Her hand traces my spine, kneading lightly. I grip the wooden handrail that circles the deck and spread my legs at her urging.

Now, both of her hands are between my thighs, her breath hot and panting against my back. She’s pumping my c**k with a firm, practiced grip. Harder than I’m used to from her. Demanding. Her other hand is massaging my sac, driving the urgency into me.

Her grip slickens as the pr**cum streams steadily from the slit at the tip of my dick. The salty air washes over me, cooling the sweat misting my skin.

“Eva . . .” I gasp her name, so hard for her, so desperately in love.

Her fingers, now creamy and always cleverly agile, slide back and tease the dark rosette of my anus. It feels good, even though I don’t want it to. The stroking of my penis is making it hard to breathe, to think, to fight . . .

“That’s it,” she coaxes.

I try to arch away, but she’s got me trapped with my dick in her hand.

“Don’t,” I tell her, squirming.

“You like it,” she purrs, working my cock, her touch something I crave and can’t resist. “Show me how much you want me.”

She pushes two slick fingers inside my ass. I cry out, writhing away, but she’s rubbing and thrusting into me, hitting the spot that makes me want to come more than anything. The pleasure grows despite the tears burning my eyes.

My head falls forward. My chin touches my heaving chest. It’s coming. I’m coming. I can’t stop it. Not with her . . .

The fingers inside me thicken, lengthen. The thrusting becomes frenzied, the slap of flesh against flesh drowning out the sounds of the ocean. I hear a rough, lusty growl but it’s not mine. A c**k is in me, f**king me. It hurts and yet the pain is tinged with a sick, unwanted pleasure.

“Keep stroking it,” he pants. “You’re almost there.”

Agony explodes in my chest. Eva isn’t here. She’s gone. She’s left me.

Vomit rises into my throat. I throw him off violently, hearing him crash through the sliding door behind us, the glass shattering. Hugh laughs hysterically and I round on him, finding him sprawled amid the glistening slivers, his hair as red as his blood, his eyes lit with that vile lustful avarice.

“You think she’d want you?” he taunts, clambering to his feet. “You told her everything. Who’d want you after that?”

“Fuck you!” I lunge and tackle him back down. My fist pounds into his face again and again.

The shards of glass pierce me, cut into me, but the pain is nothing next to what I feel inside.

Eva is gone. I’d known she would leave, that I couldn’t keep her. I’d known it, but I had hoped. I couldn’t fight the hope.

Hugh won’t stop laughing. I feel his nose shatter. His cheekbone, his jaw. His laughter turns to gurgles, but it’s still laughter.

My arm pulls back to hit him again—

Anne is lying beneath me, her face battered nearly beyond recognition. Horrified at what I’ve done, I jerk away, scrambling to my feet. The glass digs deep into the soles of my feet.

Anne laughs as bubbling blood pours from her nose and mouth, spreading through the home that was once a sanctuary. Staining everything, the taint washing away the sun until only a blood moon remains . . .

I woke up with a scream in my throat. Sweat drenched my hair and skin. Darkness suffocated me.

Scrubbing at my eyes, I rolled onto my hands and knees, sobbing. I crawled toward the only light I could see, the weak silver glow that was my only guide.

The bedroom. God. I collapsed on the floor, racked by tears. I’d fallen asleep in the closet, unable to move after Eva left me, afraid to take one literal step in any direction toward a life without her in it.

The face of the clock glowed brightly in the darkened room.

It was one A.M.

A new day. And Eva was still gone.

—

“YOU’RE here early.”

Scott’s cheery voice lured my gaze from the photo of Eva on my desk.

“Good morning,” I greeted him, feeling as if I were still in a nightmare.

I’d come to work shortly after three A.M., unable to sleep anymore and unable to go to Eva. I wanted to, would have—nothing could keep me away from her—but when I tracked her phone I found her at Stanton’s penthouse, a place I couldn’t reach. The anguish of that, knowing she was deliberately keeping herself from me, ate at me from the inside out like acid.

I couldn’t stay home and go through the morning routine of preparing for work without Eva. It had been easier to revert to the schedule I’d often kept before her, coming into work while the moon was high, finding peace in the place where I exercised complete control.

But today there was no peace. Only the torment of knowing that she was in the same building I was by now, so damn close and yet farther away than she’d ever been.

“Mark Garrity was waiting by reception when I came in,” Scott continued. “He said you’d discussed having him come in today . . . ?”

My gut knotted. “I’ll see him.”

I pushed back from my desk and stood. I’d thought of nothing but Eva and the offer I had made to Mark, trying to reason out how I could have done anything differently. I knew Eva too well. Telling her about Ryan Landon wouldn’t have made her leave Waters Field & Leaman any more than telling her about Anne would cause her to be more cautious.

Eva would face them head-on instead, growling like a lioness to defend me and failing to see the danger to herself. It was her way and I loved her for it, but I would also protect her when the situation called for it.