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  “Maybe those were the main reasons, but still, you loved her enough to spare her that pain, too. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be selling yourself short, Jasper?”

  “No, it hasn’t,” I reply, deadpan. “If I stand in a room full of people anywhere in the world, I know who the monster is.”

  She tips her head to one side to consider me, a sweetly pained expression on her face. I recognize it for what it is. And I hate seeing it.

  Pity.

  “Is that what you think? That you’re a monster?” I don’t answer her. I hold my tongue, gritting my teeth against all the uncharacteristic emotions swirling through me right now. Anger, disbelief, bitterness. Hope. Cruel desire. “Let me tell you something, Jasper,” she says, dropping the sheet and moving to straddle me.

  Despite the fact that I just slaked my hunger for her, despite the fact that I hate this subject and my obvious weakness in telling her so much about myself, I feel my cock stir instantly to life, rising toward her warm moisture.

  She does things to me, things no other person has ever done. She makes me feel . . . Hell, I don’t know. She just makes me feel. And that’s dangerous. For both of us. But will it stop me? No. Because I’m a cold, calculating man who puts feeling and consideration aside for what must be done. It’s who I have to be in order to be able to do what I have to do. So whether she believes it or not, I am the monster.

  “You’re a foolish woman if you believe otherwise,” I bite, holding on to my anger like a kid refusing to give up his candy. After so long of never letting emotion in, letting some of my fury take hold is darkly invigorating.

  “Maybe I am, but monsters don’t love, Jasper. And whether you see it that way or not, you love your mother. You love her enough to never see her again just to spare her pain and suffering.”

  “My father loved her, too, but he made her more miserable than anyone on the planet. It is possible to love someone so much that it hurts them. Or love them and still hurt them.”

  “I’m sure it probably is, but that’s not what you do. I can’t believe that.”

  “Then you’re a fool. Just like I said.”

  She is unflappable, a smile curving her lips as she leans toward me. “You’re not a monster. I couldn’t do this to a monster,” she says in a husky voice, brushing her silky lips over mine. I hold perfectly still, fighting with the anger that’s roiling within me. I want to believe her, but I know better. It’s the reality of that disparity—what I am versus what she thinks I am—that keeps some softer emotion from overtaking that anger. So I let it flow. To protect her from me, I let it flow so that she can see. So that she can know.

  “You’re making a mistake, Muse. I’m not playing around.”

  “I’m not either,” she continues, tracing my lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “Unless this feels like play.” She lightly scrapes her fingernails down my stomach, reaching between us to cup my tightening balls.

  I’m balanced on a pinhead, teetering between violence and something I can’t identify. I give her one last chance to come to her senses before I go with what I know, with what I’m good at.

  “Do you really want to know what it feels like to play with a monster?”

  “Yes,” she breathes into my mouth.

  “Then I’ll show you how a monster plays,” I hiss against her lips.

  She gasps in surprise when I roll her over, pinning her to the mattress. “One last chance,” I tell her, restraining both wrists above her head with one of my hands, leaving her open and vulnerable beneath me. I bite down on her bottom lip, hard enough to draw a single drop of blood. I taste the coppery liquid on my tongue. It’s like high octane in the jet engine of a raging machine.

  “Show me,” she pants, a miniscule trace of fear in her voice. That’s good, though. She needs to know who she’s dealing with and how disgusted she should be by him. Scaring her is the best thing I can do for her.

  I lick the blood from her lip as the last of my control slips through my fingers. “I will destroy you, too,” I confess, guilt and desire and reluctance fueling me.

  As if to prove my point, my sick, twisted point, I crush my mouth to hers, grinding our lips together, forcing her to open for me. When I taste the inside of her mouth, the submission there, my blood ignites. Suddenly, I can’t get enough of her, of her unconditional acceptance of the black beast that lives deep within me.

  I push my knee between hers, parting her legs until I rest between them. I reach down to find her slippery core and I pinch the tiny muscle within her folds, rolling it between my fingers. She half cries, half moans against my mouth, her hips bucking against me. I look down into her wide, excited eyes and I feel moisture pour out onto my fingers as I thrust them into her.

  “J-Jasper,” she begs.

  I revel in her response.

  “Don’t ask me for mercy. Monsters don’t know mercy.”

  She gulps in air, her brilliant eyes fixed on mine as I spread her further. I wedge my hips between her legs and guide my cock to her entrance. We watch each other for three intense seconds—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—recognizing each other for exactly what we are, and then I slam into her body with one brutal stroke. Her head knocks against the headboard, but that doesn’t stop me. I withdraw and pound into her again, clamping my teeth down on one beaded nipple just as her body clamps down around mine.

  I ride her silently, ruthlessly, aware only of her sounds of pained ecstasy and the heat that leeches from her body, from her soul into mine. I’m alive. Finally, after all this time, I’m alive.

  Spiraling upward in my anger, in the simple emotion that I’ve fought for so long, I find that I can’t stop. It’s as though now that I’ve finally let feeling in, I gave up control over it. It was either or. Be dead or be alive. Not both. Never both.

  With a feral noise that scares even the shadows in the room, I pull roughly out of Muse’s warm body and drop down between her legs. I want only to consume, to take her in. All of her, leaving nothing behind but vapor.

  Cupping her ass in my hands, I feast on her deliciously wet body. I bite and suck and nibble until she’s begging me with incoherent moans and groans. But I’m already gone. My mission is to possess and I won’t stop until I do.

  When she’s riding my face like I was riding her body, I eat her until the muscles in her lower body tense. In that moment, all I can think about is getting inside her. All the way inside her.

  I thrust my tongue into her pussy. I thrust my finger into her ass. I penetrate her, body and soul, until she pours out for me like she’s making a sacrifice to the god of war. And I drink her in. Her acquiescence, her surrender, her acceptance, I drink it all in.

  And when she’s lying limp beneath me, I grab her around the waist and flip her roughly onto her belly. When her face is turned into the pillow, I sink my fingers into the flesh of her hips and take her from behind. I drive my body viciously into hers over and over and over again, conscious only of the slap of skin against skin and the wet noises her slick body makes. But it’s not enough. I want to see her face. I need to see her face.

  Barely breaking rhythm, I pull out, roll her back over and thrust into her again, holding her legs wide and her gaze hostage. With our eyes locked together, black soul colliding with white, I pummel her willing body until I spill every ounce of feeling I have left within me deep inside her body.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Muse

  My entire body tingles. My entire soul weeps. I want to take Jasper in my arms and soothe him, but I know that he wouldn’t welcome it. I don’t know how to comfort him, or even if that’s possible. It seems he’s spent so long convincing himself that he’s a monster, he refuses to believe anything else.

  I know that’s what he was just now trying to prove to me. He was showing me what an awful person he is. But it didn’t work. Despite his roughness, he never actually hurt me. What he doesn’t know is that such raw emotion, especially coming from someone who rar
ely shows any emotion, turned an amazing sexual encounter into one of the most breathtaking, earth-shattering experiences of my life. My mind is reeling and my heart is opening like a blossoming flower. And my body . . . my body feels as though an entire symphony was played out on my every nerve by expert hands.

  But those might not have been the best gifts of all. The best gift might be when Jasper raises his head and speaks to me, surprising me yet again.

  “I’m sorry,” he says flatly. The remorse isn’t evident in his voice, but I can see enough of his face and his eyes to read it as plain as day.

  I reach up to touch his cheek. “Don’t be.”

  “I didn’t use protection. I could’ve . . .”

  He drops his forehead onto the pillow at the curve of my neck, so he doesn’t see the mild alarm that crosses my face.

  Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about that. I was so caught up in my feelings and what just happened between us, the consequences of it hadn’t even sunk in yet. But they’re sinking in now.

  I swallow hard. “I’m clean. I haven’t had sex since Matt and we were both tested, so . . .”

  “I am, too. I’ve been tested, even though I don’t usually have unprotected sex.”

  I nod, letting that bit calm half of my fears. The other half . . . only time will tell, but I try to focus on the positive. On what’s likely to happen. Or, rather, what’s likely not to happen.

  “Good, so we’re clear there. As for the . . . other concern, I just got off my period a few days ago, so I think we’ll be okay.”

  I send up a quick prayer that I don’t get pregnant, although, perversely, the thought of having Jasper’s child—a beautiful dark-haired girl or a handsome amber-eyed boy—gives me a warm, contented feeling in my chest.

  Maybe you’re finally losing it, Muse. Maybe you finally cracked under the pressure.

  “Okay,” he replies, the word muffled. “I don’t . . .” He raises his head and meets my eyes again. “I don’t usually lose control like that. In fact, I never do. Not. Ever. I just . . . I just don’t.” His expression is one of stilted disappointment. In himself, it seems.

  “Jasper, it’s okay to have a feeling every once in a while.”

  His expression is unyielding. “Feelings lead to weakness, to uncalculated actions and reactions.”

  I smile, undeterred by his surliness. I’m beginning to think that’s just the way he tries to be. It makes it easier to not feel, makes it easier to keep people out. But that’s not going to work with me. I don’t know why I’m so determined to figure him out, to know him, to rescue him, but I am. I think Jasper needs me, whether he knows it or not. And I might need him, too.

  “Ummm, I’m pretty sure there was nothing weak about what just happened.” A blush of sudden shyness stings my cheeks as I think about all the details of the past few minutes. “If that’s the monster you’re hiding, I think I’ll keep him around for a while.”

  Even as I speak, I feel Jasper hardening where he still rests inside me. A thread of excitement is just working its way through me when he surprises me by taking my wrists again, this time in each of his hands and pinning them out to the sides. “Don’t you get it? You shouldn’t like this. You shouldn’t like me. I’m not a good person. I’m not someone you can just happily toy with and then go on about your life unscathed. Knowing me, spending time with me, will only end in unimaginable pain for you.”

  His teeth are gritted. His eyes are fierce. His tone is venomous. I have to admit that it does give me pause. But not for long. What I do realize, however, is that it might be best not to make light of this. He obviously takes it very seriously.

  “Look, you’re not going to scare me off, so stop trying. If you’re uncomfortable with this then we’ll stop.”

  He squeezes my fingers so hard I fear the fragile bones might snap. I bite my lip to keep from yelping, determined not to back down from him in any way. I’m going to meet him head-on if it kills me.

  “That’s the problem, damn you! I don’t want to stop!”

  He flexes his hips and grinds into me as his mouth descends onto mine. He pumps his length into me in two short, savage bursts, as if he might be trying to punish me for wanting him. Or maybe punishing himself for wanting me. But it doesn’t work. I meet him, thrust for thrust, raising my hips into his, opening my lips for his provocative tongue.

  Finally, with a guttural sound that reminds me of the tiger that’s in his eyes, he tears away from me and rolls off the bed, dragging me across the sheets and into his arms. Once his hungry mouth meets mine again, he doesn’t stop kissing me. Not when he leans down to get a condom from the nightstand and not when my back is pressed to the shower wall and he drills his body into mine. Jasper never stops kissing me. And it occurs to me, somewhere deep down, that I never want him to.

  —

  I lie in bed thinking about last night. After Jasper finished trying not to want me, we bathed each other and then he stepped out to get dressed and leave me to my nightly preparations. Nearly half an hour later, I exited my bedroom to find him gone, the house empty. I was too exhausted to go looking very far, but something told me before I even looked out the window that I’d find him at the water’s edge. And I did. I left him to his thoughts in favor of falling onto the tangled sheets of my bed and drifting straight into a dreamless sleep.

  My first thought upon waking was of Jasper, of this complicated, broken, multi-faceted man who shows so little yet feels so much. I’ve always had a weakness for flawed men. It seems that I gravitate toward the ones who are emotionally unavailable for some reason. Ambitious, womanizing, cheating men who clean up pretty, but never really change. But Jasper . . . he’s a different animal.

  An animal.

  A tiger.

  I wouldn’t even know where to begin to describe him. I’ve never met a man less emotionally available, but at the same time, I’ve never met someone who’s more brutally honest about who and what he is.

  From what I can tell, his flaws are so inextricably interwoven with loyalty and dedication, it’s hard to see where good stops and bad begins. Or even if there is such a clear, black-and-white way to view him. All in all, he’s probably the strongest, most determined person I’ve ever known, but I don’t think I’ve ever met someone more in need of saving. It’s that paradox, that strength overlying a shattered soul, that draws me. Maybe even more than the magnetism with which he has held me since the second I met him.

  I roll out from beneath the covers and head for the bathroom. After splashing water on my face and brushing my teeth, I wander to the kitchen where I find an empty mug on the counter and a fresh pot of coffee on the brewer. I pour a cup and go in search of the man who dominates my every waking thought.

  I’m not surprised when I find him standing at the lake’s edge again. Something about his expression last night made me think he’d be here. Something about his expression this morning makes me think this place haunts him.

  I walk up to stand beside him, cupping my hands around the steaming mug rather than touching him like I want to. I’m still not always sure how to proceed with him, how much of me he’ll welcome. Unless we’re in bed. It’s easy to see that he wants all of me when it comes to sex. He doesn’t want to leave any part of me untouched, unscathed. He wants it all. And I want to give it to him.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I say into the quiet morning.

  He grunts. I sigh, ready for another battle of pulling teeth to try and get him to open up. Slipping on my thick skin, I step over in front of him, putting myself between him and the lake. That’s when I see his face, full-on. I see the pale complexion, the dark circles, the drawn mouth. “Jasper, are you okay?”

  His dull eyes flicker down to mine. “I’m fine. Why?”

  I reach up to brush the smudge under one eye, like it might rub off, like it might be made of something other than misery. “Did you sleep? You look awful.”

  “Thanks,” he says snidely, one side of his mouth twisting up into
a humorless grin.

  “I’m serious. Did you sleep at all?”

  “No.”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  He holds my eyes. He looks into them so intensely that I wonder if he’s trying to read my mind. When he finally answers, it’s not an answer at all, but merely something that gives rise to more questions.

  “You. You happened.”

  My mouth drops open. “Me? What did I do?”

  “You dug too deep. You gave too much. Now there’s no going back, whether you want to or not. It’s too late. You’d have to leave here to escape me.”

  A chill chases its way down my spine despite the balmy morning temperature. “I don’t want to escape you.”

  He threads his fingers into the bound hair at my nape, working the strands free from the confines of the knot I tied them into. “Good. Because I’d find you. No one can hide from me.”

  With a mixture of last night’s fierceness and this morning’s odd desperation, Jasper strips me of every piece of clothing, lays me down on the soft grass and makes love to me with the murky waters of the lake lapping just behind my head.

  —

  “So what’s the deal with this tattoo?” I ask Jasper as I trace each sadistic-looking thorn that makes up the tangled bramble inked across his right chest and shoulder.

  “You don’t want to know,” he says in his guarded way.

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know,” I reply with some amount of exasperation. Trying to ferret information from him is exhausting.

  “There’s a thorn for every person I’ve found, every assignment I’ve completed.”

  My heart trips over itself. Maybe I thought I’d misunderstood what he was getting at last night. Maybe I just refused to believe it. Maybe it’s just easier not to. But now, here, in the bright light of day, it’s unavoidable.

  I gulp, but keep my voice as steady and unaffected as possible. “So these are all for people you’ve k-killed?”