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He actually looked more than tired. Up close, she spied lavender shadows beneath his eyes, and a haggard quality clung to him. He looked bone-deep exhausted. She could imagine the kind of stuff the CIA trained its field operatives to do, and he probably had good cause to be wiped out.

She murmured, “Let me check on Dawn, and then I’ll be back to welcome you home properly.”

His gray, intelligent gaze went alert and predatory. Her tummy fluttered apprehensively in response. For all the times he’d warned her his sexual tastes were too dark for her, he always ended up making love to her without harming a hair on her head.

Sure, he’d pushed her inexperienced, vanilla boundaries some. And she’d loved every minute of it. But she’d naively trusted him back then, and he’d been trying hard to become a different person.

He’d just spent a year being pushed back to his darkest, most dangerous self. Would that translate into the bedroom as well?

“I’ll be waiting,” he said roughly.

Now why did that sound like a threat? Was it just his habitual economy of expression, or was it more? Either way, her heart leaped in trepidation.

Hah. And André had hinted broadly that Alex might not want to have a romantic relationship with her when he got home. He’d been home five minutes and already laid a smoking hot kiss on her and was now moving things to the bedroom. Abject gratitude flowed through her.

He was still hers. Brilliant, tortured Alex Peters, genius, surgeon, and now spy, still wanted her.

Part of her—okay, a scarily big part of her—worried it was too good to be true.

That he was going through the motions now because he thought she expected him to.

That the past year’s worth of training had forced him to revert to form and shut down emotionally.

That he would ultimately push her out of his life.

Worried, she leaned over the crib in the nursery. Sweet Dawn, the best baby ever, settled in under her blanket without waking up. If the way she kicked off blankets was any indication, she was on her way to being a great soccer player.

Li’l munchkin had been through a lot in her short life. She’d been born into a war zone and her mother had died in childbirth despite Alex’s heroic efforts to save her. The entire village had been massacred and the three of them had barely made it out with their lives.

But thanks to the trust fund Alex had set up, the legalities his lawyer had sorted out to give Alex and her permanent custody of Dawn, and, of course, the roof Alex had put over both of their heads, it was nothing but smooth sailing for Dawn, now.

For all of them. No more running around being chased by bad guys out to kill them.

Katie tiptoed out of the nursery and down the hall to Alex’s bedroom.

Alex stood in the darkness of his bedroom absorbing the familiarity of its dark shapes, noting the differences Katie had brought to the space. He could do this. He could pretend to be a normal man. Live a normal life. He could experience pleasure. Family. Love. He would not break.

Nothing would break him.

They’d tortured him and screwed with his head and made him kill. But in spite of it all, he had not broken. And to think, he’d once believed his father a bastard for training him like a spy. Hah. If only he’d known just how easy his old man had taken it on him.

Alex shrugged off his shirt. Cool air blew lightly across his skin causing goose bumps on his chest, back, and arms. He kicked off his shoes and stripped off his pants and socks. Naked, he stood stock still in the middle of his bedroom. Only darkness clothed him.

Memories rolled over him, then. Remembered tortures that made him tremble, even now. They’d begun like this, too. Exposed skin, cool breath upon his flesh. Then pain. Exquisite, fiery pain.

And in his agony, all the demons from his past had come calling, singing to him like Sirens, calling him home. It would’ve been so easy to lose himself in them. To check out of the prolonged agony and go to that other place inside his soul.

But he’d chosen the pain. He’d stayed present. Suffered the agonies of Hell. Only then had he been sure he was still alive.

Even now, especially now, he wondered if any of this was real. It was so mundane. His house. Katie. The baby.

Was this the cruelest torture of all? Were they going to let him get comfortable and then rip it all away from him? If he knew what was good for him, he would reject it all. He would embrace the pain and live there.

But that welcome-home kiss…

He swore violently. Kissing Katie might just worth be going to Hell for.

Katie stepped into the darkness of the master bedroom and screamed a little as strong arms came out of nowhere to sweep her up against a hard body. “I win,” Alex announced. “You’re the worst spy, ever.”

“Mmm, but I’m the softest and sexiest and love you the best.”

“True,” he agreed as his mouth closed over hers.

The explosive attraction that had simmered between them before erupted, crackling like chain lightning across her skin, striking farther and farther inside her as their kiss deepened. Craving twisted her innards into tight knots of desire. She could never seem to get enough of him.

Her clothes went every which way as passion overtook them, and frantic urgency spurred them onward.

Naked and devouring each other, they fell onto his bed.

She would’ve laughed, except he speared his hand into her hair and pulled her head back so he could plunder her neck and shoulder with teeth and tongue, and her laugh became a gasp of pleasure, instead.

He took control tonight, demanding everything from her as he kissed and stroked and nipped his way across her flesh. Where she was cold, he was hot. Where she was soft, he was hard. And where she was hungry, he starved her for more.

With hands and mouth, he played her body, using his intimate knowledge of her pleasures and desires to drive her into a frenzy of blind lust. Need to have him crushing her into the mattress, to fill her body with his, to feel his power and desire as he pounded into her…

oh, yes. She needed all of that in the worst way.

But frustratingly, he withheld it from her, tonight. Instead, he kissed his way down her body until she gasped with need. His tongue circled her most sensitive bud, wet and hot and maddening until a climax started to claw its way out of her belly. And then his mouth withdrew.

“Tell me something, Katie. How bad do you want this?”

Oh, no . “Umm, bad enough to beg?”

“Is that all?” he murmured in disappointment.

“Bad enough to do anything you want?” she tried.

“You’ll do that anyway,” he replied dismissively.

True. She never could say no to him. “Bad enough to cry?”

His thoughtful silence was encouraging. Although on second thought, she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out how he would make her cry. He’d warned her before that his desires had very few boundaries. And he’d just come off a year of pretty dark, violent training, if she had to guess.

Before he could act on her ill-considered offer, she added, “Bad enough to say please?”

He rose up over her on powerfully muscled arms. “Say it.”

“Please, Alex.” When he didn’t move, she continued, “Please give us both an orgasm. Or ten. I want you so much I can’t stand it. Now. Take me now. Please .”

In typical Alex fashion, he continued to stare down at her, letting her frustration and desperation build until she thought she might die.

“Will you beg me to stop, too?” he growled.

“Never.”

He made a skeptical sound. Cynical mood he was in, tonight.

He waited until she all but sobbed with need.

The pleasure she knew he could give her hovered just out of reach like a tantalizing piece of candy dangling on a string.

Why did he insist on playing these wicked games with her?

He knew how he made her feel. He knew how deeply she lusted after him.

And still, he made her wait. And suffer.

As if he was punishing her for making him feel the same way she did.

She knew why he did it, of course. He hated love. But it didn’t make this cruel game of his any easier to bear.

Her entire body throbbed with unfulfilled desire for the sex that was right there.

So close, and yet so totally out of her control.

If she could only get him to actually make love to her, his emotional barriers would crumble the way they always did.

But for now, he fought it. So hard, he struggled to hold himself apart from her. From everyone.

Tonight his fight was worse than ever. His features pulled into a macabre rictus of suffering half-lost in shadows. It was hard for her to look at. My God, what had they done to him?

She put her hands on either side of his face and tried silently to reach past the suffering to the man beneath. But he was lost. His eyes were black hollows. All she saw in them was pain, and more pain.

“Come back to me, Alex,” she whispered.

His hands went around her neck, his fingers encircling her throat. They were big and capable and strong. He could snap her neck quickly or choke her to death slowly if he so chose. Soul chilling terror flashed through her, along with instinctive knowing .

They’d turned him into a killer .

She spoke slowly and clearly into the hush while he clearly considered the ways they’d taught him to end her life. “Do it, Alex. If it will heal your soul, do it.”

“Gah!” He flung her back against the pillows and grabbed her hips, shoving her thighs wide. If he’d thought to scare her, he failed. She’d decided long ago that she trusted him with her life. Giving him her body was kid stuff by comparison. She arched her chest up toward him in invitation.