I start to walk toward him and then change my mind. Instead, I pull out my phone one more time.

If you need me, I’m right outside your office.

I hesitate, not entirely certain I’m doing the right thing. And then, once more, I press send.

I hear his phone chirp almost immediately. I watch as he pulls out the phone. As he reads the text. As he slides the phone back into his pocket.

But he doesn’t come, and as the seconds tick by, that iron band is tightening around my chest again, and I am afraid—so terribly afraid—that we are not going to survive this. Because if he can’t come to me now, how much worse will it be when I have to render the deathblow?

I stay for a heartbeat, then two, but then I cannot take it anymore, and I turn away, trying hard not to cry and not to run. Just to walk slowly and carefully, as if his silence hasn’t pierced a hole through my heart.

I’ve gone two steps when I hear him, his voice so low that it is almost lost in the hum of the air conditioner. “If I need you?”

I freeze, my shoulders stiff, my eyes squeezed tight to fight back the flood. And then, when I’m certain that I can manage it without completely falling apart, I turn to face him.

He fills the doorway, this larger-than-life man who right now is vibrating with so many wild emotions it is a wonder that he doesn’t combust under the strain of it all. But despite all of that—despite the anger and frustration that rolls off of him in waves—it is the heat I see in his eyes that seems to propel him forward. A familiar, wild heat—and it is directed entirely at me.

“If I need you?” he repeats as he strides to me, all force and power and intent. “Christ, Sylvia, don’t you know by now that I always need you?”

He is only inches from me, but he doesn’t touch me, and that small omission suddenly seems like the most important and most horrible thing in the world.

I want to reach for him, but instead I slide my hands into the pockets of my skirt. I’m afraid he will flinch away, and I am absolutely certain that I couldn’t survive that, too. “You didn’t answer my texts.”

“I did,” he says. “I answered each one, and then I fucking deleted it. I’m a goddamn mess, sweetheart, and I didn’t think you’d want to be with me like this.”

“Jackson,” I whisper as I step closer, thrust into motion by the force of my relief. “Don’t you know by now that I will always want to be with you?”

My skin tingles, as if the emotions arcing between us are generating power, electrifying the air like a lightning storm. For a moment, he says nothing, but I watch as his chest rises and falls with each breath.

“Goddamn him,” Jackson finally says, and my stomach clenches. He is cursing the man who pushed him away. Who turned cold and impassive when faced with the news that he had a brother. But how much worse will it be when he hears the rest of it? And will the fact that I must be the messenger make it easier or harder to bear?

I reach for him, as if to soothe a wound I have not yet inflicted. The touch seems to ignite something inside him, and he pulls me close. “Syl—oh, Christ, Syl.”

My name is muffled as he crushes his mouth over mine. I melt immediately, surprise giving way to the pure, sweet relief of being claimed by this man. Of being used by him. Wanted by him.

Of simply being his.

The kiss is brutal. Hard. Teeth clash. Tongues battle. And, yes, I taste blood. It is as if he needs to consume me, to prove to himself that I am real and that I am here and that no matter what, I am not going anywhere.

From somewhere in the back of my mind I know that I need to tell him the rest—that I must deliver that final, horrible blow—but I cannot find the words yet. I cannot risk that he will let me go. That he will back away from me, his eyes full of revulsion instead of desire.

And so I push reality away and lose myself in the fantasy that we are fine. That we are good.

That nothing can separate us again. Not even the iron will of a man like Damien Stark.

He breaks the kiss, pulling back and breathing hard. Our bodies are pressed tight together and my chest throbs with the violent pounding of my heart. “I need you,” he says, and I can only nod and whisper yes, my body limp with both relief and desire.

His mouth claims me again, but this time his hands grasp my hips and he lifts me. I hook my legs around his waist as he carries me back into his office. I feel weightless and wild, and god help me I want to be used. I want to be the bridge—the thing that pulls him from anger and back to me.

I gasp as he slams us against the drafting table. My rear is on the surface, but it is angled, and I keep my legs around him to keep from sliding off. I lean forward and attack his shirt, tugging each button free, forcing myself to not just rip the damn thing off him. I want to feel his skin beneath my hand, the heat building inside him, growing toward a violent explosion.