“I’m not,” he said, sharpness creeping into his voice. “I’m serious, Embry. This—you—I’d rather have it than anything else. If there’s a cost, then I’ll pay it. I’ll sacrifice anything to be with you.”

His words were so close to Merlin’s—if you truly love him, then there’s nothing you can’t sacrifice—and suddenly I knew Merlin meant more than an uncloseted relationship. I was going to have to sacrifice something much, much worse.

I almost didn’t. There on the floor, my bare legs tangled with his clothed ones, I almost gave in and let myself be carried away by the reckless abandon with which he was willing to love me. After all, we might not be caught, and even if we were, there were so many levels of discretion between us and DADT protocol. Was the risk really so great?

I looked up at him in the darkness, his eyes dark and shining, the moonlight hitting the angles of his cheeks and jaw, the strong lines of his neck. And in the shrouded silver light, I saw not only the man he was now—powerful and smart and kind—but the man he would be. And that man took my breath away.

The air left my body as a new truth scratched itself on the glass of my mind: I would do anything to see that future man come to be. No matter how painful.

“I’m telling you that I’m not willing to sacrifice anything,” I lied, hoping the darkness masked my expression. He’d know I was lying, he was too perceptive for that. But maybe in the dark, and maybe with some distraction…I palmed his cock through his pants and squeezed.

He groaned and I took my chance. “I want to be with you,” I said, and that at least wasn’t a lie. “But I need you to understand that I can’t ever give you that kind of love. The kind that comes with a price.”

My voice was shaking, my hand on his cock was shaking. I was an accomplished liar and never one to feel guilty about any lie that made my life easier, but fuck, this was hard. My voice seemed to burn into Ash like a brand, he flinched at my final sentence, which was such a cruel echo of his own words. And in that moment, even though I was doing it all for him, I hated myself more than I’d ever hated myself before.

“I see,” he finally said. “I understand.”

No, you don’t, I wanted to yell. You can’t. God, I wanted to take it all back, beg forgiveness, expose it for the lie it was, because wounding him hurt me worse than anything I could have ever imagined. It gutted me to make him think I didn’t care as much as he did, that I didn’t want him as much as he wanted me. I cared more, if anything, I wanted him more, but he had to believe otherwise. Because if he knew that his future was my concern, he’d wave off any and all considerations about it. He’d lay it down like it was a burden he had never wanted, all so he could give me—fucking selfish, miserable me—a white picket fence?

No, I couldn’t allow that.

But if he thought it was about my future, my wants and desires…then he’d honor that. Even as it killed him.

He pressed his lips together and nodded, seeming to come to a decision. “Okay,” he said, and I could hear his heart closing up over the pain, the sound of it turning malignant in his blood. “I’ll take you any way I can have you.”

“It’s for the best,” I supplied weakly.

He narrowed his eyes, the attention unbearable because it was paired with a look pleading and bleeding and lost.

I hated being alive in that moment. Hated it. And then his wounded scrutiny transformed into something else, something hot and violent and full of promise. It elated me. I craved his anger, I craved pain at his hands; I deserved it, didn’t I? And if he hurt me, if he used me, then maybe I could pretend to myself that the score was settled. The debt paid. I’d hurt him one way, he’d hurt me another.

Fair, fair, fair. It was fair.

I pushed him over the edge, and in that moment, I couldn’t have told you if it was to seal the decision I’d made for his own good or if it was to provoke the monster inside him to hurt me the way I’d come to crave. “It can just be this,” I said, pushing my hips against his, “and this is just as good as whatever you wanted.”

“This?” Ash asked, glancing down at our tangled legs. “This is what is going to be just as good for me?”

There was no mistaking the danger now. I welcomed it, with every cell, every molecule and atom.

Atonement.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “This is just as good.”

He slapped me. Hard, and right on the fucking face.

“Go to hell,” said Ash.

I rolled onto my back, hand pressed to my stinging jaw, my fist clenched. I was ready to fly at him, but the change in angle meant I could see the unshed tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over. Colchester, the great hero, the sadistically handsome man I’d given my heart to—he was on the verge of tears. Because of me.

And before I had a chance to react to this, I was forcibly flipped onto my stomach, something cool dripping into the divot at the top of my ass. An uncapped bottle of lube was tossed in front of my face, and then I felt two fingers, cruel and slick, shove into me.

“This is just as good, right?” he asked me, twisting his fingers in a way that made me arch in that particular kind of delightful pain. Wrong but good, dirty but right. “Answer me, goddammit. Isn’t this just as good?”

“Yes,” I moaned, but I didn’t know where the moan came from. My ass? My heart? My head, which still told me this was the right thing to do?