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I teased her clit faster as a familiar heat fucked with my senses. She was close too, her body already trembling in anticipation. The friction was maddening—heat, sweat, the intoxicating slap of skin against skin—each thrust knocking the breath from her lips.

When her orgasm came, I stole it from her, fucking her through it, and soon after, I was jerking hard against her as mine slammed into me like a freight train, my muscles locking up as a white-hot, mind-consuming pleasure ripped me apart, placing me back together only to tear me apart again.

We panted against each other as I slid my hand away from her mouth, the sounds of our harsh breathing echoing in the space around us. Even the cold air wasn’t enough to rival the heat between our bodies. When I pulled out of her, I was more than satisfied to see my cum trailing down her inner thighs. Gently, I kissed the teeth marks I’d left on her shoulder as I fingered my cum back inside her sensitive sex.

She shivered like electric sparks ran through her veins as her body slackened against mine.

“That was…” she said, trailing off as she ran out of breath. She turned to look at me as she pulled her dress down her hips, her pupils wide and round. She’d never looked more fucking beautiful.

“I think I may have hurt you,” I murmured as I caressed her hips.

“No.” She swallowed, shaking her head. She looked dazed, like she was in a trance almost. Like she hadn’t thought she would like something rough and impulsive this much. “You didn’t do anything I didn’t like.”

I curled my hand around her neck, looking at her for a while, realizing there and then that I truly had been utterly fucked by this woman. And not in a good way. It wasn’t normal how badly I wanted her.

“Come here.”

She leaned in closer and kissed me softly. We remained together in the quiet, catching our breath while the lights of Boston shimmered across the dark water. Sofia rested against me, and I wrapped an arm around her without thinking.

For several minutes, neither of us said anything. Then she laughed softly.

“This is getting complicated very quickly.”

She didn’t need to tell me. It was clear as day. Still, I looked down at her. “You think?”

She tilted her head and smiled. “I mean, we’ve known each other for barely any time, but somehow we’re already in a relationship.”

A relationship? I should have corrected her. I should have told her that it was too soon to call it that. Instead, I remained silent. The word stayed between us.

Relationship.

I’d allowed it to enter the conversation without protest, and that realization unsettled me more than anything that had happened that night. Because Sofia was right. I’d started this thinking I could keep her separate from the rest of my life. I’d told myself she was temporary, that whatever existed between us could remain uncomplicated as long as I maintained control.

Now I was standing beside her in the darkness, holding her against me and realizing that I no longer wanted her to be temporary. That was the part I couldn’t forgive myself for: Sofia had become important to me.

***

The drive to Sofia’s apartment was much quieter than the ride to the docks. She sat beside me, her hand resting near the window, occasionally turning her head outtoward the city.

More often than I should have, I looked at the curve of her shoulders, then the faint line of her smile. As we stopped outside her apartment building, neither of us reached for the door.

She turned to face me. “Thank you for tonight.”

“You’re welcome.”

She smiled, then gave me a quick kiss—gentle, unhurried, nothing like the earlier intensity. And for a moment, as she pulled away, her fingertip trailed lightly across my cheek.

That tiny touch stayed with me all the way to the end of the block. I kept driving long after the city lights faded, but I never stopped seeing Sofia Hayes’s face.

I’d barely gotten two blocks away from her apartment when the memory came back. It started with the smell first, smoke. My knuckles tightened on the steering wheel, and the present flashed away in an instant.

Suddenly I was…elsewhere. Fifteen years ago, a realm of darkness, filled with the acrid smell of smoke and heat. I could almost feel the heat on my skin. I remembered the way the smoke had rolled, the shouts echoing behind me, the unmistakable scent of…blood.

I remembered the haze through which I’d moved while men ran around me, smashing doors, searching rooms, extracting people they’d been given orders to kill.

Then I remembered…the closet door. I wasn’t going to open it. Almost tripped over my own feet turning toward the closed door. When I opened it, there’d been something small cowering against the far wall in the dark—a child no more than eight.

Wide, dark eyes blinked back at me through the swirling smoke. And she hadn’t cried.