watch you kill yourself. If being partners with that monster is something you feel you have to do, and apparently it is, then go ahead and do it. But I’m not going to be around to see it.”

“Please, Jamie. You can’t just leave me like this. My plan was to try to see each other on the sly. I was even considering giving you a suite in the hotel and just keeping our relationship under the radar.”

“Jesus, Kage.” His lip quivered, eyes glistening with the sheen of tears. “Don’t you think I’m worth more than that?”

God, I was losing my mind. Anger sizzled up from my gut until my limbs trembled with the need to lay waste to something. But the thing that needed wasting was the fucking situation, and that wasn’t something physical I could beat into submission. If I could tell Jamie about my deal with Aaron, he would understand that I had no choice. The truth rose to my lips, but I couldn’t let it out. Aaron had been very specific about keeping the mission from Jamie, and I couldn’t ignore his implied threats. Even now he could be listening. Of all of the things that would put Jamie in danger, that one was the worst.

Jamie huffed and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you think I’m stupid, Kage? You’re hiding something from me. I can see it written all over your face. Why won’t you be honest with me? Ever since I moved in with you, we’ve steadily grown farther apart. You’ve driven a wedge between us, and I don’t even know why. And do you know why I don’t know why? Because you won’t fucking tell me.”

I looked down, unable to meet his gaze. “I can’t.” I didn’t know what else to say. There was nothing else to say. Jamie was asking for the one thing I couldn’t give him, and it was tearing me up to deny him, especially when the price was him walking away.

Jamie nodded. “Okay, Kage. You can’t be honest with me? Fine. I get it. But I can’t be in a relationship based on lies and half-truths.”

“Please,” I whispered. “Just give me a little more time. Move into one of the suites for now. We’ll work it out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “I love you more than life itself, but what you’re offering isn’t acceptable to me. I just— I can’t live like that.”

“Well, can we at least make a pact to wait for each other? To not be with anyone else?”

Jamie laughed. “The pact you already broke? Yeah, that’s really fair to me, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“It doesn’t matter. The choices you made put you in that position.” He bit his lip and looked at the floor, watching his feet as they shifted with nervous energy. “If I thought—no, if I could believe—that was an isolated incident that would never be repeated again, I would forgive you in a heartbeat. Hell, I’ve already forgiven you for that. I know you wouldn’t have cheated on me if you’d been in your right mind, just like I know you wouldn’t have been rooting around in the carpet for drugs like some coked-out pig. But I can’t trust that it or something similar won’t happen in the future. Not when you insist on continuing to fuck around with this Theo piece of shit.”

He went into the closet, dressed in clean clothes, and came out with his suitcases. Already packed. Apparently, he’d been busy while I was wallowing in bed like an ignorant asshole. Fuck.

“So this is it?” I asked, my voice wrecked and trembling.

Jamie nodded resolutely, but I could see that the resolution was forced. He was doing what he thought was right, but deep down it wasn’t what he wanted.

“And you won’t wait for me?”

His eyes darted away as if he was second-guessing himself, but they ended up right back on me. He was showing a level of strength I’d only seen glimpses of before, and it made my heart throb in my chest. How fucked up was it that him breaking up with me was making me respect him even more? At that moment, my desire for him was so strong it was like another being in the room with us.

“I love you, Kage. Today I love the person you are and have been since the day we met, and I hope you will remember that in the days to come. But who knows what twisted shell of a man you’ll be when this is over? If it’s ever over. I can’t wait for someone I may not even recognize anymore. I’m sorry.”

And with that, he wheeled his suitcases out of the room. I jumped up from the bed and hurried after him, naked and not giving a damn. I grabbed one of his suitcases and wheeled it to the door. “Give me a minute to get dressed, and I’ll help you takes these down.”

“Thanks, but I can handle it on my own.” He opened the door, handed me his apartment key card, and kissed me on the cheek. “Watch yourself.”

He was quoting the mystery note, and hearing those words come out of his mouth made me absolutely certain the note had been a friendly warning. Someone had believed I was headed for rough times, and unfortunately, they had been correct.

As I watched Jamie get on the elevator and descend out of my life, I resisted the urge to run after him. Because he was absolutely right. When I finally woke from the nightmare that was my life, would there be anything left of the man he had fallen in love with? Or would I, like my uncle, allow circumstances to shred my humanity until there was nothing left?