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“Yes.” His jaw clenched. “They were murdered in front of me. Retribution is all I have left.”

“Is it, though?” I asked. “What about your friends back home? Family?”

“They understand.”

“You think if they lose you, they will understand?” I exclaimed, my head swinging. “Let me tell you, they won’t.”

A nerve in his jaw twitched, and he shifted on his bedding. “They’ll have to.”

“Ash—”

“Go to sleep,” he ordered, trying to put an end to the conversation.

I wasn’t born to be ordered around.

“It’s selfish. You might not care, but they will suffer every day.” I would know. It wasn’t the dead who endured the loss. It was the living. “Don’t you care about them?”

He moved in silence, his speed like leaves blowing in a tornado. He whipped over to me, one hand pinning down my arm, the other pressing the base of my neck to the pillow, capturing the gasp in my throat at his sudden movement.

“Selfish?” His mouth was so close I could feel his anger spitting off his lips, his eyes glowing with fury. “You have theaudacityto call me that?” He pushed his hand firmer into my throat, and the trees outside crackled with his energy, adrenaline spiking in my veins. “When all you’ve done is forcibly insert yourself intomylife andmybusiness. Causing mayhem in it all. I should already be halfway to Bucharest, instead I’m sleeping on the floor in a farmhouse, running from border patrol.” He leaned over more, his chest bumping mine, his knee braced between my bare thighs, making me hyperaware I had no underwear on. “Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t know me. And I certainly didn’t ask for your opinion,” he seethed, his thumb pushing down on my sternum.

No one had ever spoken to, treated, or touched me this way. No one would have dared. Air heaved through my nose, my blood pumping wildly.

“Maybe it takes a stranger to tell you the truth,” I speared back at him. “That your head is so far up your ass.”

“You think you’re the first?” he growled in reply. He dragged me up the bed, tugging up the sweatshirt I was in. “And what about you? You don’t think you’re being selfish? Does your family know where you are? Didn’t you just leave them without a word?”

“I had to.” I tried to break from his grip, my ribs protesting. “But I didn’t leave hellbent on killing myself for some stupid revenge.”

“Stupid revenge,” he sputtered.

“Do you really think the people who died would want you here? Dying for what? An idea of their honor? It won’t bring them back.”

Ash tipped back, ire shaking his limbs.

“How are you honoring them by treatingyourlife like nothing?”

“Why do you give a shit about what I do with my life?”

I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know.

“If you cared anything about your own, you’d get the hell out of this country. The hell away from me.”

“I can’t,” I belted out. My emotions curled into me, making the monster inside salivate, itching my wrist. It wanted freedom. It craved violence.

“Why?”

His eyes darkened when I didn’t answer.

No one could ever find out.

“Why?” His fingers pinched down on my neck. “Tell me, why?” His knee moved up, spreading my thighs, his thin pants rubbing into my pussy.

A sharp inhale tore through me, hints of a moan threading around it, my hips automatically rolling against the pressure. His body went still, freezing in place, his eyes going back and forth between mine.

The world stopped on a dime.

Desire dripped from me, my wetness soaking into his pants, burning into his skin. I fought against the overwhelming need, the craving for him to choke me harder. I wanted him to push his fingers into me, feel his cock stretch me. My body yearned for it. Pleaded to be fucked into sedation.