When I hear a distant car’s motor disturbing the peace out here in the boondocks, I stop painting the back of this pathetic little house with a roller and wipe the summer sweat from my forehead. While I was in prison, my younger brother Lucas bought this place for my use, and I’m in the process of taking possession with some of the money I scratched together from the meager savings my dad and brother kept for me. No one ever comes out here, and that’s why I like it. Fuck everyone, anyway. I don’t need company.

And I don’t need a job that forces me to work on that disgustingly ostentatious mansion Samara lives in.

Shit, I’m not going to think about her, because every time I do, I see her husband alive and kissing her while unbuttoning her blouse to expose those creamy, full breasts I remember so well. This morning, when she was wearing that nightgown, her thin robe couldn’t hide her lush tits as well as some beautiful curves that have rounded her out since I’ve been gone. I used to dream about her while I was in prison: how she looked so eager yet frightened during our first time together, how she creamed for me so easily and how I had to wrestle back my wilder side when she wrapped her fingers around my stiff cock. She’d never been with anyone before, and every time we kissed and ran our hands over each other’s bodies I would get hard. But that first night…

Fuck, on that night she was so soft and wet with her walls hugging my dick. Her sinful little sighs and moans pierced me, and so did the way she urged me on as I moved inside of her, finding home, finding everything I’d been looking for all my life.

But it was always like that with Samara, because she was my everything. She’s what kept me going in prison, giving me light during the dark times and all those moments I bitterly resented being locked up for a crime I didn’t commit. No one but Lucas and me knows about the sacrifice I made for him.

It took just one dumb shit decision from him to almost ruin the good life he was building for himself in high school. One fucking foolish night when he and his no-good buddy got drunk a few counties over and tried and rob someone’s home, then beat the owner up so badly that he was hospitalized. But falling on my sword for my brother was worth it because, afterward, he stuck to the straight and narrow. He went to community college, started working at a bank, got married, and now has a baby. I was never on that path anyway—everyone thought I was a punk and bad news—so I took the fall and lived down to every expectation, even my dad’s.

And I lost her in the process.

Even right now the thought of what my decision cost me has me straining for breath, aching all over. There’s a crack in my chest, a fissure that opens up every time I think of Samara, and it only got worse today. I knew what I was doing when I gave Lucas a second chance, and I knew what I was doing when I broke up with Samara to save her the heartache. I knew prison would make me a harder man, but seeing Samara again…

Fuck. I wish I hadn’t seen her today.

The sound of that car has stopped. I think I hear a door shutting, and I put the roller down into the pan of blue paint and then saunter around the corner of my house to see who the fuck has ventured out here into the woods.

When I see Samara walking through the pine trees, my pulse lurches. Every vein inside of me pulls tight, jerking me to a complete stop. My blood thunders through my chest, crashing lower and lower until it gets to my cock, torturing me with brutal heat and thumps.

It’s as if Samara is just as affected as I am when she comes to a sudden halt, too. As she drags her gaze over my bare chest and the other, rougher dragon tattoo I added since she last skimmed her fingertips over my skin, I tighten up with anguish. I’m bigger than I was at nineteen, and that’s because I spent countless hours building myself up in the prison weight room. No one in that place fucked with me. The dragon ink I had going in served as a warning along with my ever-improving physique. Inside the pen, I traded a shitload of commissary to another inmate so he could give me another intimidating beast, adding to what was already marked on my flesh, doubling one dragon into two.

Doubling the warning to stay away.

When she meets my gaze again, she watches me as cautiously as I watch her, but my wariness soon turns into a fierce longing as I take in that angel-blond hair that waves over her shoulders, those sweet blue eyes, those beautiful curves that are barely hidden by the light sundress she’s wearing. Her chest rises and falls with quick breaths, and I realize that I’m breathing just as fast, every intake of oxygen sharp and painful.

But not as painful as the violent pulse in my cock as it remembers what it was like to fuck a woman—to be with her.

She must sense my fierce yearning, because I think she’s shaking. There’s a part of me that’s doing the same thing, deep in my core, where tremors are tearing around the lining stomach. But then anger surfaces—it’s never far— and I think about what I can’t have and what I’ll never have again.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Samara?” It sounds like my throat is full of gravel.

“I—”

“How the hell did you even find out where I live?” Shame fills me up now—shame at having her see this shithole of a house that I’m trying to spruce up, shame at this lowest point I’m at in a life that’s always been low except for those secret nights with her.

Samara tightens her fists by her sides and lifts her chin. “I asked Tommy the foreman where you lived. There’s a lot we need to talk about.”

“No, there isn’t.” I jerk my chin at her car, just now seeing how fucking fancy it is. It’s a black Mercedes-Benz S-Class Sedan, and I’ll bet it’s got real leather upholstery and all the trimmings. I’ll never be driving something like that, but now that Samara is rich and happy, she should just climb inside of it and leave. “Go. Get back to your little picture-perfect, happy life.”

Before I turn my back on her, she raises her voice. “You don’t know anything about my life or how I got to where I am!”

I chuff and cross my arms over my chest. “Is that so?”

“That’s right! And it’s because you turned coward and ran away when things got tough!”

She doesn’t know a goddamned thing about tough—and I’m not just talking about prison. I miss the fuck out of her, and it’s tearing me apart. Sacrifice is still like a knife in my chest, and I can’t bear to see her standing so close, as beautiful and sexy as ever.

Every second is killing me.

“Fuck, Sam,” I say, accidently slipping back into my nickname for her. “Leave me alone. I just want to enjoy some solitude out here in paradise and…” I want to forget about the past.

Now I do turn around and move away, but I can hear her walking fast over the gravel, chasing me.

“Dylan.”

“I mean it. Get out.”

I open up the protesting screen door to my hovel. It smacks shut behind me as I go through what there is of a family room on my way to the kitchen. I need ice to cool off this fire, fast.

Then I hear the screen door open and slam shut again. What the hell?

And when I turn around, there she is—Samantha Childress Ford standing in my fucking grand foyer.

She’s got a look on her face as if there’s something she wants to tell me, a scared look, but then she lifts that chin again and points at me.

“You’re going to listen to what I have to say!”

I coolly lean back against the kitchen counter. “You realize you’re breaking and entering, right?”

She steps closer without even taking a second to survey the clean but sad surroundings. “There’re some things you need to know about my so-called happy life. First off, I didn’t marry for love. I needed protection and safety. Rex was a really good friend who provided that after you left me.”

After I left her. The knife twists into my gut even deeper, but I don’t say a damned word.

“Rex had been sweet on me for a while,” she says, “but I only had eyes for you. You know that. When we were together, I was even starting to think I’d give up everything for you, even if it meant going against my family.”

Her words core me out, but I only shrug.

It looks like she’s about to cry, but I can’t let that affect me. I just need her to leave before I lose every ounce of self control and pull her into my arms to take what I want, to make up for lost time and make everything right again.

Which it never will be.

She’s got that look on her face that tells me there’s something more she wants to say, but then she blinks, and the anger returns to her, laced with something deeper.

“But I couldn’t be with you, Dylan. You made sure of that when you committed that shitty crime out of the blue. Then you sent me that letter telling me to forget about you. After that… God, I had no idea what to do.”

She’s breaking me down, word by word. I catch her citrusy scent on the warm breeze coming through the screen door, heavy with memories of other summer nights when I would bury my face against her skin and then kiss my way down to her damp, luscious pussy…

My chest is being pried apart. All these years, I tried my damnedest not to hear any news of Dover or anyone in it. I didn’t want to inadvertently hear anything about Samara. It was too painful, so I stuck to all the memories I had of her instead, even after I returned to my hometown a few days ago. I didn’t want to know about how she’d moved on without me.

I didn’t know I’d be working at her home. Worst of all, I had no idea that she was unhappy, and that confuses me. I don’t know what to do with that.

She goes on, continuing the torture. “Rex was a couple years older than I was, and his family was wealthy. After you went to prison, he comforted me, told me everything would be okay. He was so good at reassuring me during a very bad time.”

I don’t want to hear this, but then again I fucking do. What pisses me off the most is that she’s got me tense and tight and angry enough to rip something apart.

She sighs. “I told Rex I could never love him back, that I didn’t have those kinds of feeling for him. He accepted that. And when I told him that I was…”

“What?”

There’s that scared look again. “I told him that… Well, I was still hung up on someone who was out of the picture.”

There’s something more here, but she quickly goes on.

“Rex wanted to start a family, and he thought that, in time, I might grow to love him anyway or maybe be in love with him. And I was so destroyed and lonely after what happened with you that I said yes.”

Fuck, I damaged her. I tried my best not to, but there it is. Pain cuts through me, sharp and raw.

She takes a deep breath and looks at me with pleading eyes. “I became part of the Ford family and, as a result, I had access to their wealth and the lavish extravagance of their lives. But I never cared about all that. I just wanted security for…” She swallows. “My baby boy, Cody.” She won’t look at me. “And I wanted security for my family. Then Rex died, and all Mr. and Mrs. Ford had left was Cody and me. They love him and are really protective of him. They grew attached to me, too.”

I know Samara has never felt incredibly close to her strict parents, and as she talks about the Fords, this doesn’t seem much different.

“They still take care of me,” she says, “but as much as they’re fond of me, I have to walk a straight line. Rex wasn’t independently wealthy—he lived on the Ford Trust. So if he had ever upset or disappointed his parents—if he ever went off the path they envisioned for him—they could have turned off the money instantly, and he would’ve basically been broke. That’s how it is for me now. It’s like I’m still in my parents’ house, held to a high standard that I have to constantly reach. My life is good, Dylan, but it isn’t happy. Not all of it.”

She smiles sadly, and I can tell the good in her life that she’s talking about is the son she had with Rex. Jealousy pulls at me, burning me. But when that smile dies again and her eyes tear up, there’s something even stronger that has me standing away from the counter and mindlessly walking toward her. I’ve never been able to see her sad, and that’s the way she is now as she stares at the rugs I bought from a thrift store to cover the dingy carpeting I’ll eventually tear out.

I have no idea what I’m doing as I reach out to touch her hair. Goddammit, that soft, angel-blond hair that I never stopped obsessing about.

“Sam…” I whisper, trying to console her.

She angrily pushes away from me. Bafflement shoots through me, hot and ragged, and everything I’ve held back for five fucking long years—my love for her, my need for her—comes back in a brutal flash. When I slip my hand to the back of her head, pulling her toward me and pressing her against my body, I see something deep and passionate in her eyes.

It’s the same desire I’ve been fighting.

“Jesus, Sam,” I say, just before her gaze melts, telling me that she wants me just as much as I want her.

Then red covers my sight, bleeding through me like uncaged heat as I tangle my fingers in her hair and crush my mouth to her soft lips, feeling her moan of surrender as it takes me over.