I’m numb, stone cold, but at the same time, my blood is lava steaming through my veins. My breath howls in my ears, and my head pulses like someone has shoved a giant splinter beneath my forehead.

All I want to do is fall to my knees in the middle of Fifth Avenue and scream until my throat is raw, but I keep my hand in Garrett’s and my feet moving one in front of the other, heading back to his penthouse where I can fall to pieces in private.

“We’re almost there,” he whispers, squeezing my hand. “I’ve got you.”

I press my lips together, nodding as tears leak from the corners of my eyes. Garrett always has me. He’s always there to catch me and talk me down when things get so intense I’m not sure where he ends and I begin, or whether I can bear the fact that we’re separate beings. That he isn’t a part of me, close as skin, dear as blood that will never leave me, no matter what.

Especially now…

Now that Bo is…

Oh God, Bo’s gone. My brother is really gone. This isn’t a dream. It’s real, and I’m never going to see him again. I’ll never talk to him or laugh with him or roll my eyes behind Mom’s back when she’s wasted and talking about all the great times we never had back in the old days.

He’s gone forever, lost to a war that’s gone on so long it doesn’t make sense to anyone anymore. Lost because the men of this world can’t stop fighting over oil long enough to realize that every soldier is someone’s baby. Someone’s father. Someone’s brother-best friend-lifeline-firewall when everything else has let you down.

I swallow hard, but the cry rising in my throat won’t go back where it came. It hums into the air, high and pitiful as Garrett puts his arm around me, pulling me against his strong, warm body.

“Two more blocks,” he says in a low voice, because he knows I hate to lose control in front of strangers.

He knows me so well, but he also knows nothing at all.

Garrett’s heard the stories, but the son of a millionaire can never truly understand what it’s like to grow up dirt poor and scared and so sad. There were times when I was so sad, and Bo was the only one who could make me see the light flickering in the darkness, even when the sun was down and the clouds filled the valley and hope seemed like a fairy tale from a kingdom far, far away.

“But if you need to cry, cry,” Garrett adds. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

My lips part in a silent sob as I sag against him. God, this man—he’s going to break me with his kindness again, the way he always does. He makes me feel so cherished. Loved in a way I never dreamed could be real.

“He’ll never know,” I choke out as Garrett half-carries me that last block to his building. “He’ll never know you. He’ll never know I met the best man in the world.”

“He knows,” Garrett says. “Or, at least, he knew I was crazy about you. I wrote him a letter about a month ago, asking permission to ask you to marry me.”

I suck in a breath, eyes going wide as I look up at his face. “You didn’t.”

“I did,” he says, whisking me past the doorman and on toward the elevator. “I know it’s old-fashioned, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I knew you two were close, and I wanted him to feel a part of this, even though we hadn’t had the chance to meet in person yet.”

“What did he say?” I ask, my throat tight.

“He gave his blessing.” Garrett hugs me closer as we step into the elevator, and he pushes the button for the top floor. “He said he was so happy for you and that I was a lucky bastard for landing the funniest, strongest woman he knows.”

“Oh God.” I tuck my head to his chest, tears flowing. “I miss him so much, Garrett. I miss him so much already.”

“I know, baby,” Garrett whispers, the pain in his voice mirroring mine. “I know…”

---

I wake with a sharp intake of breath to find my head on Garrett’s chest and his hand smoothing over my hair. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m here.”

I sit up, clutching the sheet to my chest as I realize I’m naked. I don’t remember falling asleep. I’m not even exactly sure how I got into this bed. The last thing I remember is an embarrassing amount of orgasms.

An embarrassment of orgasms…

Probably worse than an embarrassment of riches, and absolutely too much of a good thing if I’m experiencing a blackout without having taken a single drink of alcohol. Not to mention the memory dreams. I only have dreams like that—so real and so fucking painful—when I’m utterly exhausted.

“Sorry,” I mutter, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“It’s okay.” Garrett scoots back, propping up against the headboard. The glow from the nightlight across the room is too dim to make out all the details, but it looks like there are people carved into the wood. People and animals and a few in-between things that are strange but lovely all the same.

Kind of like ending up in bed with a man I assumed hated my guts.

“Do you dream about him a lot?” Garrett asks, the compassion in his voice making the memories hurt a little more. It’s something he taught me—that empathy often makes things worse before it makes them better.

I shake my head slightly. “Not so much anymore. I think it’s just being here. In Harry. The ghosts are everywhere.”

“I can imagine.” He exhales long and slow. “I guess this is the wrong time to say that I find the town charming.”

“Yeah. Probably not the time.” I swipe my cheeks again, a grim smile curving my lips as I look up at the silk canopy overhead. It’s a grand, heavy thing, fixed to the ceiling above the bed by a chiseled stone medallion straight out of the Greek exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “This place is pretty fucking fancy, huh?”

He shrugs almost imperceptibly. “I try. Especially with the penthouse. But this one only has four rooms. We kept it more restrained than usual.”

“People from town would still shit themselves if they saw this place.” I glance around the bedroom. It’s bigger than my entire studio apartment in D.C., and it’s only one room in the suite. “The furniture in here probably costs more than most of them will earn in a lifetime.”

“Maybe. But I think we both know money can’t buy the things that matter.” He brushes a hand across the top of the dark gray duvet, getting closer to where my bent leg forms a mountain range under the covers. “I’ve missed you, Dakota.”

I stiffen, hugging the sheet tighter to my chest as the ache there grows even more intense. “It’s been four years Garrett.”

“I’m a slow learner, I guess.”

“Bullshit,” I whisper, meeting his gaze, grateful for the shadows keeping his soulful, resolve-melting brown eyes from cutting straight through to my heart. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. You run a Fortune 500 company, for God’s sake.”

“Intelligence in business doesn’t necessarily translate to other areas, I’m afraid.” His hand completes its journey, coming to rest on my knee, the touch making me burn, even with the covers between us and no erogenous zones involved.

But then, with Garrett, just about every zone is erogenous.

“It took time for me to learn from my mistake,” he adds. “I’m sorry.”

My throat locks up, the way it did the first time he insinuated that he wants me back. But this time I’m able to get over the shock quickly enough to ask, “So what spurred this change, Mr. Lawler?”

He hums softly, his brow furrowing. “Mr. Lawler? All those orgasms aren’t enough to get us back on a first name basis?”

My lips pucker, not liking the reminder of how easily I tumbled back into his bed.

“There’s no reason to feel embarrassed,” he says in a softer voice. “I’m every bit as helpless to resist you.”

I roll my eyes with a huff. “Right.”

He wasn’t the least bit helpless the night I left New York for good, after standing outside his apartment for hours, crying in the rain, calling his cell every few minutes to beg for a chance to explain. But he didn’t give me a chance, and I spent the train ride to D.C. shivering in my drenched clothes, feeling like one of those stupid people who wake up in a warehouse in Queens with a kidney missing after signing up for a bargain basement facelift.

A vital organ had been ripped out of my core, and I hadn’t been sure if I could survive without it.

I close my eyes, taking a deep breath.

No, I’m not going to talk about that. I’m not going to think about it, not while I’m trapped here with Garrett, with no way out until the blizzard blows through and the plows make it up the mountain.

“I asked you a question. Are you going to answer it or not?” I slip out of bed, picking up the first article of clothing I step on. It turns out to be Garrett’s undershirt, and as I pull it over my head, tugging it down to cover my bare ass, it smells deliciously, heart-breakingly of him.

I turn back to the bed, arms crossed and jaw tight, refusing to dwell on his perfect smell or how stunning he looks with his chest bare and the soft sheets draped around his waist. “So?” I arch a brow.

He holds my gaze for a long moment before nodding. “All right. But I think it’s better if I show you.”

He tosses off the covers and crosses to the bedroom door, as shameless in his nakedness as ever. And, as ever, the sight of his broad shoulders, powerful legs, and thickly muscled ass does things to me that are beyond my control. Simply watching him walk across a room without clothes on is enough to make my blood rush and my breath come faster. To make my breasts ache and my pussy so slick I could take him again right now—fall to my knees and present myself for something hot and dirty without a single second of foreplay.

He pauses in the doorway, turning back to me with a little smile that leaves no doubt he knows exactly how he affects me. “Coming?”

No, I’m not coming, but I could be. The implication is clear in his voice. We could leave the questions and answers for another day and get back to what we do best—pleasure and pain and the magical things that happen when we mix the two together.

But I’ve already had enough magic tonight. If I let myself have any more, I’m going to end up like Sleeping Beauty, spelled into a sleep so deep I won’t wake up until it’s too late to defend myself from the prince circling my bed, deciding what he’s going to do with my helpless body.

The first time I jumped head first into love (and everything else) with Garrett, I was young and vulnerable, ignorant of the risk I was taking. But this time I know better. This time, if I dive in and cut myself on the rocks hidden beneath the waves, I’ll have no one to blame but myself.

And so, even though I hunger for him with an intensity no number of orgasms can begin to slake, I force myself to nod and move across the carpet. “But put some clothes on for God’s sake,” I mutter as I pass, ignoring his soft laugh in response.

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs. “Be right with you.”

And I’ll be with him. For now.

But how far we travel together depends entirely on him.