Brooke

“Here.”

I stare at the small foil packet in between the eyeliner and lipstick. Even though I’ve never seen one in person, I know what it is. A condom. It says For Her Comfort on the label, which is almost sweet of my mother. Except that she’s not giving me a choice.

“I don’t need that,” I say, knowing that’s the wrong answer.

She doesn’t look surprised by my refusal. She doesn’t look accepting, either. “It’s normal to be nervous about this. That’s why I want you to be prepared.”

“Mom, I barely know Liam. And I don’t want to have sex with him.”

Disapproval flashes across her face, which is so like mine. The Botox has kept the wrinkles away. “He’s spending a lot of money on tonight. The limo, the dinner at Bel Canto.”

“So what? Does that mean he’s paying me for sex?”

She looks horrified. And angry. “Of course not. This is a completely normal thing that happens on prom night. There are girls who would love to go out with Liam McConnell.”

The words slip out before I can stop them. “Because his family’s rich?”

My bedroom turns ten degrees colder, and I shiver in my pale pink slip. My dress hangs on the back of the door, the perfect combination of sophisticated and sexy. I might even like it if I had chosen it myself. Instead it was planned for me, like everything else in my life. This is the first time Mom’s let me wear black.

When she speaks, her voice is unexpectedly soft. “I’m not saying you have to do it, Brooke. Only that you should be open to the possibility.”

I force a smile. “I understand.”

“And if you have any questions about what to expect…”

God, she makes it sound like I’m getting married. It’s prom night, and I feel like I’m being sold to the highest bidder. Liam isn’t a bad guy. A little cocky, but what heir to a shipping fortune wouldn’t be? We aren’t close, though.

Honestly I was surprised when he asked me to prom, but it seemed like a good idea. Now that the little silver packet stares up at me, I’m rethinking that decision.

“I do have one question.”

She doesn’t quite manage to hide her wince. This conversation is as uncomfortable for her as it is for me. “Of course.”

“That story about Dad? The one you tell at Christmas, about him being like the Innkeeper from the Bible. Did that happen before or after you were married?”

She blinks, looking surprised by the question. “We were engaged at the time. That was when he only had a couple of motels to his name.”

It’s my mother’s family that had money. My father had pure ambition and hard work. The business thrived until just a few years ago. I know that Liam might be the answer to turning things around. Such a mercenary way to look at my prom night.

The foil crinkles, and I realize I’m holding it in my fist.

My mother’s blue eyes are pleading with me. “Brooke, I never would have suggested this if I hadn’t met Liam myself. If I didn’t know he comes from a good family.”

“What if I don’t want him?”

“You wanted him enough to say yes,” she reminds me gently. “If you decide you don’t want to do anything with him, then don’t. This isn’t a requirement. But if you’re on the fence, remember all the things I’ve done for this family. That your father has done. We both make sacrifices.”

Sacrifices. She could be talking about Daddy’s long hours at work. But what if he’s sacrificed more than that? What if he’s sacrificed his morals as well? What if he sacrificed defenseless children?

But he’s my father. I won’t give him up to Stone.

Which is why it’s a good thing I haven’t seen Stone again. Over and over I tell myself that.

My mother scowls at my feet, clad in black heels. “Is that a scuff?” She mumbles something about her kit and sweeps out of the room with an air of annoyance, as if I’ve been careless already.

I flop back on the bed.

It’s been a year and a half since my seventeenth birthday. A year and a half since that last ride. A year and a half since he made me feel free, hurtling down the highway in the sunshine.

When I turned eighteen, I half expected him to show up, the way he did on my sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays. In truth, I more than expected to see him. I wanted to see him. I yearned to hear him call me little bird in that way of his, gravelly and surly, yet so strangely full of tenderness. I would’ve given up every brightly wrapped birthday gift to feel his hand on my thigh just once, a little bit too heavy, too possessive.

Stone was the only birthday present I wanted and the only one I should have never wanted.

I told myself it didn’t matter what I did—Stone would either show up, or he wouldn’t. That’s his way.

Still, I parked in a shady spot near a shadowed doorway. After school I actually sat there, alone in the driver’s seat, for fifteen minutes, checking Instagram.

I wasn’t looking at the scroll of smiling faces and meals and blue-water beaches—not really. With every fiber of my being, I was waiting for him, trembling for him, butterflies in my belly, thighs smashed tight together, thinking of him.

An ache between my legs.

I felt sheepish about that when I realized it. What if he touched me there? What if he knew? But Stone wouldn’t joke about something like that, and he would never say I was a slut.

He would like it, because my desire for him is something real and true. Stone likes real and true things about me. He’s the only one who wants to know my dreams. He’s the only one who doesn’t want me in my mask.

In the end, it didn’t matter how long I sat in the car. My birthday came and went.

Stone never showed up.

It’s for the best—I know that. Even as he could touch between my legs and feel the wetness there, I knew he could gaze into my eyes and sense my secret worries about my father.

Could I lie to him? I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to try.

Three hours and a hundred photos later, I’m riding in the back of a huge limo next to Liam, across from Randall Wainwright and Kitty, one of the gorgeous Shaffer twins. They’re nice enough, but kind of drunk, and Kitty managed to make me feel terrible about my dress by not saying a word.

Randall cranks Lil Peep.

Liam slings an arm around me and hands over a polished silver flask.

“No, thanks,” I say. “I haven’t eaten.”

“But look, it says drink me,” he protests.

I smile. “Where does it say that?”

He grins and changes his voice, like the flask is talking, blond hair flopping over his forehead. “Drink me, Brooke!”

I roll my eyes. Liam can be seriously silly sometimes, though I don’t really know him that well. Liam and Randall go to the boys’ school down the block from our girls’ school, but in the upper grades, we share activities like band and theater and choir, and we do all our dances together.

“Drink me, drink me!” he repeats. Randall and Kitty are laughing.

I snort and take the flask. “I think you’re the Mad Hatter, that’s what I think.” I take a fake sip.

“Oh, come on,” Liam says.

I take a good swig this time. The liquid burns my throat.

Liam takes the flask back and drinks. Randall cranks the tunes.

Kitty shows me her nails, with tiny loops on the ends of them. “Amazing,” I say.

We get a booth at Bel Canto. Liam and Randall have fake IDs. They order two whiskey sours each and then give them to us when the waiter leaves.

We get puffed pastry appetizers, and Randall is laughing about band kids. It’s a five-course meal, the kind you order as a set. It’s delicious and probably worth an entire car payment for most folks.

I have just that one drink—I don’t like to drink the way some kids do.

Liam is actually really nice. He likes me, and he’s always trying to make me laugh. He gives me the cherry out of every drink he orders, and he smiles at me when he puts his hand on my thigh under the table, watching my face for any sign of not wanting it there.

I smile back at him, signaling that it’s okay. I try to imagine it feeling alive and exciting, like when Stone first touched me there, but really, Liam’s hand just feels…wooden, in a weird way. Like there’s no life in his touch. Flat.

But I let him leave it there, because he’s taking me out to this nice dinner, and maybe he’ll grow on me. I remind myself I didn’t like hanging around with Stone at first, and he grew on me, right?

Understatement of the year. Stone is all I can think about.

But Stone can’t be my boyfriend.

If anything, I should hate Stone for how he blazed into my life with all his heat and fury and passion. I should hate Stone for his intense gaze, and the way his eyes burn into my soul, and the way he kisses me—like he’ll die if he doesn’t.

Liam kisses me after dinner. More tongue, less passion.

It’s not fair to compare them. Of course Liam would have less experience. I have less experience, too. It’s actually kind of sweet. We can experience this together.

The prom is held at the elite boys’ school down the block from our girls’ academy. The theme is fairy garden, and kids from both schools have been collaborating on the decorations, though everyone knows it’s just an excuse to meet each other.

And as the night goes on, Liam’s kisses get more sloppy. During a slow dance it seems like he’s making out with my cheek. “Got a hot tub room at Solange,” he slurs.

I smile and nod.

Solange (you never call it the Solange) is where the after-party is; Solange is a boutique hotel on River Road Drive, just down from the Ivy Club, which is the exclusive private men’s club that my father belongs to.

If the schools Liam and I attend cater to the most elite families in all of Franklin City, the Solange penthouse after-party is where the heirs of the most elite of the elite families will go.

I’m hoping Liam passes out before we get there. Even though he was nice to me, I don’t want to have sex with him. The condom feels hot in my little black and gold clutch.

He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the ballroom, mumbling something about fresh air.

I’m wondering whether he’s feeling sick. Some small part of me hopes he is.

I imagine myself playing Florence Nightingale, making the limo driver bring us to the 7-Eleven, where I’d buy him crackers and soda. He’d apologize, and I’d be so nice about it. And then he’d drop me off, and my mother would have no excuse to be angry—how could I go to Solange when my date was deathly ill?

“You okay?” I ask.

“Gotta get air,” he murmurs, arm slung around my shoulders.

The limos are arrayed up and down the block. “Which one is ours?” I ask.

“Who cares?” he says, and his voice is lower than usual.

It sends a shiver down my spine, not completely unpleasant. It reminds me of Stone, that voice. Enough that I turn my face away and pretend he’s with me.

So we keep walking. Suddenly, he’s leading me into a darkened walkway between buildings, ivy-covered brick on one side, a chain-link fence on the other, a dim glint in the dark.

“What are you doing?”

“A little party of our own.”

I slow down, tugging toward the street, the light. I’m not sure that I want to go back. Not sure that I want to go forward. “We’re missing the dance,” I say, stalling for time.

He pulls me deeper in, then pushes me against the bricks in the dark and makes out with my face—that’s how it feels, like I’m a face to make out with while he paws my breasts.

My mother’s words ring in my ears. Be nice. Try. We all make sacrifices.

“Somebody might come.” But that’s not what I’m worried about. No one will find us out here. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Everyone in there will end up naked in a hotel room.

“Let them come,” he says, running his hand over my dress, pulling it up, feeling my bare thigh above the stockings, reaching higher.

“Wait,” I say, but what I really want to say is, you’re not Stone.

The realization turns my insides cold. No matter how long it’s been since Stone left, even after I knew he wouldn’t come back, I’ve been waiting for him. Ignoring all the prep-school boys for him. Keeping myself a virgin for him. How messed up is that?

In the end it’s not my mother’s words that move me.

It’s the knowledge that I want Stone that makes me decide to have sex with Liam. I think if I let Liam inside my body, if I lose myself in this moment, I can finally forget.

I resign myself to this. I’m going to have sex with my prom date, like a hundred other girls tonight. I’m going to be completely ordinary, completely normal, completely unlike the girl who dreams about the man who took her hostage.

Except that Liam isn’t kissing me anymore.

He’s pulled back, looking at me, concern replacing some of the lust in his eyes.

Because I told him to wait, I realize. He’s respecting my body, respecting me, and that’s another thing that makes this so different. Stone never had sex with me, but I like to think that if he decided to, he wouldn’t stop. Not even if I asked him to.

That’s the way I fantasize about him, being hard and demanding.

“You want to go inside?” Liam says, his voice a little hoarse.

It would hurt him to go back inside, be a strain on his body, but he’d do it if I asked him to. The knowledge sends a tendril of tenderness through me. “No. I want this.”

To prove the point, I reach back up for him, curling my hands into the lapels of his tux and pulling him down to me. His lips meet mine again, and I can almost, almost be in this moment with him. I’m a few seconds away from letting go of those car rides. A single breath away from forgetting.

Suddenly he’s off me.

There’s a flash of hands and black leather. The shattering smash of a body against steel links. A delayed grunt of surprise. Protest. Pain. Liam leaning against the fence, a stunned expression on his face.

A hulking shadow stands in the alley between us.

“What the hell?” Liam says, pushing away from the fence.

“Walk away.” Stone. He came for me. He watched me. And he’s standing between Liam and me. I can hardly process this. It’s like seeing a wild animal in the middle of a shopping mall. He doesn’t belong here, but I’m so angry. Angry that he messed up the one thing that might help me get over him. Relieved, too.

“Who the fuck are you?” Liam demands.

Stone takes a step toward him, and in a matter of seconds, I’m flashed back to my sixteenth birthday party. To seeing Stone for the first time. To blood and death.

“Wait,” I say, breathless with panic. “Don’t kill him.”

He turns to look at me, his face in shadows. Even in the dark, I can see his expression. Terrifying. And a little incredulous. “You think I’ll kill him.”

His voice is flat, and I realize I’ve managed to insult him.

The truth is, I don’t know what he’s going to do. He beat that man in the truck stop bathroom, but that was entirely different from this. I didn’t want that man. And, for my own reasons, I wanted this boy.

“Please,” I say, soft. It’s only meant for Stone, that one word. Not for Liam, who’s cursing and threatening to call the police.

Stone takes a step toward me, and I’m too glad to be scared of him. Maybe I should be worried that he’ll hurt me, but he’s protected me too much.

“I should leave you with him,” he says, his voice still strangely flat. “So he can paw at you. Put his filthy hands on your body. That’s what you want?”

I have the sense of being at the top of a mountain, that whichever way I lean now will determine where I roll, one word to decide my whole future. Stone will leave me here. That much is clear in my voice. If I tell him that I want to stay, that I want to lose my virginity to Liam, he’ll let me.

“No,” I breathe out, before I’ve even thought through the ramifications.

Liam chooses that moment to wave the phone at us, the screen overbright in the dark alley. “The police are on their way, asshole. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

My blood runs cold. The police. They won’t take kindly to a grown man crashing a rich-kid prom night. “You have to go,” I whisper.

“Come with me,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s ever asked me that.

He’s taken me hostage three times now. Sat in the passenger seat and told me to drive. But he’s never asked me to come with him. The question sits between us, as precious as crystal, fragile as dew.

“Stone,” I say, and it’s impossible to mistake the longing in my voice.

I’m standing here in a dress my mother picked out, with the boy she wants me to lose my virginity to. With that foil packet in my clutch, a symbol of everything I’m worth to them. The dutiful daughter to make a sacrifice. What about what I want?

What about what I need?

Light bounces off the bricks, flashlights on cell phones. Then Randall appears at the entrance to the alley, his arm slung around Kitty, who’s carrying a bottle of wine.

“We’ve been looking for you,” he says, his voice almost a shout. “It’s time for Solange, baby!”

It’s Kitty who realizes something is wrong. “Oh my God,” she says.

Randall sobers up real quick. “You can take what you want. I have money in my wallet. I’ll give it to you.”

He thinks we’re being mugged. And in the middle of this mess of teenage hormones and drunkenness, Stone stands like he’s actually made of marble. Still. Cold. Unfeeling.

With a terrible shudder I realize he never had this. Prom night. Tux rentals. A limo.

He stands there looking so alone.

I take his hand in mine. He squeezes so hard I gasp, and I realize I was wrong. He’s not unfeeling. Not cold. He burns hot with fury, with regret. “Let’s go,” I tell him softly.

“Come quietly and your pretty boy doesn’t get hurt.”

Stone’s words ring loud through the alley, bouncing off brick, and I realize he wants it to seem like he’s taking me hostage. Even though I already asked to come. I don’t know why he wants it like this. Maybe this is the only way he can take me.

“No,” I say, a little hesitant at first. “Don’t.”

“I won’t let you touch her,” Liam says, but he doesn’t sound sure. And he doesn’t place himself between us the way that Stone did. Doesn’t defend me with his body.

“What are you going to do about it?” Stone says, soft with menace. “Are you going to fight me? Going to throw a punch at me? Does it seem like you’d walk away from that?”

As threats go, it’s effective. A visible shudder grabs Liam.

Stone grabs my wrist, his grip firm but not bruising. “He understands, princess. You don’t fight me. Got it? That’s the way you keep your friends nice and safe.”

He drags me down the alley toward the street.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Liam, hoping he’ll understand. It sounds like I’m sorry that he was threatened, like I’m terrified and mindless. In truth I’m just sorry he didn’t get the sex he deserves.

Stone pulls me down the street, with Liam shouting about the police, with Randall staring after us. Kitty whispers to me as I pass by, asking where I met him. She thinks he’s some kind of bad man, the kind who would snatch a young woman off the street. She doesn’t know he’s so much better than that. And so much worse than that. Because he’s done this before.

A white truck waits at the corner, a sharp contrast to the long line of black limos in the parking lot. I’m supposed to be in one of those limos, getting felt up, getting drunk. I’m supposed to be a regular eighteen-year-old girl, but instead I’m holding hands with a murderer.

My high heel twists in a sewer grate, and I yelp as I start to fall.

Stone catches me, pulling me into his arms before I can land on the street. One shoe stays stuck in the grate. The other flies off and lands on the pavement. I’m barefoot, and my feet don’t hurt for the first time all night. It’s enough to make me laugh. I must look like a maniac, wearing a ten-thousand-dollar gown while he has on a leather jacket with a T-shirt and jeans. Happiness courses through me, the certainty that I’m doing something right, even as I make the biggest mistake of my life.

Sirens sound in the distance. Liam hadn’t been bluffing about the cops, but then that doesn’t surprise me. But they got here fast.

“Sirens,” I whisper. Meaning, we have to hurry.

The tender look he gives me melts something deep inside my belly. He opens the door and carefully sets me in the truck. It’s not a limo, but it might as well be. It’s better than that. He buckles me in, heads around to his side, and we pull out.

We’re halfway down the block when I see the flash of lights bouncing off the buildings to the right of us. They won’t catch us. Affection fills me as I look at Stone’s hard profile. They won’t catch him.

“You came for me,” I say, still stupidly excited about that.

He grunts, turning onto the freeway and merging with the other cars and trucks.

I run my bare feet along the rough carpet at the foot of his truck. There aren’t any old wrappers tossed into the bottom, but it’s not exactly clean either. There are too many rips and burns in the fabric for that. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere quiet. We need to talk.”

It’s ridiculous, but my mind goes to the silver foil in my clutch. I have a condom. Protection. This was the night when I would lose my virginity, and now I’m with a man who can take it.

“Talk about what?” I ask in a voice I hope is seductive.

He gives me a sideways look, dark and severe. “Your father.”

My mouth goes dry. I look down, twisting the soft part of my clutch. I’m not good at hiding my emotions. And right now they’re lit up like a neon sign, flashing guilty guilty guilty. “My father?” I say as lightly as I can. “Why would you want to talk about my father?”

“It’s serious, what I have to tell you, little bird.”

The sirens get louder. Closer. I give him a frantic look. He glances in the rearview, once, then again. His voice calm and steady as he says, “We’re okay.”

“You sure?”

There’s a grim look on his face. What does he know about my father? Does he know he’s the Innkeeper? Keeper? Is he going to hurt my father? I’ve gone from joy to dread in the space of a heartbeat.

He’s pulling off the highway. It’s the Big Moosehorn Park exit. But instead of heading down to the river, we go the other way, up a road that turns into dirt and rough gravel. It’s a bumpy ride up here, jolting me out of my panic.

“Where are we going?” My voice comes out small.

“A place I like to sit to think.”

Ten minutes through the woods, twisting and turning through it all, and he’s pulling over in front of a tiny cottage. Ten minutes of wondering what Stone could possibly want to say to me except the worst thing in the world. Ten minutes of wondering how I can plead for my father’s life.

He looks over at me. “You can’t tell anyone this is here.”

“How would I even find it again?” Except I remember the path by heart.

He leads me around to the back, to a door with the hinge broken off. “This used to be a ranger station before they built the nice one down by the road. I fixed it up two summers ago.”

It’s old but clean. He lights a gas lamp, and then another. “Remember my friend Grayson, who was framed for murder?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Your friend in jail.”

The place glows, tiny and cozy. A red plaid blanket is thrown over a small couch. There are books and papers around.

“Well, he’s out now.”

I turn to him, forgetting my nervousness. “They let him go? That’s great, Stone! You were so worried about him. He was like a little brother to you.”

He tosses me a bottle of water. “Let him go…that’s not exactly how I’d put it, little bird.”

“Oh my God.” If they didn’t let him go, that means he left on his own. A prison escape? Stone’s expression is unrepentant, which means he probably helped.

“It’s all good.” He grabs what looks like a giant sketch pad from the table and settles down on the old couch, sinking into the cushions. It looks like the most comfortable place in the world.

I sit next to him. It feels strangely natural, like I’ve been here forever.

He sets the pad on his lap but doesn’t open it. He just slides his hand over it. Thinking. There’s something different about him, but I don’t know what.

“It’s amazing to have Grayson back,” he says finally. “I didn’t let on to my guys how worried I was about him. Things are…different with Grayson. Not really in a bad way. I think he grew up a little. Calling his own shots in some ways…”

He looks over at me, pinning me with that intense gaze, eyes deep pools of green that seem to go on forever. It comes to me that what he said about Grayson calling his own shots is significant in a way I don’t understand. Like maybe it changed something for Stone, too.

Or maybe for us. Because something is definitely different. It’s been a year and a half since I saw him last, but it’s not just that. He doesn’t look different, but he feels different. Stronger and more solid. More purposeful.

The air seems to heat and thicken between us.

“But he’s back,” I supply. “I'm glad. However he got out, I'm glad, Stone.” I find that I mean that.

“Me, too,” he says. My breath stutters as he reaches up and slides a strand of hair from my face, grazing the side of my forehead with his knuckle. The small touch burns, sends waves of heat through me. “You look beautiful tonight,” he says. “So goddamn beautiful, it kills me.”

“You look beautiful, too.”

He narrows his eyes, as though I said something silly. He tugs at the frayed collar of the soft-looking green T-shirt under his leather jacket. “Good, because this is my best T-shirt. Special occasions only.”

He’s being sarcastic, but the T-shirt goes with his eyes, and it looks soft, and the collar is perfectly worn below his thickly muscled neck. His pulse thrums beneath his jaw line, and for a moment, I imagine pressing my lips to it. Would his skin feel warm? “I mean it, Stone.”

He keeps his gaze on me for a long time, and I’m acutely aware of us alone, here in this simple, masculine space that feels so much like him.

He seems to remember himself. “There are things I need to tell you, Brooke.”

I nod, tense again.

“We…had a talk with the man who helped to frame Grayson,” he says.

A sense of something darker—something unsaid—arrows through me. Had a talk. They’d do more than talk with the man who helped to send Grayson to prison.

Is the man still alive?

“We got some new info. It’s bad.” He pauses, runs his hands over the pad. “There are other boys out there—right now. Being held, just like we were.”

My stomach turns over. “Where? Right now? Can you get them out?”

“We don’t know where they are. Yet,” he growls.

There are kids being held in a basement like the one I saw. Touching a burning hot rivet as their only sign of hope. I can imagine the heat against my finger. “Did you tell the police?”

He looks at me like I said something outrageous. Like I asked whether he told the Martian delegation or something. “This city, you have no idea, do you? The police have been the best protection these guys could ever have.”

“Oh.”

“It’s up to us,” he says. “They’re out there, being kept in a hole like we were, nobody giving a fuck. Or at least, that’s what they’re thinking. But they have us. They don’t know it, but they do.”

He’s silent for a bit, staring down at that pad.

They have you, I think. And it makes them amazingly lucky. I don’t know where the thought comes from, but I’m thinking it with all my heart.

“We’re going to find them,” he continues, “and we’re going to make everybody who put them down there sorry they were ever born.”

I nod, swallow past the dryness in my throat. I can’t believe my father would knowingly be involved in the horror of boys being imprisoned like that. But what do I say if he asks me point-blank about Keeper? I can’t let him hurt my dad.

There’s no way my dad is a part of this. Even if he let someone rent a property way back when, there’s no way he’s helping keep kids captive right now.

Stone opens the pad. “I need to show you this.”

My pulse races as he turns to a page full of pencil scribbles—words in circles with lines connecting them, a massive, tangled web, like a flowchart or mind map or something. “They’re going to see that somebody gives a shit. Finding out about these kids has changed everything for us.”

“And you’re sure about…more boys being held?”

“Oh yeah. It’s from somebody who wouldn’t have lied.”

I focus back down on the chart. It reminds me of the kind that police make when they’re trying to solve a crime, but instead of photos, there are names. Madsen is scribbled in one circle. Governor Dorman. Shock squeezes my chest. “The governor was involved?”

“That’s who we had a talk with,” Stone says. “That’s who helped to frame Grayson.”

“He died recently. It was in the papers. He had a heart attack.”

“Wasn’t a heart attack,” Stone says simply. He points to a small image. A house—the house. “Whoever owned the house we were kept in, that information is lost. Or more accurately, it was destroyed. We’ve been looking at all the big players in real estate from around that time. We’ve run down their information. Questioned a few…” He doesn’t elaborate on questioned. He means tortured. Maybe killed. “It’s a lot of dead ends. Nobody wants to talk. But then we were looking at who was small potatoes back then. Your father was just starting out as a real estate broker twenty years back.”

My pulse races. “Was he?” I say, as if the timeline has just occurred to me. Inside my organs have shriveled and tangled up, torn apart by guilt, but who do I feel guilty toward? Stone, for keeping information from him? Or my father, for even thinking of betraying him?

“I know it’s a long shot, but maybe he could remember something from that time. Maybe somebody asking around about abandoned places.” He points to a circle with Keeper written in it. “Or maybe he knows who this guy is.”

“Twenty years ago,” I say.

“It’s a lot to ask, but I wanted to show this to you, so that you’d know everything I do. And maybe you could talk to him. Even if he doesn't know this guy Keeper, he could know something important. If you could get even one piece of the puzzle. Like, maybe he knew Dorman back then. Or maybe he remembers something Madsen said, or somebody else who’s involved.”

My heart’s pounding like a jackhammer. “So you don’t know who Keeper is.”

“No, but see how many lines connect him to the other players?”

So many lines. Was my father really connected to that many players in this horrible underground kidnapping ring? How is it possible he had that many connections without knowing? “My father might not have known,” I say, but my voice is shaky. “He didn’t.”

“He knew something,” Stone growls, more impatient now. “Even if he doesn’t know Keeper, he has to know something. You don’t work in real estate in this city for this long without hearing something.”

Oh God. “He’s more on the construction side now.”

“Still want to talk to him.”

I nod, but there’s a lump in my throat. “Because boys are out there now.”

“Not for much longer.”

“You’re going to free them.”

“Fucking right we are.”

I reach up and straighten his collar. He really does seem different. It’s this new focus on saving those kids. I like it. I love it. But how can I keep something from him?

But God, how can I turn over my father on a silver platter?

I’ve seen my father come home, exhausted to the bone from trying to keep his company afloat. And I’ve seen him smile at me, asking to see the poem I’ve written or watch my new gymnastics routine. He always found time for me, no matter how young and silly I was. He could never be involved in something that hurt children. Not knowingly.

And Stone won’t ask questions. He won’t care about nuance. He’ll question my father using every method of torture he knows. Something tells me it’s a lot.

“I’ll talk to him,” I say, my throat tight. How am I going to ask something like that? Hey, Dad. Do you remember anything about selling young boys on the black market? That will be a fun family conversation, but it’s better than Stone doing it.

“Thank you,” he says softly. “This is important.”

I reach over and take his hand. Warm and soft. Heavy on mine, years of rough living forming calluses. I squeeze. It’s like holding a tiger by the paw. “Of course it’s important. You are important.”

He shakes his head. “The kids.”

Doesn’t he see that he’s one of them? Even after all these years. But then he never thought of himself as one of them. Even when he was locked in that basement, he saw himself as the caretaker. The one responsible for the children like Grayson. His guys, he calls them.

“Where is Grayson?” I ask, looking around the small cabin. “If this place is safe, why doesn’t he stay here?”

“Oh, we have somewhere else in the city. It’s secure as hell. Completely off the grid. This is a place that only I go.”

And now me. His guys are like little brothers to him. And he doesn’t bring them here? My heart seems to expand, imagining him trusting me. And then pop like a balloon. I’m betraying that trust by not telling him everything I know.

The cabin has one main room with the sofa that we’re on. Off in the corner I can see a rudimentary kitchen, a hot plate and a freestanding stainless steel sink. There’s a door that I assume leads to a bathroom. I wander toward it, because I can’t bear to be so close to Stone—and so far away, at the same time. It’s ripping me in two.

Instead of a bathroom, I find a bedroom with an actual bed with white sheets and a navy-blue wool throw over the top. Walls of rough pine. Does Stone sleep here? He said he only comes here to think, but I realize he means for longer than an hour. Maybe even days.

“Why did you come to prom?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the bed. I’m avoiding something, not looking at him, but I don’t know who it’s protecting really—me or him.

I hear him come up to the door. He stops there, staying behind me. Even so, the air seems to crackle between us.

“Are you sorry I screwed up your date?” he asks, his voice neutral.

Shivers go over me. “Are you?”

“Hell no. That fucker didn’t deserve to touch you.”

That makes me smile, even though it feels a little sad. “Who deserves to touch me?”

“No one,” he says with such stark honesty that tears prick my eyes.

I turn to look at him, then. His worn leather jacket hangs open, revealing the soft green T-shirt over faded jeans. He’s fully clothed but strangely naked to me.

Because I can see him.

I can see that there is a gaping hole in his chest, a place where pride and safety and self-respect should go. It was ripped out of him a long time ago, but I only see it now. He couldn’t let Liam touch me, but he can’t bring himself to touch me either.

My feet move on their own, crossing the small space. And then I’m kneeling in front of him. It’s a position of supplication, but one of strength.

He looks down at me. For once I can’t read his expression. But I read his body. He’s aching, wild with fury and loneliness, an abandoned bear cub.

Completely dangerous. Completely unused to affection.

I thought I was the innocent one. Never had sex. Barely even kissed a boy. But how many times has Stone had sex with tenderness? Maybe never.

“Have you ever been in love?” I ask softly.

There isn’t jealousy inside me—not knowing what he’s suffered. I want him to have found love, a hundred times over. He deserves a thousand lifetimes of it.

“Yes,” he says, his voice hoarse, gazing down at me with raw pain in his eyes.

I hate the pain I see there. Is that what love means to him? Suffering?

I may be naive, but I know love doesn’t have to be about suffering. And it doesn’t have to be about drunk boys in dark alleys.

There’s something better in the world—I know it as sure as I know I’m kneeling in front of this strong, beautiful man who sees himself as a monster.

“Did you go to prom?” I whisper.

He laughs, uneven. “Fuck no.”

“You were still…” In the basement. The words are etched into the air.

“Nah, we were out by then. On the run. Definitely not worried about being tardy to class.”

“Did you miss it?” Maybe it was good that he came to prom night. Like some sad little replacement for what he never had, except I remember how he looked in that alley. Forlorn. It didn’t replace anything. It just highlighted what he never had.

“No,” he says, but I can tell he’s lying. “I knew that shit wasn’t for me. None of it. Tuxedos and flowers. What the fuck would I do with that? It’s not for me. I can never have a normal life.”

The statement rings inside me like a bell; I’ve been made hollow.

I reach out a hand, slide the pads of my fingers along the side of his wrist. His whole body vibrates under my touch like he’s about to shatter. Like he’s made of glass, even though I know he’s got strong bones and hard muscles and an unbreakable spirit.

Higher. I reach his forearm. His skin feels warm, muscles hard as rock.

I can never have a normal life.

Suddenly he closes his fingers over my wrist. “What are you doing?” he rasps.

What am I doing? I’m touching him. I’m feeling him, understanding him, for maybe the first time ever. I turn my hand to grip him back, wrist to wrist. Our hands form links of a strange chain, joined together against everything impossible.

The air pulses with new energy. Frightening energy. I breathe in the salty, musky scent of him. There’s no trace of perfumes or body spray, just pure male beast, surging with pain.

I feel drugged by his nearness. Unable to speak. I just want to touch him.

I just want him.

His fingers brand my wrist with sizzling heat. With every ragged breath, his chest rises and falls under his T-shirt. The open sides of his jacket move, too, grazing his faded blue jeans. Dull metal snaps set deep into his jacket are grayed with age and shift in the dim light that streams in from the other room.

For a moment I think I must be crazy, kneeling in front of him, holding his wrist like a lifeline, imagining he wants me the way I want him. The way he would’ve wanted the lucky woman he was in love with. Or maybe still is in love with.

Who does he love?

She must be older than me, I think. Worldly and beautiful. And I’m nothing but a sheltered girl who never even had a class with a boy. He would hold himself back from her; that’s how well I know Stone. Whatever woman is strong enough to have taken his heart?

He wouldn’t think himself worthy.

I know Stone, inside and out. I’ve seen him kill. I’ve felt his fingers dig into my flesh as he tried to drown me and couldn’t. I’ve seen him beaten and bruised. I’ve held the broken little bird he made just for me. Touched myself to his rumbled commands over the phone.

God, that phone call. I’ve replayed those words so many times in my head, it’s as familiar to me as the Girl Scout pledge.

Oh yes, sweetheart. I’m there. I’m holding your hands down to your cunt, telling you to fuck yourself. Shoving my cock in your throat until you’ve got tears down your cheeks. Until you’ve got saliva running down your chin. You’re crying, but you don’t dare stop touching yourself.

I pull my hand from his. Peering up at him through my lashes, I reach down and lift the hem of my skirt. I gather up all the useless fabric, pushing it around my waist to reveal pink panties.

“Holy fuck,” he rasps.

My sex feels cool in the air. Soaked.

Slowly and deliberately, I push my hand between my legs. I burrow my fingers under the hem of my panties. I reach down and stroke along the slickness I find there.

Breath shudders out of him. “Brooke.”

I don’t know what he means. Brooke, don’t? Or Brooke, more?

But it doesn’t matter. My life is full of smiles when I’m sad. Of somebody else’s secondhand clothes passed off as couture. A veneer of politeness to cover survival of the fittest.

All of these things are lies.

Me kneeling before Stone is truth. The wetness between my legs is as real as the rough wood floor scratching at my knees. My desire for him is raw. Unbearable.

He’s the man no boy can measure up to. He’s the moon lighting the vast, dark night of my life. “You’re the only one,” I say. “Not Liam. Not anyone. I don’t want them.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I gaze up at him from under my lashes. Meet his eyes, dark with lust. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“I ruined you, baby,” he grates, his voice thick.

“I like it.” I pull my hand from my panties and start to undo his fly, unbuttoning the silver button, drawing down the zipper, clumsy with desire. “It’s what I want, Stone,” I plead. “I want to do it like we did on the phone call. Ruin me.”

He gazes down at me—burns down at me.

I gather the courage to whisper the words I’ve said in my head so many times. “I want you to put your cock into my mouth.”

“Fuck.” He shoves his hands into my hair, grips my head.

“I want you to fuck my throat. I want you to,” I say. “Make me cry while I touch myself. It’s all I can think about.” Maybe he did ruin me. Maybe if I’d never met him by the river that night, I would have had sex with Liam earlier. I would have even been satisfied with that.

But that isn’t what happened. He rewired something in my brain. Or maybe I would have been like this anyway. There’s no way to know. No way to separate who I could have been with who I am now. There’s only lust. Only this.

Strong hands come to rest on my head.

Only that, and I sink into some strange place in my mind. He isn’t even forcing me to do anything, isn’t pushing me forward and back, but the strength of him is unmistakable.

My fingers are clumsy with the hard denim of his jeans. He’s already thick beneath the zipper, and even without experience, I know what it means. It means he wants me.

When I get the zipper down, his cock springs out, thick and pale and ridged with veins. A gasp escapes me, which makes me sound like the untried virgin that I am. I expected there to be something constraining him. Boxers or something like that, but there’s nothing. Only his cock, pulsing with expectation. Larger than I ever imagined.

The musky scent of him works its way into my lungs, into my memories, so deep I don’t think it will ever really leave. He doesn’t make any move to rush me, but lets me study him. The time doesn’t make me any more certain. If anything, I’m intimidated by him. Maybe that’s the point.

But I started this, and I’m going to finish it. Going to see if the reality of this is anywhere near as good as the fantasy. Going to see if I come as hard beneath his hands as I did beneath his words.

My hands are trembling only a little as I take hold of his smooth, marble-hard length. I press my face to his warm, slightly furred belly. I squeeze.

He groans. “Can’t,” he pants. His fingers are clutching my scalp.

Can, I think. We can. “Only you,” I say.

I touch my tongue to the glistening droplet at the tip of him. He lets out a garbled cry. Strangled desire. Holding himself back from this, even as I finally, finally let myself go.

Dizziness washes over me at the salty taste. I fit my lips around his head. I can feel the tremor all the way through him. Or maybe I’m the one shaking, coming apart at my seams, not fitting back together in any order that I knew before.

My other hand moves back down between my legs. I touch myself as I take him into my mouth, just the way he said to on the phone. He feels impossibly huge. I’m riding a tidal wave of feeling, and I want him to fill me, to make him cry, to be everywhere in me. I feel like I could come in an instant. At the same time it feels like we could do this forever.

His breath gusts wild. He fits my hand around the base of him. “Squeeze, baby.”

I squeeze.

A string of unintelligible words tears from his lips as I increase the pressure—swear words mixed with other words I don’t understand. “Harder. Tighter. Let me feel you.”

Except he doesn’t wait for me to obey him.

He rocks into me, slowly, gently. The rhythm of him feels ancient. Savage. It’s like he’s using me, and the realization is hotter than my fingers against my clit. An imprinting so primal that it’s in my DNA, the knowledge that I should open my mouth to him, that he should fill it.

“Yes,” he grunts. “Fucking take it.”

There’s a sound I make. I think it might have been a word—yes or God or please. I’m too mindless to know, his cock too far inside me to let me speak. It comes out as a hum. When he moans, I realize that he can feel the vibrations on his cock. That’s how close we are right now. So deep inside me that he can feel the words I can’t say.

“Touch yourself,” he says.

And I realize I had stopped, lost in the surrender to him. My legs are spread wide as I kneel on the wood floor. I’m shameful and unashamed. I’m needy and satiated. When I touch my forefinger to my clit, the sensation is sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes. This isn’t like in my bed, when I could rub myself, again and again, in that one special spot. The need is too much, the ache almost pain, and I have to make circles instead.

I stroke myself to his rhythm, lost in him, in the surge of us together.

“You like that, little bird?” His expression is dark, knowing. He already sees everything that I feel. He wants me to nod with my mouth full of him, my eyes wide and pleading.

Something gentles in his eyes. “You can’t get off, can you? Your fingers are all slippery. I can see them shining from here. You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

My hand clenches into a fist, slick with my juices like he said. I don’t know why I can’t do this. Is this because I’m a virgin? Or because there’s something wrong with me?

He pushes his boot between my legs. “There,” he says, like he’s given me something.

I blink at him, uncomprehending, even as a spurt of salty precum coats my tongue. My throat works on its own, swallowing him down. My tongue rolls along the ridge of him, making his eyelids drop to half-mast. How does this come so naturally to me? Pleasuring him?

And why can’t I do the same to myself?

It feels good, but I’m hovering on the edge of it. I’m trapped here.

“Go ahead,” he says, coaxing. “Fuck yourself.”

The curved toe of his boot nudges me in the most private place, gentle but still coarse, the curved toe of his boot. And I realize what he wants me to do. To press my sex against the smooth leather. To rock my hips like that while I soak his boot with my arousal.

The humiliation of it does something to my brain. It makes everything sharper, clearer. And when I position my knees around his leg, it feels a little like coming home.

Finding the exact right angle is awkward, but that just makes it better. The way I have to tilt my hips to get friction for my clit, the way he doesn’t let me release his cock, the way he watches me the whole time. God. And then my clit does rub against the leather, with exactly the right amount of pleasure, and my eyes roll back.

“That’s right,” he says, grasping my hair tighter.

I thought he had taken control of this act before, but it’s nothing compared to now. Now he holds my head steady, fucking my face with long, hard strokes. It’s hard to breathe, because I can’t even focus on it. Breathing doesn’t feel important when my hips are rocking against his boot, when there’s pressure building in my sex. When I’m one second away from exploding.

“Yeah, that’s how you want it, isn’t it? That’s how you need it, little bird. Hard and fucking dirty. And I’m the only one who can give it to you.”

I moan my agreement, feeling the climax collect above me like a tidal wave. I’m in its shadow now, in that half-second space before it crashes down, knowing nothing can stop it.

He’s moving faster now too, almost jerking, his words choppy.

“The only one,” he says, but it sounds a little meaner. “The only one fucking dirty enough to count. The only one wrong enough to make you feel bad.”

Tears spring my eyes, because of his fists in my hair. The words in my ears. The climax doesn’t care about the warning in the air. It falls and falls.

“The only one fucked up enough,” he mutters, and I’m not even sure he knows he’s saying it. His expression is hard as granite. “So you can stop being the good little girl.”

The realization clicks with horrible certainty. He thinks he’s my rebellion. That I need a break from the prep school and the rich boys. That I only want him because he’s messed up.

Then the climax crashes down on me. It rushes along my skin, lighting up every nerve ending, taking over every thought until I’m a mindless being of pleasure. My whole body shakes, wringing out the last hint of orgasm from my clit against his boot.

Dimly I’m aware of his roar loud enough to shake the cabin windows. Of the thick, salty proof of his climax flooding my mouth.

My throat moves to swallow him, taking what he gives me. Only this.

Gently he pulls himself from my mouth. He groans. He’s putting his pants back together, snapping them up.

Large paws roam over my face, then up, up, up to grab hold of my hair. I’m panting. The room feels off-balance, or maybe it’s me.

He gets down on his knees to face me. To kiss me. He lets go of my hair, smoothing it down. He pulls away and wipes the tears from my cheeks with the heel of his hand, rough movements, clumsy from his orgasm, maybe.

I feel happy, with him taking care of me like this. I feel…loved.

“God, little bird, look at you, so fucking hot.” He kisses my cheek. “You are so fucking hot with my cock crammed in your face.”

He kisses the other cheekbone.

“I liked it,” I say. “I dreamed of it.”

He gives me a strange look. Like I shouldn’t have said that. But I have more to say than that—much more.

“Stone, I have something,” I breathe.

“What is that, little bird?” He wipes another tear.

“In my clutch. I brought a…you know…” It feels wrong to say the word. Like I’m propositioning him.

He stills. Studies my face. Tilts his head. “What did you bring to the dance tonight?”

My face flashes with heat. “You know.”

“Can’t even say it.” He slides a knuckle along my cheek. “But that’s okay, because your skin is the perfect shade of pink right now, just like your pretty little cunt.” He traces my swollen mouth. “And your tears are the sweetest, dirtiest things I ever tasted. I love that my cock put them there.” His rough, giant knuckle pauses at the edge of my mouth. “I love this little bit of my cum still here on your lips.”

My pulse races. His possessive words wash over me, heat my veins.

“So fucking hot when you’re slumming it.”

I frown. “I’m not slumming it.”

“Shhh.” He pins me with his wicked gaze. “No more talking. I’ll give you what you want.”

He’s touching me with his whole hand now, sliding his open palm along the side of my neck. He drags it, warm and heavy, down the front of me. Calluses scratch tender skin. Hot breath fans over my forehead. Whatever I’d been worrying about before, it turns to smoke. Any thought in my head, blown away by the soft gust of his breath.

“Stone,” I whisper, enjoying the sound of his name. Amazed we’re here together.

Fists close over the fragile black piping that lines the top of the bodice, over the fragile lace-covered fabric. He yanks, ripping it.

I gasp.

“Shhh,” he says. “I got you. You want your junkyard dog to fuck you with the condom, don’t you?”

I don’t understand why he’s calling himself that. My protest dies in a cry and a flurry of sensation as he pinches my nipple between rough knuckles.

“I should make you wear my cum on your face all the time,” he says, voice thick. “Show the world how much you like playing at the dirty little girl.”

“I’m not playing,” I protest. “This isn’t playing, and you’re not—”

He claps his big hand over my mouth, stopping me midsentence.

…you’re not a junkyard dog.

I mumble into his hand, but he just tightens it. He won’t hear it.

“So polite.” He kisses my forehead. He squeezes my nipple between his knuckles, rough and warm, squeezing, pinching, twisting lightning clear through my body, electrifying the place between my legs.

“No talking, I said. Got it?”

Again I shake my head, but he won’t let up. I can’t concentrate with his big fingers rolling my nipple, sending more zings of feeling through my body. He makes me want everything. The folds between my legs feel swollen. Achy. But tickly, too.

I mumble into his hand. I need to tell him that he’s not a junkyard dog. I need to tell him he’s the best man I know, loyal and good and brave.

But his fingers are between my legs now, making the feelings roll through my body. Everything he does feels like sparkles. I’m panting through my nose, mumbling frantically.

“You want me to fuck you with the condom? You want me to make you a bad girl with that condom you brought for that good boy? Because you know I can. He might have fancy shit and a fancy family for you, but he can’t get you dirty like I can, can he? And that’s what you want.”

My hips move with his strokes, like he’s fucking me already. I should be ashamed, but it feels so good.

He slides his finger harder, invading me. I cry out from behind his hand. He moves it back and forth. It reminds me of camp, rubbing sticks together to make a fire—harder and harder until the sparks come. “That what you want?”

I nod behind his hand. I’m whimpering, crying. I need him to do it.

He takes away his hand. “Yes!” I gust out. “Please!”

He watches me, and something hard comes over his face.

He stands, hoisting me up, the world a whirl. He holds me tight to his chest, breathing hard as he carries me to the bed and throws me down. “You better be out of that thing when I get back.”

He stalks out of the room.

I wriggle out of my dress, pulling off all my clothes. He comes to stand over me, watching me darkly.

I lie there, naked beneath him. I want him to touch my naked skin, but not because he’s dirty or he’ll ruin me. Because I love everything about him. I trust him. Of all the people I’ve ever known, only Stone has never lied to me.

He tosses down the clutch. “Get the condom out, then. I don’t have all night.”

I fumble with the clutch. Something’s wrong. Something’s different.

He pulls off his jacket, throws it aside, then pulls his T-shirt over his head. His chest is thick with muscle, and here and there are strange white lines, like scars. Some seem to be injuries, wounds. Others make designs. I’m riveted by him, by his beauty and his pain.

“Sorry, the tattoo store was all out of yin yangs and thorny roses or whatever the fuck high school boys get. Wanna fuck the bad boy, you gotta get used to a little ugly.”

“I think it’s be—”

“Shut it and let’s do this.” He holds out his hand. “Gimme.”

Beautiful, I was going to say, but he’s in such a strange mood, suddenly. There’s a tremor inside my chest. It’s not fear, exactly, but it’s uncertainty. It’s being out of my depth. I put the foil wrapper on his palm. The small contact sizzles over my skin.

“Move.” He pushes me back.

I curl my legs under me, waiting awkwardly on the bed below him. I feel like covering myself, but he’s not even looking at me. He opens the little packet with a crinkle. “Girl like you should learn not to slum it,” he grumbles, rolling it over his hardened penis with rough efficiency. Maybe he has to concentrate, maybe that’s why he doesn’t look me in the eyes or seem romantic anymore. “But if this is really what you want…”

“Stone,” I say. “It’s what I want. It always was.”

“What you think you want.”

“You don’t know,” I say.

He doesn’t seem to be listening. He crawls onto the bed and grabs my hair. The strange, hard look is back in his eyes. With a guttural sound, he bends me over, pushes my face into the rough wool blanket. It feels like a kitchen scrubby on my cheek.

“Ass up. Now.”

“Wait…” I’d imagined it different. Us face-to-face.

He slaps my butt. “Up. You want roses and candles? Don’t tell me you’re chickening out already.”

Slowly I raise my butt in the air, reminding myself I trust him. He’s had all the reasons in the world to hurt me, and he never has.

He positions himself behind me. His hands are on me, but his movements aren’t tender anymore. I don’t understand what’s happening. Why does he seem mad at me? His fingers are between my legs, sliding my juices around between my legs, but his touch isn’t tender.

“Stone?”

“Wider. Jesus!” He pulls my thighs apart without waiting, wide enough I feel the stretch on my secret muscles. Wide enough that a blush burns my cheeks, imagining how much he can see.

I try to swallow past the thickness in my throat. My cheek itches from the abrasive fabric. I’m always doing things wrong, never measuring up. Did I do something wrong? I crane my neck around to try to see his face. Try to figure out what happened.

He’s kneeling behind me, chest rippling with muscle, every inch of him hard. But the look in his eyes is…torn. Or maybe grief. Pain.

I feel the fatness of him between my legs. He feels like a doorknob. Like something that definitely shouldn’t fit into the soft private place.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, a tremor in my voice.

He frowns down at me, fixes me with a glare. “Did I say you could look at me? That’s not how we’re doing this. You’re gonna kiss that scratchy blanket and take what I give to you.” He smacks my butt again—hard.

“Ow!” I say.

“Kiss the blanket! Or are you changing your mind?”

My heart hammers in my chest. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. He was rough with me before, during the blowjob, but it felt different. A little bit more like a game. A secret we both knew.

“Why are you still looking at me?”

Then I get it. The look on his face isn’t grief or pain. But it’s close.

It’s loneliness.

What he’s doing, the way he’s acting—if loneliness was a sport like field hockey or badminton, he would be an Olympic gold medalist.

Looming there behind me, he’s transformed into the loneliest person I ever saw. It feels like a knife twisting in me to see him so alone. Why is he so determined to keep me out? To keep me facing away from him? It isn’t because he wants pleasure. There’s only pain now.

“No,” I say.

“Had enough?” he growls.

I turn to face him. Move nearer. I slide my palms over his chest.

“What are you doing?” he rasps out. He grabs my wrists.

“Let me go!” I hiss. I shake him off.

He lets me go—more out of surprise than anything, I think.

I run my hands over the scars and the crisscrosses that mottle his chest. Some of them old. I lean in to kiss the largest, most angry of the white lines. He called them ugly. They’re anything but.

He shudders. “…the fuck?”

“I love this one,” I say and kiss it again.

“Don’t.”

“I love this one, too.” I kiss another.

“What’re you…”

“I love this one very much.” I press a kiss to a scar over his heart, press my face to his heart. I feel him trembling, shaking.

“Stop it.” He grabs my shoulders, holds me off.

Maybe he can keep me from touching him, but he can’t stop what’s true. “I love you.”

He seems to freeze, right there before me. “What are you doing? No.”

“I love you,” I say before I’ve even thought through the words. I’ve only ever said I love you to my parents. And not very often. They don’t like to say it back. “And I want you to fuck me however you want. I’ll love whatever you do because I love you.”

“You can’t,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

I throw my arms around him and kiss him on the lips. Because love doesn’t have to be complicated and hard. It doesn’t have to hurt. This feeling inside me, something large and expanding, a lightness—it’s love. As ordinary as a speck of dirt. As magical as moondust.

And something strange happens.

It’s as if all the hardness melts out of him, and he pulls me to him. “Goddamn it,” he snarls. “Fuck.” He’s holding me to his ruined chest, clutching me hard enough I can’t breathe.

I make no move to stop him. I don’t want to stop him.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he demands, but it feels a little desperate. Like I’d maybe solve everything if I just cowered from him. Like he’s imagined ways he could scare me.

I let him crush me, the way I might be hugged by a wild animal. A tiger or a bear. With his claws resting against my fragile skin. He could hurt me, but when you love someone, you don’t let that stop you. What’s the point of fear if it keeps you from living?

He isn’t going to let me go, so I turn my face, only slightly. His chest looked terrible in the moonlight. A tapestry of scars. But it’s only skin pressed against my cheek. I can barely even register his scar tissue from feeling alone.

There’s a message there. Something I need to understand about the man who holds me. He has been tortured and used. He has been hurt, but it doesn’t change the fabric of him. He’s still a man.

Only a centimeter, that’s how far I can turn my face toward him.

I open my mouth and graze his skin with my teeth. He sucks in a breath. He doesn’t relax, not exactly. It isn’t that the pressure around me loosens, but it changes. It becomes heavy with expectation, with the knowledge of what will come next.

Not my face pressed into the blanket, with him saying crude words to distance himself. But it will be sex. And it will be rough. Maybe even rougher like this, without him holding back.

“I’m not going to use that condom,” he says, his voice thick with lust.

The declaration saturates the air around us, the knowledge that he’s serious, the awareness that I’m going to let him. That I like it. I want us to be skin to skin. “My mother gave it to me.”

A growling sound. “She saw that fucker and gave you a condom and let you leave with him?”

Jealousy. It’s weirdly mundane, even as I’m naked in a wild hideout with a criminal. Like we’re an ordinary couple instead of a hostage and her captor. “Liam’s nice.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Or maybe exactly the right thing to say. Because when Stone pulls away from me, there’s a dangerous light in his eyes. “Liam’s nice,” he repeats, his voice caustic. “He’s fucking nice.”

“He is,” I protest, not sure why I’m pushing Stone.

Probably because I want him to push back.

And then he does, in a literal way. His hands on my upper arms. That’s all he uses to lift me up and toss me back toward the middle of the bed, like I weigh nothing. The breath whooshes out of me as I land, and I scramble to get away from him, breathless, panting, because it’s almost like a game again.

Almost. Because there aren’t any rules.

Stone grabs my ankle and drags me back to the middle of the bed. Then he grabs my other ankle, spreading me wide. I have this mental picture of him having sex with me this way, my legs pressed so wide apart, him far away at the foot of the bed. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what happens when you’re a virgin. Even your fantasies are a little confused.

And then he lowers his head, right there. Between my legs.

My fantasies didn’t prepare me for this.

His mouth touches my stomach, and I jerk away with a high-pitched sound. “What…what are you doing? No. Wait. Not that.”

He gives a low laugh. “Not that, says the girl who can still taste my cum.”

And I realize that he’s right. There’s salt that lingers on my tongue. Oh God, that makes me think about what I must taste like.

He slips his tongue into my core, warm and thick. He’s fucking me with his tongue. Invading my most secret place.

He pushes it deeper, again and again. I shudder at the sensation. I writhe and moan.

Heavy hands push my legs wider apart. He changes his motion, licking now, licking me like an ice cream cone. Except not exactly, because an ice cream cone is cold, and the heat from his tongue sizzles up through my belly.

He licks again, making wet sounds that are somehow more obscene than what he’s doing to me. Then his licks get smaller, more pointed, his tongue feeling more like a finger, thick and warm.

I never felt anything like it. I grab onto his hair, stunned at the feeling. His tongue between my legs is the best thing I’ve ever felt. Embarrassment washes over me for a split second when I make myself think how he’s licking right where I pee, but then he moans, rumbly with pleasure and approval, like he thinks it’s the best thing, too, and I let go.

The rules don’t apply when Stone is around, and everything is possible. I shove my hands into his hair and grab and twist. I hope I’m not hurting him.

But from his moans, he seems to like it.

He’s licking faster. He’s swirling good feelings through me, swirling and swirling them. It’s too much, but I don’t want him to stop.

There’s a high noise in the room, and I realize it’s me, crying out. Stone’s answer is a rumble between my legs, low and dark. His tongue is a live thing, wiggling on that special spot. It’s as if he knows exactly where I ache for him—even better than I do. As if he knows secrets hidden inside my body.

That’s when everything explodes behind my eyes. Pulsing waves of magic flow inside my head and down to my toes. “Stone!” I cry.

His licking is different now—softer. Like he’s softening with my pleasure. As if he’s taking care of me, even in this.

He slows and rumbles again. I can barely think. Everything seems so wild. I tighten my grip on his hair.

He’s kissing up my belly. Rumbling into the soft flesh there. He kisses between my breasts, kisses my neck.

He looms over me, cages me with massive arms.

“More, Stone.”

He studies my face, muscles bulging on either side of me.

“I want all of it. All of you.”

He looks down at me with a kind of wonder. “There’s no going back.”

“Please.” I reach down to grab him like he showed me, but he’s too far away. He wraps his fingers around my wrist and kisses the flat of my palm, then places it above my head. Somehow I know to keep it there. He trails rough fingers down the sensitive underside of my forearm, then down to my armpit, to the side of my breast.

I let out a gust of air. Everything with him is new and sexy.

He lowers himself. Slowly, muscles bulging. And he kisses me. He’s right on top of me—not enough to crush me, but I feel him there, heavy and good.

“Please,” I say into the kiss.

“I’m gonna give it to you good and slow, little bird, but you’re going to feel it.” It’s going to hurt, he means.

“I want to feel it,” I say, even as his thick fingers move at my entrance.

I feel the knob of him pushing into me, filling me. My breath quickens. It’s bliss and pain, mingled together.

I cry out.

He stills.

“Keep going,” I say.

Gentle fingers stroke the side of my forehead. “Breathe, baby.” He nips my lips. “Breathe.”

I take a deep breath, and he’s rocking into me, rocking gently. Filling me, stretching me impossibly wide.

I feel panicky, like maybe it’s too much. He’s so huge inside me.

I breathe again, and something warm in me unwinds, loosens, and he’s sliding deep. It feels like he’s filling me down to my toes.

“Stone,” I whisper.