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My chemise shifts with his touch; fingertips grazing my side. I stare ahead at the made bed, the black furs that invite me into them.

“The old you,” I say, and it’s the truth.

I hear the faint swallow behind me, the bob of his throat as he forces down my honest words.

I hurt him.

A cheap strike, but it lifts my chin a touch higher.

I aim to hurt him.

“I miss you.” The confession spills from him in a rushed breath. His chest deflates against my back. “I love you.” Words breathed, not spoken. His hand firms on my side. “Stay with me.”

My lashes flutter.

A soft breath unravels from me and I melt into his chest.

The chemise shifts against my skin. His hand flattens on me, pushes around my middle to rest on my belly. His thumb caresses me through the material.

“Stay with me, my vicious one.”

Darkness washes over us.

In it, we can’t be seen; we are in the shadows.

So no one can see my misdeeds, how I betray myself.

And all I can think is how this might be our final time together—my last chance to change everything.

I murmur my answer, “Make me.”

A gasp cuts through me.

Daxeel spins me around and yanks me into him. His hand comes up and steals my chin. He adds pressure to his grip; it pushes my head back to align our faces.

Exhaustion is draped over him like a weary cloak, but not his eyes—cerulean that gleam through the darkness of the bedchamber, flickering with the shadows licking around his boots. “Get on the bed.”

He nudges me back.

I stagger some steps before my legs bolt with his command, and I turn my back on him.

I look over my shoulder.

His eyes are pools swimming in the dark. Shadows peel away from his shoulders, start to melt into the blackness of his leathers. He watches me closely, as though he studies every angle of my face.

“And lie down,” he adds with a throaty weariness, his lashes low. “Do not fight me on this. I am tired of your battles.”

My lips curl to bare my teeth. “You mean to hurt me with your words.”

“Do I speak lies?”

“You speak viciousness. How do you want me? On my back or my front? On my knees?” I croon, then move around the bedpost. I don’t take my eyes off him. “Vicious male.”

I crawl onto the bed, never breaking eye-contact, and I watch the cut of his jaw deepen in shadows, the burn of his blue eyes through the dark.

A shiver of familiar fear runs through me, all the way to my core. But it’s the tension in his grimly set mouth, somewhere between rage and guilt, that steals my heart.

“You punish me still,” I go on and crawl over the mattress to him. “But how you crave me.”