Iris wasn’t sure when one day ended and the next day began.

Not when she followed the same routine, waiting until her alarm sounded on her phone to get out of bed, grab some food from the buffet downstairs in the lobby of the hotel where she was currently staying, and venturing back upstairs where she allowed herself a few minutes to eat before crawling back into bed and burying her head under the covers.

It was easier this way.

Just existing.

Pretending as if her world hadn’t come to a screeching halt despite her best efforts to keep going.

But no matter how much time passed, no matter how many times she tried to talk herself out of her lonely exile, Iris couldn’t bring herself to do anything but lay there in misery.

Except for Tuesdays.

And the only reason she knew the day was because on Tuesdays, her phone chimed twice, the second alarm telling her that if she wanted to make it to the prison in time for visiting hours, she would need to leave within the hour.

On these days, she dragged herself out of bed, dressed in whatever she could find that was clean, and rode the short trip up to Sing Sing to wait. From the minute visiting hours began until they ended, she waited in the lobby, hoping her father would change his mind and allow her to see him.

She had sent him a letter all but pleading and hoped that would be enough to convince him. It was going on a week now, and he still had yet to answer.

No matter how often she came up here to wait, no matter how many hours she sat alone watching as the clock wound down, her name was never called.

And when those days shifted to night, she found a bottle of vodka and drowned her problems away. It didn’t hit her as well as an expensive bottle would, but it was enough to numb the pain for a short while until she could finally pass out and start the week over again.

Iris rolled onto her side. The bottle she was holding slipped from her fingertips and hit the carpeted floor with a thump. Luckily, she’d had the foresight to screw the cap back on so the alcohol didn’t spill out once it landed on its side.

She sat up after a moment, shoving her tangled hair back out of her face as she tried to muster the energy to do anything. She’d had her anger to fuel her those first few hours after she walked away from Synek. At that time, she was better able to pretend she could fix the colossal fuckup that had become her entire mission over the past eight years.

As soon as she had arrived at this room after check-in, she loaded all the files she had on her father’s case and searched for something else. Some other person or place or thing that could help exonerate her father. There had to be something.

Maybe she had been reading too fast. Maybe she had been too focused on the Spader that she had overlooked a minor detail that could prove beneficial.

Nothing.

No matter how she looked, no matter where she searched.

Nothing.

And with that realization came crippling depression that had sent her into a crying jag she still hadn’t come out of. She hardly recognized the person staring back at her in the mirror.

Her eyes and nose were red and puffy. Her cheeks chafed. Her hair was nothing short of a bird’s nest, yet ... she couldn’t bring herself to care about any of it.

It didn’t matter anymore.

Iris was seconds from lying back again and letting her drunkenness take her away when she heard the unmistakable sound of someone knocking on her door.

Housekeeping, probably.

She hadn’t realized when she stumbled into the first hotel she came across just how often the maids appeared to make sure she had fresh towels or sheets if she wanted them.

Knowing they wouldn’t be going away until she answered, Iris climbed to her feet, reaching out blindly for the bed to catch herself before she went tumbling to the ground. At least, she managed to laugh before she stumbled her way across the floor and reached the door just as the person started to knock again, this time more insistent.

“Thank you, but I don’t need—”

Dark eyes found hers, his brow furrowed, and she saw the exact moment when his concerned expression turned to something she always knew she’d hate to see on his face.

She didn’t want his pity.

She didn’t want anything from him.

“Go away, Synek.”

She had meant to say it sternly, to make sure there was no question about what she wanted from him, and that something was nothing.

It was worse because it hurt to see him standing there, as harshly beautiful as he was. He didn’t look happy, though he wasn’t in nearly as bad of a state as she was, and that helped but ... she didn’t need to see him right now.

She didn’t need to see him ever.

Not when just his presence mere inches away from her already made her feel better. As if the world wasn’t slowly closing in around her and suffocating her to death. And nothing was worse than wanting to seek comfort from the person she was supposed to hate.

Maybe she wouldn’t be a mess if she could hate him.

He didn’t speak despite her declaration nor did he turn and walk away as she was expecting. Instead, he took a step forward, easily maneuvering her back before she even understood what he was doing.

The door shut in the next second, a twist of the lock, and finally, he slipped an arm around her waist and lifted her without asking to carry her through the hotel suite. She couldn’t get free of him because no matter how she shoved at him or tried to twist her way free, he held fast.

Synek didn’t let her go until they were in the bathroom of the suite, and he stood between her and the bathroom door.

He tilted his head in the direction of the shower. “Get in.”

“I beg your fucking pardon?” She had obviously drunk more than she intended if she thought he was actually standing in front of her issuing orders as if he had any right.

“Either get in there or I’ll put you in there, d’you understand?”

Iris folded her arms across her chest—which took far longer than it should have as she swayed where she stood—before tilting her head up and narrowing her eyes on him. “Make me.”

She hadn’t meant to challenge him, but as the words hung between them, that look of pity he’d walked in with disappeared. The emotion playing across his face wasn’t one she could easily identify, but something about it made her think that whatever notion he’d come in with, he’d gotten over that.

She also realized, in the next few seconds, that she had forgotten one key thing about him. He rather liked his challenges.

Synek stepped around her to turn the shower on, and before she could think of dashing for the door, he caught the back of her shorts and hauled them both, clothes and all, into the shower and closed the glass door.

Cold water drenched her hair and face in seconds, leaving her sputtering as she tried to get her bearings. He was right there beside her, not seeming to mind the frigid temperature as he helped move her hair back out of her face but kept her standing exactly where she was.

But with each drop of water that landed on her, the fog in her brain cleared a little bit more, and anger rose in its place. “What are you even doing here? I told you I didn’t want you anymore.”

It didn’t matter that it was a lie. Leaving him had hurt just as much as the realization that the ex-governor was dead. She only knew she couldn’t be around him and be in pain because he would want to make her feel better.

But Synek didn’t respond, not as he brushed the tangles free from her hair with his fingers and stared down at her as if she were the only thing worth looking at. And for one completely selfish moment, she allowed herself that. It was just one moment to remember how it was between them.

How easy it was to fall for somebody like him.

As quickly as that moment wrapped her up, however, it released her again just as quick.

She tore her eyes away from him, placing her hands in the center of his chest to push him away, but then his arms went around her, and he was just suddenly there. All around her.

His strength.

His smell.

And God, just the feel of him there made her chest seize, her throat closing up.

She couldn’t be weak with him. That would only make it worse.

But it was hard, so hard, to fend off tears when he held her like he loved her and whispered apologies in her hair. The more she fought to get away, to shake off the comfort he offered, the tighter he held her until she was pressed against his chest and her fingers fisted in the shirt he wore.

At that moment, Iris broke.

* * *

Synek couldn’t remember the last time he cried.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt such an acute pain that it broke him.

He’d been a boy, maybe, back in London where he grew up learning to fear those who were supposed to love him the most. In his mind, tears were a show of weakness, a show of pain better left buried inside. Which was why for years, he bottled it all up, never wanting to give a person ammunition to use against him.

It was the only life he knew.

But for each minute he sat against the back wall of the shower, Iris locked in his embrace as she cried herself hoarse, he didn’t feel that same desire to gloat over her the way his brothers had done to him. He didn’t want her to hurt this way, and seeing it ... feeling it ... touching it made him antsy.

Yet unlike the family he was born into, her pain didn’t bring him joy. Especially since he was responsible for a portion of it.

As she shuddered, he contemplated—as he had over the past week since everything had happened—whether he should have done what he’d set out to do at the safe house and ended the Kingmaker’s life.

At least then, this moment could have been a little different. He would have been able to tell her what he had done, and it would have made her feel better. But in the end, he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered. Even as it might have eased some of the pain she was in.

Whether the Kingmaker was alive or dead or something in between, her father was still in prison, and as far as he could find, there was fuck all he could do about it.

For days on end, he had pored over any and everything he could find on her father’s case. Even had Winter hack the electronic police files for anything Iris might have had access to over the years. He hoped, even, that something would have been overlooked—the key piece that he could find to put an end to their pain.

But nothing.

There was nothing.

It shouldn’t have surprised him, not when it was Spader they were talking about. And even before he had been sworn in as governor, he was a senator, and both he and his wife had a long history of affluence and money.

The mistake. Synek had no doubt there was one somewhere, but he just hadn’t found it yet.

And considering the man was already cremated to ashes to ensure his body was never discovered, he wouldn’t have anything more to go on.

He was fucking stuck.

Iris settled finally, a long sigh leaving her lips, but she didn’t attempt to pull away as he’d worried she would. She settled more firmly against him, the top of her head tucked beneath his chin. The palm of her hand resting over his heart.

He wanted to speak, but he was also afraid to disrupt the careful silence they had fallen into.

After a while, once a cramp started to flare in his leg, Iris stirred. She didn’t look at him as she said, “Unfortunately, I think I’m still a little drunk.”

Synek almost smiled as he stood and turned the water off. Stepping out of the shower, he grabbed one of the towels from the shelf and walked back over to her.

“Take off your clothes.”

Even as she moved to obey, he didn’t miss the way her eyes narrowed on him.

“I’m not here to take advantage,” he said as she removed her shirt first, then the shorts she was wearing, and finally everything else.

He wrapped the towel around her, ignoring her protests as he got his arm back around her waist and carried her to the bed before dropping her on it.

“This isn’t my first time with too much liquor, Syn,” she murmured before shifting on the bed until she was sitting up. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, you tell me that often enough.”

He already knew she could take care of herself. She was more than capable since she’d had to long before he ever stepped foot in her life. He also wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to always be alone, that she could rely on someone else for a change.

Rely on him.

But he doubted those words would be received well right now, all things considered.

“How long are you staying?” she asked, and maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part, but he thought she didn’t want him to leave.

“However long you’ll have me.”

* * *

She was supposed to send him away. Force him out of her room and slam the door before she could see the flash of emotion in his face. She should have been seeking that same numbness that had lingered just out of reach since Belladonna had escaped.

Instead, she was trying to ignore the way just his presence across the room was dulling the raging anger she’d carried for nearly a week now. It wasn’t fair to her father.

Right now, she wasn’t supposed to be happy.

She wanted to hurt.

Sliding off the bed, Iris didn’t think before she crossed the floor, catching his look of surprise before she went up onto the tips of her toes to press her lips against his. It was a beautiful sort of agony to have him, feeling the way his mouth molded over hers.

Everything about this moment was wrong, and she knew it, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. She couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to.

And worse, when she felt his hesitation, the way his hands settled so firmly on her waist when they would usually be exploring her body, she wanted him to forget too.

Forget everything that wasn’t the two of them right here at this moment.

She craved the escape only he could provide.

It took nothing at all to yank at the knot in the front of her towel until it loosened and fell away completely, the towel hitting the floor, her body on display for him. Now his hold on her was a little more insistent—the grip of a man who was fighting his own urges in favor of what he thought was right.

“Iris …” he said after finally pulling away, though his forehead still rested against hers.

He didn’t try to push her away or widen the minuscule distance between them. He held her exactly where she was, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his body.

Even as her hands tightened in the front of his shirt, fisting the material and already thinking of pulling it off him, he shook his head once, then twice, and said, “This isn’t what you want.”

That was the furthest thing from the truth. Right now, being with him was the only thing she wanted. “I want you, Syn.”

She wanted what only he could give her.

She wanted to forget how lost she felt, and how unsure she felt as to whether she would feel this way forever.

“Don’t—”

“I want you to fuck me,” she murmured, knowing he heard her when she felt the shudder rush through him.

She knew what those words did to him. Even now, she could remember the keen roughness that overtook him when she whispered those words in his ear. As if he’d always wait for her permission to ruin her.

And right now, that was exactly what she wanted.

She didn’t waste any time before dragging his shirt up and off, nearly smiling when he lifted his arms to further assist her. She was glad he was giving in.

But he was still thinking too much. He was too in control of everything around him when she wanted his savagery.

Iris dropped to her knees before he could stop her, pulling at the zipper of his jeans until the denim went lax and all she could see was the thick root of his cock nestled among dark hair. Her thoughts were only on the task at hand as she glanced up at his face before easing the denim down and freeing his cock.

She was hypnotized by the way his expression changed when she grabbed him, pumping her fist in slow strokes, just enough to make the muscles of his abdomen tense.

No one had a body like Synek. All the hard lines and scars that covered him. The dark ink from his tattoos and the musculature that made her feel as if she were gazing upon a god.

If this was the last time she would ever have him, she damn sure wanted to appreciate every second of it. She wanted to memorize every contour and slope. And the way that intoxicating V at his hips was all the more prominent with his jeans undone and his cock in her hand.

She could see the war raging inside him. The way he wanted to deny the thing she wanted most, but it only took rubbing the flat of her tongue over the head of his cock to elicit a groan from him. For his eyes to squeeze shut as he stopped fighting the urge to tangle his fingers in her hair and draw her closer.

“Suck me.”

If only for a moment, he was giving in.

And maybe some selfish part of her was glad for it because she felt that sweet blooming ache below the pit of her stomach, the sensation making her throb and work her mouth over him faster.

Every groan she coaxed out of him, every time his cock jerked in her mouth, she was sure he would break first. That he would yank her off him and mount her right there on the floor until she was a sobbing, shuddering mess beneath him.

Instead, when he did pull her off him, his movements weren’t hasty as he scooped her up and carried her back to the bed before tossing her on it. It was all very deliberate.

Even the way he crawled up the bed and knelt between her spread thighs.

He didn’t have that mindless, wild look in his eyes that she had grown accustomed to. It was softer, yet more intense somehow, but still in complete control.

She saw his intentions too late as he fisted his cock and tilted her hips just so until it was only a matter of him pressing forward before he was slipping inside her.

Her head tilted back deeper into the mattress with every inch he gained, her breath exploding out of her when he eased out again.

Here, she could bury it all. The pain. The frustration. Everything she didn’t want to feel she let slip from her mind, staying anchored to the moment by him.

Synek kept most of his weight on his forearms as he stretched out over her, the fingers of one hand coming up to cup her face. To force her to look at him.

And she knew, even before she opened her eyes to meet his stare, that it would be her first mistake. She should have known with the way he was fucking her with deep, toe-curling strokes that he wasn’t going to let this be rough and filthy.

He would take his time.

He would make her feel it. Feel him.

And he wanted her to know it.

“Don’t,” she whispered, resisting the pull he had on her, the way she could see emotion reflected in his dark eyes. This wasn’t the plan.

This was supposed to be a punishment, something to make her feel worse.

Yet he was turning something that was supposed to be rough and ugly into something darkly beautiful.

His lips were mere centimeters from her own, and even if she was capable of it, she didn’t think she would be able to resist him.

“I love you,” he said against her lips, punctuating the words with a harsh jerk of his hips.

Her cry echoed around the empty room, loud to her own ears. It spurring him on further, but he wasn’t giving her the recklessness she thought she wanted.

He fucked her like he loved her.

And just hearing those three little words threatened to break some other part of her, a part that had longed to hear those words in the past week while they had been separated.

No, this felt too right. Too much like a good thing.

But when she tried to escape, he caught her wrists before she could get anywhere and pinned them to the bed. “I love you,” he said again, right at her ear, right before his lips pressed against the wonderfully sensitive spot just below it.

When she said his name, it was supposed to be with a clear firmness, followed by a demand that he fuck her like he meant it.

Make her hurt.

Bruise her.

Leave his marks all over her.

But he wasn’t doing that in the way she wanted. His went beyond skin deep. He was branding himself on her, in her, until she stopped caring. Until her mind grew blissfully unaware of everything outside this moment.

Until there was just her and Synek and their connection.

This time when she kissed him, she melted when his lips connected with hers. She arched into his hold, her nipples scoring over his chest as his thrusts sped up.

“I love you,” he said again, his voice harsh and slightly out of breath.

Honesty leaking from every word.

It took nothing at all, no hesitation and no fear, to whisper those same three words back to him.