“WHY’D YOU GET UP?” Robby asked quietly as we slipped under the covers.

I sighed. “I was going to chill with a sitcom.” I glanced at him in the dark, and his concern lines were deeper than normal.

“Are you okay?” He studied me as if he hadn’t seen the haunted quality of my eyes every day since we escaped.

I hesitated, choking on my standard response. Was I okay? The impact hit like a force of a wrecking ball, and I shook my head. That knife could have killed him, and it was only now sinking in. Although I could bring him back with my tears, the pain of losing him once was enough. I never wanted to feel that agony again.

It seemed like days ago that I promised to be patient with him. But it hadn’t even been a full twelve hours. Right now, all I wanted was him to hold me and make love to me. I needed him to show me he still loved me after all that had happened with Cassius. I didn’t want to lose any more time to this gaping chasm that seemed to have been built overnight.

Sure, he clung to me in his sleep when his fear of losing me manifested the greatest. But the closest he came to anything sexual had been in the shower this morning, but that was more out of self-loathing than any display of tenderness.

A glimpse of the Robby I knew at the academy surfaced in his eyes, and warmth filled me as he pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead.

“You’re shaking,” he said softly.

I had no idea I was trembling, but the aftereffects of turning on the autopilot to stop his bleeding in the kitchen never let any other thoughts enter my mind. But now, in the confines of his bedroom, all the awful what-if scenarios looped through my head like a horror flick.

“You could have died,” I whispered against him.

He ran his hands through my hair with a gentleness that he hadn’t shown since we returned, and when he tilted my chin up to stare into my eyes, heat filled my belly. His gaze dropped to my lips and then slowly raised back with both heat and a flutter of fear.

I didn’t give Robby a chance to let that fear make him pull away. I planted a soft but insistent kiss on his lips. His arms tightened around me and just when I didn’t think he’d allow me to explore his mouth, his lips opened, and the kiss transitioned from a sweet peck into an exotic tongue dance.

He buried his hands in my hair and deepened the kiss, making a sweet noise at the back of his throat, like something between a whine and a growl. He pushed me down onto the bed, stretching out over me as the kiss continued. I ground my hips into him and every muscle in his body stiffened.

He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against mine before rolling onto his back next to me, nearly panting as he stared at the ceiling.

Instead of getting angry and allowing him to disengage, I rolled on top of him, straddling him. I needed him, and tonight I wasn’t going to let him deny me.

“Sarah,” he whispered and reached for me. “You promised.”

I could see his intent reflected in his eyes, and I captured his wrists and pressed them into the pillow on either side of his head. “No. You could have died tonight. I am not wasting another moment together because of the ghost of Cassius Chase.” I took a deep breath at his wide eyes and pale cheeks but forged ahead, kissing him again. I held his wrists in place, feeling his pounding pulse in my palms and the erratic rise and fall of his chest under me.

“Sarah,” he whispered, this time his voice threaded with need.

I moved my kiss from his lips to his jaw and down the line of his throat. His breath hitched in and didn’t release until my mouth had moved beyond his pulse point. I kissed his chest, running my tongue from nipple to nipple—tasting his skin, his essence. Goose flesh appeared in the path my tongue left.

He shivered, but it wasn’t the teeth-chattering kind of shiver. It was a shiver of sexual anticipation. I released his wrists, running my hands down his arms, praying he wouldn’t stop my oral exploration of him.

His gaze locked on me as I moved lower, taking liberties with him that I hadn’t since we arrived here. By the time I got to his boxers, they were tented with his desire. And instead of being cordial about it and trying to slip them off nicely, I shredded the fabric in one quick tear.

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

“There are times when taking clothes off properly just isn’t fast enough.” I repeated the words he had said to me back in the hotel after he had ravaged me. That was before all hell broke loose.

A ghost of a smile appeared, as if my words triggered the same memory.

When I took him in my mouth, slowly licking him like a sweet Popsicle, his eyes rolled back in his head and a whisper of a groan escaped. He hiked up on one elbow so he could watch me play with him. I sucked and rolled my tongue around his slit, tasting his salty precum.

Robby threaded his hand in my hair and guided me to take in more of him with each stroke of my lips. The rumbling in his throat thrilled me, and I obliged, taking nearly all of him in my mouth, humming in response to my gag reflex. I had learned that trick a long time ago.

He held me in place, using his hips to pulse farther down my throat. His eyes hooded with pleasure as I choked on the length of him. I started to pull away, but his hand tightened in my hair, forcing me to wince at the pull against my scalp.

“You started this,” he said with a crooked smile. But there was no warmth in his eyes, just a frantic need for release. “So just keep sucking,” he growled out between his canines with his alpha force behind his words.

Irritation bloomed, and I glared up at him as his unwanted command weaseled its way into my muscles. My lips pressed against his throbbing cock, and I drew him in even deeper in my throat, humming because he wasn’t going to let go of me until I complied with his alpha authority. I could see it in his eyes and feel it in the painful grip he had on my hair.

He rose to his knees and held my head with both hands as he moved himself between my lips. “Suck harder,” he demanded. “And faster.”

This wasn’t the Robby who had ravaged me back in my home. This wasn’t the man who made love to me under the moonlight. This was a demanding, punishing partner I was not used to. Although his attempt at using his alpha power irritated me, the way he was taking control heated me from the inside, turning my nipples as hard as his.

I resisted his demand for me to stroke him faster, slowing my motion down, but I did suck harder at his request. His reaction was a low groan and more pressure on my head, trying to push me all the way down his hard shaft. I pulled back until only the tip of his cock was in my mouth.

His eyes sparkled at the slow roll of my tongue. I forced my head against the grip of his hands, letting his cock slip from my mouth.

He stared down at me in pained disbelief that I stopped.

I blew lightly on his slick shaft, triggering him to shiver before I took him between my lips again. I claimed control as I moved my mouth in a painful crawl. He dropped so his ass sat on his heels as I continued to tease him in slow motion, caressing his balls and his thighs with my hands and his hard member with my mouth.

“God, Sarah,” he whispered with his hands still tangled in my hair.

This time, I set the pace and the depth of each stroke. When I sped up, it wasn’t at his insistence, although his hips matched my movement and his breathing got heavier with each stroke of mine.

The mark on my shoulder flared with the intensity of his emotions as I kept up my gentle ministrations. His groans became less reserved as I sped up, sucking, flicking, taking him in deeper against my cheeks and into my throat.

At the height of my control and his exalted whispers of my name, I relinquished it, by tying my hair into a messy bun and then clasping my hands behind my back. I smiled up at him, gently stroking with my lips, sucking him like a sweet lollipop.

A crease appeared between his eyes and then it smoothed as he grasped the fact that the pace, whether gentle or punishing, as well as the depth of his thrusts, was all his prerogative. A wicked smile formed, and he moved just as slowly as I had been, but with each roll of his hips, his cock went farther down my throat.

“Swallow all of me,” he whispered with a rasping voice shaking with need. Then he forced his thumbs in the space between my back teeth, widening my jaws. The next plunge left my nose buried against his flesh and tickled by his pubic hair.

I resisted pushing away, humming as he pulsed in my mouth. Breathing wasn’t an option with his entire length between my lips, even through my nose. He stared down at me, pushing the last few centimeters into my throat. And then he eased up enough for me to take a deep breath of air through my nose before he went deep again.

“Please suck me.”

He continued to roll his hips in a punishingly slow manner. Stealing my breath for longer periods until I became lightheaded from the lack of oxygen and the strength of my sucking. Just when I thought I’d pass out, his pace quickened.

“Fuck,” he growled. His cock thickened in my mouth, and he plunged deep, groaning as his hot release filled my mouth and throat in a flood. He pulled back, still spurting hot cum over my tongue as I swallowed. He plunged again with another blast. I couldn’t keep up with the torrent, and his seed dribbled from the corners of my mouth as I gulped and fought for air.

He pulled out and dropped onto his back with his breath laboring in shaky pulls. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, trying to catch my breath as every nerve of my body craved the same type of release he just experienced. But I knew better. This was a step, and if I pushed it further than I already had, it might backfire.

I stretched out next to him, and he kept his gaze on the ceiling, as if trying to decide what had just happened.

“You promised,” he said.

“Yeah, well, when you became my partner, I promised never to cross the line with you either,” I said.

He rolled his head toward me. “And look how that turned out.”

With his essence still coating my tongue, I sat up and stared down at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He stared at me for a moment too long.

My irritation ratcheted up as flames broke out on my fingertips. I quickly clenched my hands. It wouldn’t be good form to burn down the only place we had to hide right now.

He ran his hand over his face and shook his head. “It just means I wasn’t ready for that kind of intensity.”

He sounded so defeated that my heart actually squeezed in my chest, sending tendrils of pain through my entire form. My shoulder ached with a deep sorrow that I couldn’t name.

What if we couldn’t find our way back to what we had for those brief few days between me being turned and Cassius getting his grubby paws on us?