Strike surprised her by closing Opal and putting the laptop on the table. “What are you doing?” Rora asked. “You just got her back.”

“I just got you back.” Scooping her into his arms, he stood up and carried her through to the bedroom. “It feels like years since we’ve been alone.”

“Since we’ve been bad together,” she said, tightening her hold on his neck when he laid her on the bed to pull him down with her. Maybe she had gone over the edge, but if she had then oblivion felt good. “I want you to corrupt me, Strike. I want to be bad with you. I thought I was lost, that I didn’t know what I wanted, but I did. All along I knew what I wanted… you. You’re the only thing I want.” Invigorated, she pushed him onto his back and climbed up into his lap to rock her hips on his. “I’m so happy we’re alone right now.”

Sitting up, he touched his lips to hers. But rather than the deep, passionate kiss she was expecting, this kiss was short. “Wouldn’t matter if we weren’t,” he said, stroking her breasts. “I’d have given Torres a shot of morphine before I gave up the chance to be inside you again.”

She laughed, working her pelvis faster, whimpering at the feel of his erection fighting to get out of his jeans.

Their gazes locked.

Dragging her lip in her teeth, she chewed hard, not because she was anxious but because as she stared into him, she saw it. She saw what she’d spent her life looking for: her rock. 

“We need to be naked,” she said and leaped off the bed to begin stripping.

He didn’t stand up, but pulled off his tee-shirt and kicked off his boots. She laughed at their haste and turned to toss her clothes away as he pulled off his socks and started on his jeans.

“What the fuck is that?”

She didn’t expect him to be off the bed and so close to her when she twisted toward him. But he grabbed her arm and turned her away from him again. She saw in the mirrored closet door that he was examining her back, his face tensed in a scowl.

When his fingertips traced downward on her back, she figured out what he’d found. “Junker said most of them won’t scar, but that one was the worst. It’s taking the longest to heal, most of the time I forget it’s there, but sometimes if the water in the tub is too hot, it stings.”

The mark started beneath her shoulder blade and ran down about six or eight inches. She wasn’t sure, she’d never seen it properly, only felt it. 

Grabbing her arm tight, he flipped her to face him. Nothing but fury exuded from him. “Bella,” he growled, his jaw clenched. 

She nodded and tried to reach for his face, but he backed off. “Baby, it’s fine,” she said. “I don’t care. I love you. As long as I have you, every second of pain was worth it.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, turning his back on her. Rora had never seen him so tight with anger. “I will make her feel every second of agony she put you through. I’ll make her pay for every moment she even thought about hurting you.”

“Word is that’s what you were doing when she ran off,” she said, going to him to slide her hands up to his shoulders. “Don’t be blinded by your hate, my love. That’s living in the past, you never do that. Celebrate that we have each other. Celebrate the future we can have.” Rising on her tiptoes, she moved around him to brush her mouth over his. “Celebrate with me, Flame.”

Curling her fingers around his solid arms, she guided him to the bed, and held his hands on her waist, bringing him down onto the mattress with her. He scooped a hand under her jaw and tried to guide her mouth to his, but she pulled back.

“Did we lock the door?” she whispered, breaking eye contact for the first time.

But he grabbed her chin to pull her focus back to him. “I cuffed Torres. Doesn’t matter anyway, in a minute your screams will keep everyone out of here.”

Her smile grew but worry made her catch her lip in her teeth. “I don’t trust myself not to scream your name too loud.”

He kissed her, a slow but hard press of his mouth onto hers. “I trust you, Ro,” he said and parted his lips to plunder her mouth deeper.

Kissing him really did have the power to set her alight, just like Bella had once said, except now this mouth, this man was hers. He belonged to her and had proved that her happiness was more important to him than even his own.

“I need you,” she said, her fingers not working fast enough to free him from his jeans.

The moment he slid into her was the most freeing of her life. This joining was more significant than any they’d ever had before because as her body locked around his, Rora knew, no other man would ever occupy her like this again.

With his fingers digging into her ass, he pulled her up to meet every one of his thrusts. Rora let him take control of her body and instead focused on stroking him, kissing him, feeling him, enjoying every second with this man she’d missed so much.

“Fuck, baby, you feel good,” he said and pulled her pelvis to his, clamping them together.

She was still writhing beneath him when he coiled his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back to open his mouth on her throat, dragging his teeth against her skin. The sensation of his wet mouth and the scrape of his teeth made her shudder.

“Strike,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

His teeth went deeper, and she grabbed for his waist, digging her teeth into his arm when orgasm clenched her whole body. He groaned and pulled out to drive himself back into her again.

Air was pushed from her throat as their bodies clashed together. Her whimpers became moans until the overwhelming pleasure was making her scream out.

“Fuck, yes, I need it. I need you!”

“You’ve got me, baby. You’ve got me,” he groaned, shoving his dick into her and meeting her climax with his own when she called out until her throat grew hoarse.

He began to withdraw, but she grabbed for his shoulders and pulled him back to her. “No, no,” she whimpered. “I’m not ready for you to go yet. Don’t leave me, Strike.”

Stroking his face, she tempted his mouth back to hers, but he leaned back when she tried to slip her tongue into his mouth.

“I’m not going anywhere, baby,” he said, moving his lips back and forth over hers. “I’m yours, and any time you want me, you can have me.”

“Any time?” she asked, running her hands down his arms. “And what if I want to touch you or flirt with you?”

Pushing her chin up with a fingertip, he kissed her lower lip. “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven.”

Laughing at his use of such a cheesy line, she patted his chest. “We’ll work on that, baby.”

Lying in his arms, she began to relax. They’d never really done this, never just held each other. But then they’d probably never appreciated the importance of their connection, not until they almost lost it.

“What changed your mind, Ro?”

That was a loaded question and wasn’t an easy one to answer. “You weren’t wrong, I was. I mean, you were in your methods, but I was wrong too,” she said. “I thought I wanted to do the right thing because this is dangerous and that’s what people do. But people are selfish. They go after what they want and say fuck the world. That’s what I want to do, Strike. I want to say fuck the world.”

He kissed her head. “Then you’ve definitely picked the right guy.”

Burying her face in his chest, she breathed him in. “I don’t doubt that.”

His fingers coiled in her hair. “I can’t believe you did it… you put the fucking Point on Opal… I’m still in shock.”

She laughed and kissed his ribs. “Good. It’s nice to know I can surprise you… in a good way.”

“The way I did it wasn’t good?”

Leaving her tied to a bed and running off? She bit him. “No, that wasn’t a good surprise. Cupcakes and coffee are good surprises. Abandonment and betrayal, not good surprises.”

“So, your plan… does it extend to what we do next?”

Rising to prop herself on an elbow, she looked at him. “You don’t have a plan?”

“I have plenty,” he said. “But I want to hear what you’ve come up with.”

“Well,” she said, trailing a finger across his chest. “One thing I wondered about was letting them destroy each other… What if we led Burke to the Black Jewel, let him destroy her, then we hand over Torres or threaten to blow the whistle. We’ll have the processor and the Point, and the world will be at peace again.”

“And we’ll be together.”

It felt so freeing to give in to her need for him. If playing with the Point was what her man needed to be happy, then it was her job to support him in the pursuit of his dream… and she had to have faith that he’d respect her reservations about using or bartering it.

“We will be together, my flame. I love you.”

Both corners of his mouth rose, but even his smile was sinister. “You’re something else, Miss. Maguire.”

“I want you to be happy,” she said, trying to kiss him again. “I need a rock, I need someone I can rely on no matter what. I thought that man was you before the Point came between us. Without that, I have no reason not to trust you. And if I’m wrong, I’ll put a bullet in my head and be done with it.”

“I told you that you had your one.”

He seemed so inspired by her act that he was almost in awe of her and that was what she wanted. Rora wanted him to be proud of her. She’d told him that she would never judge him and that was why she needed him so badly because he would never judge her either, even when she wasn’t following the rules. 

“You told me there was still a place at your side,” she said, taking that risk Junker had told her about. “Now you have the tech, you don’t need me, but I’m asking you… can I be your one and only Queen?”

“There’s nothing else you were destined to be.”

She kissed his chest again. “Promise me you’ll remember that while you’re with her.”

“Her,” he said, tugging the strand of her hair he had coiled around his finger. “I’m not going back to the Jewel, Ro. No fucking way.”

She didn’t like to see him annoyed with her, and she couldn’t think of anything she’d hate more, but their options were limited. “Junker has screwed everything up,” she said. “Setting Burke after the Jewel could work, but what if it doesn’t? What if Bella wins? And now we have Junker out there making alliances with God knows who, he knows Torres is here, and what he’s told us. We need an inside man.”

Rora was forced to move when Strike pulled his arm from around her, she lay down while he sat up. “You want to send me back to her?”

“Want to? No,” she said and tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away. “But you’re the only one I trust to make sure she doesn’t get near Leandra.”

Letting him think about it, she hoped he could come up with a better suggestion. They’d just found each other again and she’d handed him some pretty enticing temptation. Sending him off to Bella with Opal and the Point, he’d have the chance to retrieve the processor and then he’d have no reason to come back to her.

Funny, Rora had gone from one extreme to the other. This was another test, but it was real, and if he failed it, she wouldn’t only have her heart broken, but the people of the world could be at Exile’s mercy and it would be all her fault.