William pushed her onto her back and forced her arms over her head. He’d done this so many times he didn’t even have to think about how much strength to exert to keep her down with one arm while his free hand bound her wrists to the bedpost. He pulled the knot taut but not tight enough that it would cut off the circulation to her hands. He would hurt her and hurt her but he would cut off his own arm before he harmed her. Looking down, he saw her face turn to the window. Sunlight poured in and turned her eyes and her pale hair white as the feathers of a dove. A soft gasp across her lips as he pushed slowly into her. Her head tilted back and a sob escaped her throat.

He pulled out of her and she dragged her knees to her chest and rolled onto her side, her arms still pinned over her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered the question he hadn’t been able to ask. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Talk to me, Caroline. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. She took a deep breath and then another. She slowly rolled onto her back again. “We don’t have to stop.”

He leaned forward and untied her wrists and gathered her into his arms. The gesture seemed to release whatever was tied up inside her. Sobbing, she collapsed against his chest.

Pulling her as close to him as he could without crushing her, he said the three words that most terrified him.

“Maybe we do…”

Nora stopped typing and stretched her hands and wrists. She was tempted to delete everything she’d just written. It felt like melodrama to her. But then again most relationships falling apart often genuinely degenerated into melodrama. There was no dignity in grief, a truth she knew all too well. After leaving Søren she’d turned into a ghost for almost a year. It wasn’t until she grew bored and disgusted with her own sorrow, the days spent half-sick on dirty sheets, that she picked up a pen and started jotting down sentences—sentences that turned into paragraphs that turned into pages and pages of demons she exorcised out of her own soul. Still she hadn’t been able to get her life back together. It wasn’t until her mother had laid down the final ultimatum—get up or get out. For once Nora listened to her mother. She’d done both. She’d humbled herself at the feet of Kingsley Edge, the King of the Underground and Søren’s oldest friend. She’d do anything, she told him, just so she could afford her own place to write and grieve in peace.

“Anything, chérie?” he’d asked her. “Anything at all?”

“Just a job, King. I’ll cocktail waitress at the club, I’ll mop floors…I don’t care.”