Chris reaches over and hits the snooze button. “We’re being timed.” He slips his ingers into the silky heat of my body, parting me, and pressing the pulsing thickness of his erection against me. Anticipation burns through me as he adds, “So I’d better not waste any time.” He thrusts hard into me and I gasp.

“Maybe this will make you do as I say.”

“Don’t count on it,” I taunt, but my deiance fades into a moan at the way he slides his c**k left to right, stroking nerve endings to life.

His cheek caresses mine, lips brushing the delicate skin of my neck, then my ear. “There’s a price for making me worry, Sara,”

“What price?” I manage in a whisper.

“There are all kinds of ways I could make you pay,” he assures me, tugging roughly at one of my nipples. I bite back a moan and my sex clenches around him. His head dips and his teeth scrape the stif peak before he suckles it deeply. My ingers twine into the silky strands of his hair, urging him to continue, but he abandons my nipple to nuzzle my neck, denying me what I want. “The price you pay today is putting up with another man. Rey’s going with you to the embassy.”

Unbidden, Rebecca’s journal entries about the many ways Mark shared her with another man, and how much it hurt her, rips through my mind. The pain she must have felt. The pain I would feel if Chris tried to do this to me. I’d be torn into tiny pieces, never to be put back together again.

“Sara, I would never, under any circumstances, share you.

Not the way you’re thinking. Not with a damn soul.”

I blink and ind Chris staring down at me. “What?”

“I don’t know what set it of, but you’re thinking about the journals, and how Mark shared Rebecca with other people.”

I’m amazed he can read me so easily. It’s true. I’m haunted by Rebecca’s life and now her death.

“Remember your own words,” he continues. “I’m not Mark and you’re not Rebecca. You know me. You know I don’t share. You’re mine, Sara. Only mine. ”

His possessive words radiate through me and warm the chill of my memories. I wrap my arms around his neck, blocking out everything but the warmth in his eyes and the feel of him inside me. “I like being yours.”

Pure male satisfaction lashes in his eyes. “Then you’d better accept that I’m going to protect you, whether you like it or not.

Either Rey is going to take you to the embassy or I am.”

I give him a playful frown. “You’re being overwhelming again.”

He nips my bottom lip and licks it. “I’ll make it up to you.”

And he does. Oh, how he does.

Chris pulls on light blue jeans and a white T-shirt with the museum logo on it and heads downstairs to brew cofee. I choose a black skirt, a V-neck black silk blouse, and knee-high black boots and brush my freshly washed long hair into a silky mass around my shoulders. Satisied I look passport-worthy, I head for the kitchen, jitters overtaking me with the thought of leaving for the embassy. It’s a silly energy drain when I’m simply replacing my passport, but it’s hard to completely ignore Chris’s paranoia. I don’t see how anyone here could connect me to Ella. Could they?

The instant I step into the living room, my nostrils lare with the rich aroma of cofee beans, and the idea of sharing a cup with Chris brings a smile to my lips. Hurrying up the stairs, I’m still smiling when I see Amber, with her back to me, decked out in an orange shirt, black leather pants, and high heels, and pouring herself cofee. My smile disappears, stripped away with the shock of her presence like a sticky piece of tape ripped from my mouth.

She turns and smiles at me. “Morning, Sara.” Her gaze sweeps up and down my body, sending discomfort through me before she meets my eyes. “You look nice today.”

“Thank you.” I wonder if she really means to compliment me or frame the obvious. Amber has this Barbie-gone-biker kind of beauty that’s striking in every way, and I’m . . . just me.

It’s hard to believe we’d draw the same man’s attention. I’m suddenly ready to be rescued from this conversation. “Where’s Chris?”

“Letting Rey in.”

I barely contain a sigh of relief at what is sure to be his short absence. In the meantime, I do . . . what? I glance toward the cofeepot, remembering how she’d touched me the last time we were here. I’m not so sure I want cofee, after all.

Amber watches me eye the pot and lifts her cup. “Would you like some cofee?”

As if I’m the guest, not her. It might be innocent, but I don’t think it is. I don’t think anything Amber does is innocent.

I force myself to cross to the cofeepot. “What brings you here so early?” But I know why she’s here. Chris wouldn’t take her calls last night, an action I regret now. I suddenly wish he’d just talked to her.

“I usually stop by a few mornings a week when Chris is in town,” she replies, implying she plans to continue the pattern.

I freeze with my back to her and the cofeepot in mid-pour.

With extreme efort, I beat down how iercely territorial I feel of my new home and my man, reminding myself why Chris keeps her in his life. She has no family, and the wounds on her arms, combined with the haunted look in her eyes I’d seen last night, indicate her story is more nightmare than fairy tale.

Despite the discomfort Amber stirs inside me, I love Chris all the more for being the kind of person who won’t shut her out.

And if he won’t, I won’t.

Finishing the task of illing my cup, a new attitude in place, I return the pot to the burner and rotate around to face Amber.

“Cream, right?” she asks, and ofers me the bottle on the island beside her.

I feel ridiculously unsettled by her being attentive enough to remember how I take my cofee. Trying to shake it of, I reach out to accept the creamer. “Thank you.”

Her hand closes over mine, a scalding vise that makes my heart race. Her eyes are lat, almost hard, and she lowers her voice to a near whisper. “He’s good at shutting people and things out. Too good.” She cuts her eyes sharply away, like she had back at the Script, then licks them back to mine. “I won’t be one of those things.”

I’m shaken both by how she’s called herself a thing, not a person—and by the truth she’s stated. Chris is good at shutting people out.

Footsteps sound behind us and she jerks her hand away from mine. “It could be you, just as easily as it could be me, that he suddenly blocks out. Remember that.”

Stunned, my lips part and I don’t move away.

Amber grabs her purse and rushes toward the stairs. “Of to work,” she announces as she passes Chris and the man behind him, whom I assume to be Rey, on the stairs.

“Amber,” I hear Chris say, halting her with the short command. I take the short delay to compose myself, turning away from the stairs. The creamer and my cup of cofee are still in my hands. I set them on the counter and steady myself by leaning against it.

“Don’t forget what I told you,” Chris reminds Amber, and I don’t even care what he’s talking about. Amber has sliced open the memory of Chris leaving me and all but kicking me out of his apartment, and it’s still too fresh not to bleed.

Footsteps sound behind me and I hear Chris and the other man speaking in French. Drawing a deep breath, I turn to face them, avoiding Chris’s stare for fear he’ll read how shaken I am. But I feel him. Every time he enters a room, I feel Chris in every pore of my body, in every inch of my existence.

Rey, who is somewhere around Chris’s age, and a good two hundred pounds of hard body and dark, edgy good looks, inclines his head and greets me with “Ravi de vous rencontrer, Mademoiselle Sara.”

The pull of Chris’s stare willing me to look at him is mag-netic. Somehow, though, I blink Rey into better focus and repeat his words in my head, pleased at my understanding of a basic greeting. “Nice to meet you, too, Monsieur Rey, and thank you for escorting me today.”

Rey smiles approvingly and licks Chris a rather amused look. “I thought you said she doesn’t know French.”

Afraid I’ve encouraged him to test my French rather than sticking to his well-spoken English, I say, “Understanding a few small phrases and speaking them are two diferent things.

I speak the French language about as well as I do English after three shots of tequila.”

Both men laugh, and at the sound of Chris’s rich, sexy chuckle, I inally look at him. His eyes meet mine and the tender concern in his wraps around my heart and begins to seal the wound Amber has opened.

Chris runs a hand over his jaw, looking thoughtful. “I seem to remember sounding like I’d drank a bottle of tequila back when I learned.”

“I ind that hard to believe.”

“Why do you think I got into so many ights at school?”

Rey shakes his head. “I wish I had an excuse for the ones I got into. At least I chose a job that gives me a way to use my ag-gression in a positive way.” His eyes land on me and the humor fades from his expression. “Chris told me about Ella.”

I shoot Chris a questioning look and he explains: “Rey has some connections he’s going to use to help us ind her.”

Eager for answers, I step closer. “How? What does that mean?”

“My brother is a military gendarmerie,” Rey reveals. “That’s the French police in more rural and border areas.”

“The towns outside the city are popular escapes from the city so they’re important to cover,” Chris adds. “Aside from his brother, Rey’s going to hire an investigator to ensure no stone is unturned here in the city.”

“It would help to have a picture of Ella and any data you have on her,” Rey says. “And it would be a good idea to take the picture with us to the embassy, in case one hasn’t already been given to them.”

I’m lustered by the request, kicking myself for not being prepared. “I don’t have a picture with me.”

“We can arrange to get her United States driver’s license through my brother,” Rey offers. “But a better picture would be helpful.”

Chris ofers a quick suggestion. “Would the school have a picture of her?”

“Yes.” My voice lifts with my approval. “That’s a great idea.

If I can’t get a staf photo, someone will be able to give me a yearbook shot, for sure.”

The doorbell rings. “That must be Chantal. I’ll let her in, then call the school before they close.”

I dart forward and Chris shackles my wrist. “Let Rey get the door,” he says softly.

Rey speaks to Chris in French, then his feet hit the stairs.

Finally, we’re alone.

The burn of the recent heartache he caused me explodes into my words. “Amber can only get to me because you haven’t told me whatever it is you need to tell me.”

He gives me a heavy-lidded stare. “What did she say to you?”

“Nothing I didn’t know. And what she said isn’t the point, Chris. Or maybe it is the point. She’s talking, and you aren’t.”

“What did Amber say to you, Sara?” This time there is steel in his voice.

I grimace with defeat. He’s in stubborn alpha-male mode, where “no” isn’t an option. “She said you’re good at shutting people out, and she doesn’t plan to let you do that to her. And she’s right: you aregood at shutting people out. No one knows that like I do.”

“Sara—”

“It’s the past. I know.” I touch his cheek. “But Chris, if there is anything I fear, it’s you judging yourself through my eyes, like you did after I saw you in Mark’s club, and judging wrongly.”

My breath hitches. “I can’t go through that again. I can’t.”

His gaze lifts to the ceiling, and he seems to struggle before he ixes me in a burning stare, and not the kind I crave on a cold winter’s night. He’s angry again. “This is what I get for letting her in this morning. I should have known better.”

Exasperated, I shake my head. “If you don’t want me around her, and you knew she was going to be present in our lives here, why are we in Paris, Chris?”

“If we didn’t have to be here, we wouldn’t be. This is where this has to happen.”

In his haunted eyes I see the demons of his past, and the damage they’ve clawed into his soul. “Chris—” I start, but stop abruptly as I hear Chantal’s and Rey’s voices downstairs.

Chris reacts to our limited time, cupping my head and pulling my forehead to his. My hand settles on the solid wall of his chest, and his heartbeat is a steady, soothing thrum beneath my palm, the way he is to my soul. The way I want to soothe his.

His ingers gently tease the hair by my ear. “There is a right place and a right time. You’ll understand what I mean—soon, I promise. I’m asking you to trust me on this.”

My heart squeezes with the rough quality of his voice, at the vulnerability I doubt anyone else knows he’s capable of experiencing, let alone exposing. But he lets me inside the walls I once thought I’d never tear down.

“As long as you promise to trust in us, Chris.” I sound as afected as he did and I’m not sorry. I want him to understand how much he means to me.

He leans back and looks at me, and for a mere moment, his eyes are intense, probing. They soften then, warming me inside and out, amber lecks lickering to life in their depths, beams of sunlight in what has become a storm cloud of worry. “You know what I’m going to say to that, don’t you?”