My bedroom door opens. I know it’s him. I could feel him coming down the hall, even though his footsteps are off somehow.

I don’t get up, just lie with my back to him, the blanket drawn up to my shoulder. Grace reamed me the entire way back to the Cloister after my “reckless assault” on the senator. But at least she didn’t lay a hand on me, no matter how badly she’d wanted to.

Exhausted in every way that counts, I’d returned to my room and got into my bed. Haven’t moved since.

“Delilah.” His quiet voice crosses the barren landscape of distance between us.

I don’t look at him, because if I do, I’ll cry. The tears are already there, waiting to be shed. For Sarah, for me, even for him.

Some shuffling noises, and then the bed shifts—he slips under the blanket behind me and wraps his arms around me. I don’t struggle or protest when he pulls my back against his warm chest and nuzzles into my hair. There’s a gentleness to his touch. He isn’t taking. Not this time.

I sigh and relax a little, breathing him in. He must have just showered because he smells like soap along with some sort of faint antiseptic scent. Rubbing alcohol?

“Are you hurt?” The question escapes before I can stop it.

“No. Are you?”

I turn over, my dress twisting around my torso, and look into his eyes. As I predicted, mine start to water.

“Are you hurt?” he asks again.

“Yes.” My word breaks on a sob, and he pulls me tight to him, my hot tears rolling down his neck and bare chest as he rubs my back. The same hands he used to take Sarah’s life, and I can’t reconcile the two. I’ll never be able to. But I can’t stop the river of emotion that pours out of me, and I don’t want to leave the safety of his arms. It’s false—I know it is. His strength isn’t real, not when he can be so easily crushed by the Prophet. But right now, here in this room, it’s enough for me.

“Shh, it’s okay.” His voice is gravelly, as if his anguish mirrors my own.

I don’t know how long I cry. Long minutes of hot tears and anger and sorrow run together until I’m finally spent, every last bit of grief wrung from me like bloody water from a washcloth. He still rubs my back and shushes me softly.

I wipe my face on the sleeve of my dress and pull back enough to look at him. He blinks several times and runs a hand over his face. But I don’t miss the wetness on his lashes. My heart would break for him if it wasn’t already dusted and scattered to the four winds.

“I didn’t want to. I swear to you.” He strokes my cheek. “I’ve killed before. Plenty of times. I’m not a good man. But I swear on—” He blinks hard, his eyes watering, and his voice lowers to a barely audible whisper. “On my daughter’s grave that I did not want to kill your friend.”

I’ve never seen a person in so much pain, the anguish spilling over and coloring everything in shades of gloomy gray and funeral black. I catch a single tear that rolls from his eye and wonder at it, at the man who seemed made of stone that now lies crumbled before me.

“You had a daughter?”

He nods, but doesn’t speak, as if saying more might cause injury. I recognize the bitter taste of mourning, the same unyielding pain I felt when Georgia died, but perhaps even deeper since he lost a child.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” He holds me so close I can feel the steady thump of his heart against my chest.

There’s nothing else to say. Not really. I want to know more, but I don’t want to probe a wound that still bleeds. He gives me the same courtesy, not mentioning another word about Sarah.

He hasn’t said that he didn’t kill Georgia. I haven’t asked. And I won’t, because I already know the answer. The misery consuming him at this moment is truth enough. Sarah is the first innocent he’s sacrificed. I wish I could tell him that I’m here to make sure it never happens again. To end this place for Georgia … and maybe even for us. But some secrets are best left unspoken.

Instead, I say, “Someone bought me.” The words should strike me as absurd, but they don’t. Evan Roberts is all too real, his threat palpable.

“I know.”

“Don’t let him take me.” God, I sound weak, and I hate it.

“I’m going to do whatever I can to keep you away from him.”

“Like what?”

He doesn’t hold back, giving me a frank gaze and the truth. “I don’t know yet, but I’m working on getting us out.”

“I punched him in the dick,” I blurt.

He smiles. Jesus Christ and all the angels, he’s actually smiling, and I can’t believe how much I long to see more of it. Pure and warm—nothing like the darkness that usually envelops him.

“Your eyes got so big right then.” He streaks his fingertips along my temple.

“I’ve just never seen you… happy.”

“Tell you what. You keep dick-punching that motherfucker, and I’ll keep being happy.”

I smile and press my lips to his. “Deal,” I whisper against him.

He doesn’t need more of an invitation. He grabs a handful of my ass and yanks me against him as his tongue wars and wins against mine. His embrace is warm, and delicious, and wrong in so many ways, but I crave it all the same. Throwing one leg around his hips, I scoot closer. He surges forward, his cock pressing against me, the only things separating us a few layers of inconsequential fabric.

After a while, he shifts away from me, and I find myself panting, wanting more of his kiss.

He squeezes my ass again. “I have to hurt you. For the camera.”

“Oh.” I press my open palm against his chest. “You don’t like hurting me anymore?”

“I love it.” He snakes a hand up my stomach and grips one breast, kneading it roughly. “But only on my terms. Not for anyone else. Just us.”

“Us?”

He covers my hand with his. “Us.”

We’re both raw, trapped animals, forced to perform for the crowd night after night.

“Let’s do this for us, then.” I kick off the blanket, then rise onto my knees and strip my dress over my head.

He tenses and scores my body with his gaze. My already-hard nipples start to ache as he stares at them. Something dangerous lights his eyes, and a shiver courses through me.

“All fours,” he grates.

I prowl down to the bed and watch him.

“Oh, little lamb, you know what I like.” He lifts himself onto his knees beside me and presses my face and chest to the bed with a steady hand on my upper back. He smooths his other palm over my ass in slow circles. “I can’t leave a mark on you.”

I can only breathe into the mattress as his circles grow smaller and smaller until his fingers dip between my legs and stroke my wet folds. His touch sends sparks of tension swirling inside me, the threads holding me together pulling tighter and tighter.

“But what I give you right now will fade.” He rears back and brings his hand rushing forward with a loud slap, a rush of pain following behind like thunder after the lightning.

I grip the sheet and try to take a breath, but the blows come hard and fast, each one sending stinging pain through my skin and a jolt up my spine. God, it hurts, and I’m almost to the point of trying to stop him when he dips his fingers between my thighs again, pulsing them against my slick core and moving quickly.

I moan, and he speeds up, his touch verging on too rough and not enough. I rock my hips, searching for the one electric road leading to my release.

“Not so fast, little lamb.” His fingers retreat, and his hand comes down on my ass again, slap after stinging slap.

“Adam!” I push against the hand holding me down, but he doesn’t let up.

More pain and then his fingers snake between my thighs again, demanding my compliance. I give it, grinding myself against his fingers as the cocktail of pleasure and pain shoots through my bloodstream, taking me to a new high. Right there, on the edge of release, I tense, so close to that perfect explosion.

He takes his fingers away. I scream into the mattress and buck when his hand comes down hard again. He doesn’t show any mercy, only hits me until I’m a quivering heap, everything inside me drawn relentlessly tense. When his fingers press against the hot, needy flesh at my core, I moan low and long.

“Now, little lamb.” He strokes me in hard, consistent movements.

It doesn’t take long until my body freezes, then bursts outward in an electric blast of release. I cry and writhe, the pleasure more than I’ve ever felt, almost too much for me to bear. When the waves finally crest and fall back into the deep well of the ocean, I go limp, my body too shaky to do anything other than lie down.

He rubs my ass with both hands, soothing the ache. I can’t think, only feel. And I feel everything—his hands, my throbbing clit, the rough sheets beneath me, the need for him that eclipses everything else.

When he drops a kiss on my back, I tremble and turn to him. I need his arms around me, his secrets whispered in my ear. But he backs off the bed, wincing when his feet touch the floor.

“What is it?” Using the last of my strength, I roll to his side of the bed. “What’s wrong with your feet?”

“Nothing.” He pulls on his button-up and straightens the collar. “Stepped on some glass is all.”

“Glass?” My brain can’t connect any dots. Not right now. “Does it hurt?”

He shrugs. “A little, but it’ll heal.”

I want to tell him I’m sorry, that I wish I could fix it—but those are things that can only be whispered in his ear. Not out loud so the Prophet or Grace or whoever can use it against him, can use me against him. I graze the small line on my neck where the Protector cut me while Adam… No, I won’t think of what Adam was doing that night at the bonfire. I can’t.

“Goodnight, little lamb.” He doesn’t kiss me, though I can feel how much he wants to from the heated look in his eye. Turning away, he walks to the door with uncertain, pained steps. “Merry Christmas,” he whispers as he closes the door.