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Jesse flew at Michio, his face burning with rage, his khukuri suddenly appearing beneath Michio’s jaw.

“Jesse, no!” I didn’t know where the knife had come from. Under his invisible jacket? Beneath his tight leather pants? Out of his ass? Telekinesis? Nothing surprised me anymore.

Roark was right behind him, his fist rearing back to swing. Fuck! I grabbed his waist, my stomach spinning as I twisted around him.

“You promised.” I glared at the back of Jesse’s head and pushed against the hard press of Roark’s heaving chest, shouting at both of them, “He wants you to punish him because he’s hurting, but none of this was his fault.”

Michio lifted his chin, moisture sheening his eyes as he leaned into the lethal edge of the knife.

I pushed harder against the corded muscles of Roark’s torso. “Tell them, Michio!”

With my hands pressed against Roark’s naked body, I struggled to hold him back. I leaned harder, with my shoulder then all of my weight. I wished I hadn’t removed my clothes and revealed the bruises. I should’ve explained the marks first instead of relying on Michio to defend himself.

A few feet away, Jesse and Michio were still dressed, locked in a lethal embrace with Jesse’s knife against Michio’s throat. Jesse glared at Michio, his eyes burning, while Michio stared back, silently begging him to sink the blade.

“Jesse, I know you won’t hurt him. You saw him save my life up there.” I knew he was reacting without thinking, and Michio was giving him an easy target. “Michio, tell them what actually happened or I will.”

Jesse jerked the dagger away but didn’t back up.

After a heavy swallow, Michio unraveled Aiman’s plans, the mind control used on him and the spiders, and how my blood in the women worked as a vaccine against the venom. He spoke in anguished tones, each word more hollow than the last.

Jesse and Roark backed up, staring in horrified disbelief.

“You understand now?” I waved a hand over my bruises. “Aiman used Michio’s body to hurt both of us.”

Jesse and Michio remained outside of the spray of the shower head, and Roark pulled me beneath it.

As the warm water enveloped us, he wrapped me in his arms. “Shh. It's over. It's all over. He can't hurt you anymore.” He lifted his eyes to Michio. “Or you.”

“Fuck.” Jesse dropped the khukuri on the duffel bag, his eyes staying with Michio as his anger slipped behind the furrowed grooves in his face. “That’s fucking…I don’t know what it is. How did you break your mind free to kill him?”

Roark’s fingers traced the mark on my neck. I suspected he wanted to ask about it. Maybe he was already figuring it out, but he remained quiet as he shifted his attention to Michio.

“Aiman controlled my voluntary movements and knew all of my thoughts.” Resentment seeped through Michio’s voice. “So I shut off my mind.”

“What do you mean you shut it off?” I held my head out of the water as Roark rubbed shampoo into my hair. “Are you talking about meditation?”

I recalled all the times I’d seen Michio sitting cross-legged on the floor in Malta, with the backs of his hands on bent knees, ankles on opposing thighs, eyes closed. A pose used in Buddhist meditation.

“Yes. I quieted my thoughts and focused on my breaths in self-forgetful concentration. In doing so, I surrendered my body to physiological response.”

Jesse tread a path through the room, his leather pants straining against the flex of his thighs. Anxiety was better than anger in this case, but it didn’t make his pacing any calmer. “That’s fight-or-flight reaction, right?”

Michio nodded, staring down at his empty hands. “I didn’t know if it would work, but I trusted my unconscious reflexes when it came to Evie.”

I rinsed the shampoo from my hair, my mind spinning with questions. “The rope…I don’t understand. How did you tie it so diligently without thinking about how I would fall with it?”

His slack expression and sad eyes tightened my throat as he said, “I’d been in a state of meditation for two weeks. When Aiman commanded me to restrain you and bring you to the surface, I let my instincts guide the intricacies of the knots.”

God, he’d been through so much, and my heart thumped with the need to protect him from the emotional aftermath.

The wounds on his arms and upper body were closed up and healing beneath all the blood. But his ribs jutted sharply around the stacks of muscles in his chest.

I left the warmth of the falling water and gripped his wrist, pulling him toward the shower head. Before he moved into the water, I reached down to remove his pants. It was such a familiar thing to do, yet I hesitated. Fucking bitch Elaine.

I looked up and asked with my eyes. Do I have permission to strip you? Is it okay to touch you here?