“That’s why you hid from your sister.”

“Yes.”

She studies me a long few moments, searching my face, and there is a shift between us, a spike of passion, a darkening of the mood in the most erotic of ways. “Untie me,” she says. “I need to touch you. I need to touch you, Chad.”

A rush of wild emotions beats on me from all directions. I feel responsible for her. I feel the impact of the decision I made years ago, and how it’s bled into her life. My fingers flex on her face. “Tell me you understand first,” I demand.

“More than you can imagine,” she whispers, and I don’t know what it means. I want to know what I sense she’s hiding. “Untie me,” she repeats. “Please. And yes, please means please do all those things you said to me before. Please make me scream your name. Please make me never forget who you are.”

Her words crash over me, stirring more of those dark emotions I’d awoken with, and that I live with every day of my life. I kiss her, and it’s deep, passionate, tense with all the emotions I’ve suppressed since waking up from that nightmare raging to the surface. The only means to my relief is this woman.

I tear my mouth away from hers, and for a moment, we just stare at each other. I don’t know what it is that’s between us but it’s far more real than anything I’ve felt outside of pain in a very long time. I unbuckle the belt, quickly loosening it and tossing it away. The instant it’s gone, we are kissing again, her fingers delicate, soft and warm on my skin, and yet somehow as demanding as I feel.

My fingers close around her neck, under her hair, and I pull her mouth to mine harder, kissing her, consuming her, and finally I am touching her freely, exploring her body, her breasts, her nipples. I turn our bodies so her back is now against the wall, lifting her leg, sliding my cock along her core and pressing into her. Driving deep. Hard. Burying myself in the farthest part of her. Our eyes lock and hold, and the shift between us, that connection I’ve felt ever since she walked into the interrogation room, blossoms and grows. There is heat in my blood, heat in my chest that I do not want to feel. But it’s here, alive, real, and it stretches between us, a tight band of desire that snaps.

Suddenly, we are kissing again, and I grab her backside and pick her up. Her legs curl around my waist and I carry her to the mattress, laying her down, going down on top of her. And then I am driving into her, pumping and thrusting, my hand still under her, arching her into me. Fucking. We are fucking, and it’s that wild, primal, animalistic rush that I need, that she needs. And she’s making these soft, sexy sounds that drive me insane but they travel through me, too, whispering in a way no other woman’s soft sounds ever have. I’m fucking her, trying to get to that dark, oblivious place where the woman doesn’t matter, only the sex does. But I can’t. I pull back slightly, burying my face in her neck, forcing my body to slow down, to calm. Inhaling deeply, I slow down to allow her to get to the same place I am.

I cup her breasts, licking her nipples, sucking and teasing. I kiss her neck, her ear, her shoulder. Her fingers tangle roughly in my hair and a soft, desperate plea of “Chad,” follows. It’s then that I kiss her again, then that I drive back into her, and there’s a new edge burning between us. We are grinding and touching and practically trying to get under each other’s skins.

Too soon, it seems, she digs her fingernails into my back and tenses. A second later, she spasms around me, milking my cock, and I drive into her one last time and explode, shaking with the intensity of my release. Time floats away, and I am spiraling into that sweet oblivion that is the moments after great sex.

Slowly, I come back to the room, to Gia, to the natural scent of her that is pure, sexy woman. The feel of her beneath me makes me not want to get up, and that’s when I know this was more than a fuck session. And that’s not only new to me, it’s trouble. Forcing myself to pull out of her, I stand up, not looking at her as I turn away, snatching up my jeans and walking to the bathroom. I rid myself of the condom in the toilet and lean on the wall, trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me.

I just met this woman. I can’t have an attachment to her. I won’t. I don’t. I push off the wall and put on my pants, walking into the bedroom.

Gia’s standing by the wall we fucked against; her back to me, her naked, gorgeous backside in full view as she tugs the dress over her head. But it’s not her gorgeous body that does me in. It’s the tension radiating off her, slamming into me. It twists me in knots, punches me in the chest. Fuck!

I go to her, grasping her elbow and turning her to face me. “Are you okay?”

She laughs nervously, her cheeks flushing pink. “You stripped away every reserve I own and then told me that I can never be that vulnerable ever again in my life. Of course I’m okay.”

Sarcasm. Nerves. I’m coming to know this pattern. “This, us, fucking like we did, it was an escape for both of us.”

“Right. I get it. And the lesson of it all was that the next time I get naked with a man, he could tie me up and hurt me. Have a gun handy.”

The idea of her having sex with another man sits uncomfortably in my chest, and I don’t like it. She isn’t mine and she never will be. “Sex is a necessity of life,” I say. “It’s going to happen. Be cautious. Be aware. And don’t turn it into a relationship. When someone works themselves beneath your defenses, you’re in trouble.”