Kill groaned low in his throat. “What the fuck are you doing to me?”
His confession tilted my world. I never thought I’d hear such lostness in his voice.
I shook my head, my body heavy and throbbing. “What are you doing to me?” Tears came to my eyes. “Please… tell me. You saw something. On the yacht—you saw something to make you believe. I need to know.”
He squeezed his eyes, his lips pressing tight together. “Don’t. I know I said we’d talk, but—”
“No. You can’t pull away again. It isn’t fair for either of us.”
I drowned in his green gaze as he tore his eyes open. He wedged his elbows behind him, sitting up. “You said your name is Sarah. That’s a lie. How does any of that make sense?” The way he said my name was a curse. A horror-laden curse reeking of his need to find a flaw in my whole argument so he didn’t have to pick up the pieces of his shattered world.
“I don’t know. I thought my name was Sarah. It fits. It feels… familiar. I didn’t lie about that.” My eyes desperately wanted to look down where my peripheral vision teased with his thickening erection.
“I’m not saying you lied,” he growled. “I’m just saying… Fuck, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Suddenly, he moved, grabbing my waist and hauling me on top of him. “You’re giving me a heart attack. Sitting there naked. Healing me. The girl I’ve loved since I was fucking eight years old. It’s so hard to shed a lifetime of belief.”
I had no response. Every muscle tensed, sprawled over his bulk. “You did love me, even though you were sixteen before I managed to make you kiss me.”
His eyes shot wide and a strangled gasp came from his lips. “Fuck.” Grabbing the nape of my neck, he kissed me hard. His tongue licked my lips, not seeking entry, just wanting to taste.
Pulling away, he said, “You remember? Those nights we spent together? The endless homework sessions?” He swallowed hard. “That night you snuck into my room and climbed into bed with me? Fucking hell, that was the hardest thing of my life turning you away.”
I smiled softly, loving the animation on his face but cold inside because he described things I still couldn’t recall.
His body stiffened. “You don’t remember?”
I wanted to lie—to keep him happy and hope that I didn’t ruin whatever was building between us. But I couldn’t. “It’s selective. Parts are so clear while others are lost.”
“When did you first know?”
“That I knew you?”
“Yes.”
I bit my lip. “Um… I can’t remember my first flashback, but the second you took my blindfold off, I knew. I recognized your eyes.”
His face softened. “I want you so fucking much.”
The swift change of direction sent a firework of lust to my core. “Take me, then.”
Pain crossed his features, a small droplet of blood from removing the stitches bright and accusing on his skin.
He waged a battle inside before finally giving in. His hips pressed upward and I gasped. I wanted him. I couldn’t deny it.
“Do you want me to take you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you doing this because you think you can erase what happened? Give us back what we lost? Bring back the past?”
Yes. No. I wish.
“I’m doing this to fix our future. And to figure out what happened.”
His face went cold. “Some things are better left in the dark.”
My heart twisted. “Things revolving around my supposed death?”
He didn’t reply.
Rushing to change the subject, I said, “Whatever happened won’t change how I feel about you.”
Even as I said it, I didn’t know if it was true. Could I still love him, like I did all those years ago, when I didn’t know the man he’d become? Or the mysterious circumstances of my death? Was I in bed with my killer?
The concept of him being a devil in disguise terrified me.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean,” he muttered.
I hung my head, unable to hide the truth.
Tucking red wind-tangled hair behind my ear, he said softly, “Talking and answers can come later. Tell me one thing truthfully now.”
“Anything.”
His hips tilted dangerously. “How much do you want me?”
My eyes flared and my insides melted. I would play his game. Questions could wait. Anything that might ruin what we had could wait an eternity. “So much.”
He shuddered beneath me. Chemistry sparked between us. Passion and need. The connection beyond intense, throbbing with history so much deeper than a few misunderstandings.
Before I could answer, his skin blanched and he rolled me off him. “God, this is so fucked up.”
My body went instantly cold, missing his heat. Sitting upright, he cradled his head in his hands. “I can’t believe—after all this time.” His biceps throbbed as his fingers latched into his long hair. “It hurts to believe. It hurts my heart to think you’ve been alone—all this fucking time.” His eyes glowed with rage. “They told me! They made me—”
I couldn’t keep up with him.
My heart thundered. I scrambled to my knees. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. As long as you keep me—”
“Keep you?” His face twisted. “Fuck, I was going to sell you! How can you look at me? How can you sit there and still care about me when I’ve been nothing but a fucking asshole to you?”
“Honestly? Because something inside me knew all along. Call it kismet or some soul-deep connection. I saw past your actions and into your heart.” I took a breath, trying to steady the flutter in my chest. “This entire time I’ve had nothing to guide me. No past lessons or memories. I had to rely on instinct, and no matter how you treated me, everything inside vibrated with knowledge that you were the one I was running to. Even when I should’ve been running away.”
Arthur sat stunned. His lips twisted in pain. “Fuck. Do you have any idea what that does to me? To hear how damn selfless and strong you are? To believe in us so absolutely, even when I did everything in my power to destroy you? You make me feel like a fucking monster. I’ll never deserve you after I stooped to their level. A level I vowed never to go to.”
I couldn’t stand to see his anguish; I shuffled closer.
He continued, “I can’t understand how this happened. I believe you are her—but the burns… the tattoos. It’s playing havoc with my mind.”
He hung his head in his hands, pulling away even more. He muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t hear.
He smiled sadly. “If what you say is true, then my life just got even more fucked up and the nightmare has only just begun.”
I trembled with foreboding. “What nightmare?”
He stared into the distance, seeing things I never would. Shaking himself, he said, “Doesn’t matter.” His eyes went sharp and he tackled me to the bed. Spreading me on my back, he murmured, “Right now, I want to focus on you—us. I want to remember you.”
With nimble fingers, he followed my tattoo to my hip. His gaze locked onto the design that’d snapped him from his fugue and made him believe the truth.
Finally, he looked up. “You want to know what set me off? What makes me so fucking terrified that you’re telling the truth? That all of this is real, even though it’s so hard to believe?”
I nodded.
I gasped as his fingers traced the pattern inked into my skin. “It’s here. After all this time, I never thought—”
Tensing my stomach muscles, I tried to sit up to see what he did. But he kept a hand splayed on my rib cage, keeping me down.
Then he began to talk.
“You were thirteen. I’d been helping you with your homework every night since you flunked math. I’d always thought of you as my baby sister or an annoying tagalong, but something changed that night.” His voice was wistful, full of aching longing. “You were the one who kissed me. You threw your workbook to the
side and launched yourself into my arms. We fell off the couch, crashed against the coffee table, sent paper flying. Thank God your parents weren’t home, because you put up a fight when I tried to stop you.
“We rolled around, you trying to kiss me, me trying to avoid it. But you won.” A smile graced his face. “Nothing would stop you from getting what you wanted. And for some inexplicable reason, you wanted me.”
His eyes met mine. “You tasted of cola and sugar, and you fucking drugged me that night. I wasn’t supposed to want you. I was almost four years older and already had a girlfriend. Not only was I making out with my father’s best friend’s daughter, but cheating on the girl I’d agreed to be exclusive with.”
My heart hurt. I didn’t remember his girlfriend and a fire churned in my belly to think of him loving another.
He smiled, tracing the frown on my forehead. “Still jealous, after all this time.” His eyes clouded, carting him back into the past. “You didn’t allow our age to get between us and you didn’t accept my no as an answer. You dragged me from loving you as a little sister to loving you like a man should never love a young woman. Especially you being his daughter.”
“I made you fall in love with me?”
He chuckled. “Cleo, you made me fucking dedicate my world to you.”
Cleo.
Cleo.
My world fractured and I fell through the cracks.
“Cleo, baby, we’re having a dinner for the other members tonight. Go put on your best jeans and come and help with the decorations.” My mother’s bright red hair shone beneath the kitchen spotlights.
Memories twisted and collided.
“Ah, so you want me to call you Cleo now? What happens if I want to continue calling you Buttercup?” My father poked me in the ribs, trying to make me laugh but only annoying me further.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Dad. Call me Cleo.”
I swirled deeper and deeper into my hidden past.
“Cleo Price, I love you with all my heart and soul. You’re my Sagittarius and I’ll always be your Libran.” Art stole my cheeks in his warm hands and kissed me with sweetness, adoration, and most of all, the soul mate kind of love that’d blossomed from a lifetime of learning about each other.
Tears trickled down my cheeks.
My name is Cleo…
I blinked, slamming back into the present. “I’m Cleo Price. My father’s name was Paul ‘Thorn’ Price, my mother Sandra Price. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. You were my entire childhood. You were my first and only crush. You were my reason for living and I’ve found you.”
The wall barring my family broke away, washing like a broken dam through the valley of my thoughts, sweeping away the blackness.
I remember them!
I couldn’t contain my shiver of happiness.
Kill sat frozen. He didn’t breathe or blink.
Sitting up, I wrapped my arms around him. “Speak to me.”
He took a very long minute to thaw but finally his back sagged and his arms wrapped around me in the tightest embrace. “I’ve lived the last eight years believing you were dead. I’m struggling to come to terms with everything I’ve done—how I treated you—how I fucked you with no emotion. Fuck, it’s doing my head in to think how I used you. Shit!”
He trembled in my arms and I nuzzled into his neck. “You didn’t know. We’ve both lived with enough torture. Let the past stay where it belongs.”
“No, see, that’s the thing. The moment I saw you, I hated you. You looked so much like her but I convinced myself it couldn’t be. I couldn’t see how it would be possible you were still alive after all this time. So many times in the past, I’ve looked at women and seen you there. Seen you hiding in their eyes. It fucking ripped my heart out every time—so to see you… looking so like—”
He grabbed his hair. “Ugh, this hurts to get straight. I’m repeating myself yet it doesn’t make it any easier.”
My fingers went to his nape, massaging gently.
“To love as much as I loved you—it decimated me when you’d gone. I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t want anything but for you to be alive again.”
My heart hurt with my next question. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
I couldn’t voice it.
Did you do what they said and kill me?
His face tightened, understanding my unsaid question.
He grabbed my hand, linking our fingers. “I swear to you on our love that I didn’t. I don’t know what happened.” Fear filled his voice. “I didn’t, Cleo. You have to believe me.”
I squeezed his fingers. “I believe you.”
The relief ebbing from his muscles scared me. “Why didn’t you tell the police? Why did you go to prison for a crime you didn’t commit?”
The room went icy as Kill sucked up everything he’d let go. Hiding. Blocking answers that I needed. “Please… It relates to the past that I can’t talk about just yet.” His face twisted with torture. “Give me time. That’s all I ask and I’ll tell you—I promise.”
I sat still. Would he ever tell me? Wouldn’t it be best to rip off the Band-Aid quickly and deal with the consequences now? But I couldn’t do that to him. I’d already destroyed the world he knew; I couldn’t demand more.
“Okay. Time.”
He reached up, kissing me sweetly. “Thank you. I’ll tell you everything… soon.” A cloud passed over his face. “That goes for you, too. I need to know where you’ve been. How you lost every memory of your past and me.”
Nervousness filled me at telling him everything—things I still hadn’t recalled. My mind was Swiss cheese with too many holes. Deflecting a little, I smiled. “I’m hoping you can get it straight for both of us. I remember what my parents look like. I remember my bedroom with the yellow walls and my favorite quote from The Princess Bride stenciled on my ceiling. But I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember what happened after my fourteenth birthday, and I don’t remember how I became Sarah or lived overseas or even how I became a vet.”
Kill looked away anxiously. “There’s so much you’ve forgotten. So much we don’t know if you’ll remember.” His shoulders bunched. “Shit, Cleo. There’s so much I want to tell you and so much I hope you never—” Cutting himself off, he sighed. “It all hurts too damn much. I have too much inside my head… I’m such an asshole.” Pulling away, he looked deep into my eyes. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Tears tickled my spine at the thought of him being so broken. So upside down and inside out from finally seeing me. “I already have. I understand.”
He sniffed. “I’m so damn sorry.”
I wanted to stroke away his pain. My consolation wasn’t enough to save him. Directing the conversation to easier topics, I asked, “What finally made you see?”
Smiling quickly, he crushed me to him. “It was the equation. Our equation. The stupid geek thing that you giggled over when I showed you how awesome math could be.”
My mind came up blank. It was as if my family was now free from the net that captured my mind, but the rest—it was still trapped, still squirming and trying to escape.
He let me go, his large hand falling to my hip. “Look. See for yourself.”
I glanced down at the pyramid of numbers inked into my skin. I remembered the night I’d woken at some ungodly hour and scribbled the equation down before it escaped from my dreams. But I still couldn’t remember how I recalled it or what it meant. It tugged so hard inside with a hidden message that I’d given it to the artist to place on my skin so I would never forget.
My heart twitched as Kill traced the pattern: I
“Do you know what it means?” he murmured. “Do you remember?”
I shook my head, wishing I could. “No.”
He smiled. “It’s the perfect mathematical proof that love exists, written in numbers. You had your words and poems, I had this. And I finally found a way to say I love you.”
I couldn’t say a word.
“I’ve loved you for most of my life, and then you were… gone. I don’t know what you’ve been through and I don’t know the woman you’ve become because of it, but I do know I’ll never be able to stop it. Never be able to ignore…” His face twisted and he growled, “I’m not going to fight it anymore. Too fucking long I’ve been fighting and I’m done.”
“Fighting what?”
“Emotion. The highs and lows of life. I’ve lived with revenge for so long, but you brought light back into my black world.”
I bit my lip, suffering an explosion of happiness in my heart.
Kill continued, “There’s so much to tell you. So much you don’t know. You have no fucking idea how my life was. Everything I ever wanted was torn away from me and it terrifies me to think it will happen again.”
“It won’t.”
“You’re right. It won’t. Not this time. This time I’m keeping you safe and never letting you out of my sight until those motherfuckers pay.”
My heart raced. My gasp was loud in the silent room.
Leaning close, he breathed, “Does that scare you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well, it should.”
“I understand you carry things inside. Dark things—painful things. Tell me. What happened to you?”
His eyes lost the burning intensity, hazing with lust. “Later.”
I swallowed as he cupped my cheek and whispered a thumb over my lips. “I’ll tell you everything… but first, I need to touch you. I need to make sure this is real.”
A small smile twisted my lips. “I am real. I’m yours. You’re mine. Just like we said all those years ago.”
He sucked in a breath, his chest rising sharply. “God, I’ve missed you.”
His hand slipped from my cheek to the base of my skull. His eyes tore into me, welding his soul to mine. “Every night I dreamed of kissing you.” His gaze dropped to my lips. I didn’t have time to gasp or enjoy the blissful anticipation of being kissed before his mouth crushed against mine.
My body melted against his, becoming one with his passion and heat. His arms wrapped around me, his heart thundering. I snuggled closer.