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Invisible darkness rushes over him and curls around me, leaving me shivering and forced to take in his musky scent. He loses his smirk. “Because I make you want things you wish you didn’t?”

You, in particular.

“And lock you up so I can keep you for myself?”

The knife slips in my wet grasp.

“And hold you so fucking tight?”

Oh so tight.I close my eyes and savor the taste of blood behind my lips, shuddering at the fingers whispering down my spine.

“And you don’t like that?” He slides a hand down my arm and over my wrist, my eyes opening as he gently twists the knife and points it to the side. Then he presses my hand to his chest, running it up and up until the blade meets his neck. His blood pumps beneath my trembling fingers.

“I don’t,” I lie. To him, to myself.

He swallows against the blade. “Then do it. Kill me.”

“Umm—” Milo starts.

“I swear to the fucking gods, Milo, join us or get out,” Eli says.

I can’t look away from those eyes of his, alight with darkness. He’s teeming with lust, but it’s the trace of panic, the indecision on his face that bottoms out my soul, and it has nothing to do with the metal pressing into his throat—he’s going to push me away again.

Tears threaten to spill out…for the beautiful knife at his neck, for letting him live and for wanting to escape so badly that I triedto kiss him. Each breath is a damn chore. He lowers his head, his soulful eyes questioning. So I answer.

“I can’t fucking kill you.”

He pries the knife from my fingers and charges me through the falling rain, right smack into the wall, sliding his arms around my back in time to keep me from hitting the cold marble. His hips roll and slam into me. Pleasure jolts through my belly.

I lift my hands to his heaving chest, rain dripping from the tips of his wet curls down onto my fingers. “But I will if you panic again.”

“Fuck.” He sucks in the deepest breath, holding it far too long as his hands creep up and cradle my face, then lets it all out along with the last of his self-control. And with one final, pained look, pleading for me to stop him, he crashes his lips onto mine, hard and insistent—not at all optional. Yet soft and inviting. And rough and stubbly.

Heat floods through me at the contact, the press of our lips, every muscle of his flexed, flattening me against the wall. His hands tighten on my face, a slight quiver in every finger. And somehow—our faces so close, noses side by side, lips sealed—it’s more intimate than the gliding of tongue on tongue. Too intimate. Torturous, actually.

I gather his shirt into my fists.Don’t fucking stop.Cold steel presses against my cheek as he curls his fingers in my hair, his eyes wide open and blistering with fear. He blinks—four times that feel like four thousand—locked in place, kissing me.

I blink back.

Then those eyes shrink to dark slits, and he pulls away, lips poised a breath from mine. “Look what you made me do, little Never.”

The door opens, leaving me no time to throw the blame at him—nor pull him back for more.That wasn’t enough.

Milo yelps and jumps up, sending himself sliding along the wall and into me. A guard stands in the doorway, gray eyes and ashy hair, muscles barely contained by his black jumpsuit. He looks up at the hole in the ceiling, then at us, and storms forward.

“Give her up, Eli.”

Eli shoves me behind him and braces for attack, but before the guard’s bulky body collides with his knife, Milo dives between them in a flash of blue and blonde. I hold onto Eli’s waist and peek around him. Milo is squashed beneath the guard on the floor, every limb triple his size.

With a hand on my chest, Eli pushes me into the wall. “Stay back.”

Not a beat later, he leaps onto the guard and punches the back of his head. Dazed, head rolling, the guard loosens his grip. Milo crawls out from under him and scrambles to his feet, patting himself down with those fidgety hands of his, searching for damage. Eli kneels on the guard’s back and slides the knife into the side of his neck with a stunning smoothness, no hesitation, like a key into a lock. No amount of scrabbling for a hold on reality makes the corpse vanish. Because it’s not a vision.

“You could have cuffed him,” Milo says, stepping out of the red puddle.

Eli climbs off him, his upper lip curling. “He wanted to take her.”

“Theyalldo.”