Catarina sighed and lifted her gaze to his once more. “You don’t understand. I realized that I can’t go back with Rafe, not after everything between us, which essentially means I’m staying with you. But you hurt me. I let you in so deep, and I didn’t even know I was doing it. You hurt me far worse than he ever did. I have to get to a place where I can let that go. I don’t want to be the type of person who brings up the past and throws it in someone’s face, and that means I have to deal with it and forgive you or I can’t be with you. More, I have to trust you again. To do that, I’d be giving you everything, stripping myself bare. And if I do that . . .” She trailed off.

He kept his face blank, but it was a body blow. You hurt me worse than he ever did. He wanted to roar with rage. He’d handled everything the wrong way with her. I don’t want to be the type of person who brings up the past and throws it in someone’s face, and that means I have to deal with it and forgive you. She’d delivered that in her soft little confessional voice as if she was the one who had sinned, not him. Giving you everything. Stripping myself bare.

She was definitely going to kill him if she kept saying things like that in a voice that penetrated through all of his armor and pierced him straight through the heart. He pressed one hand to his chest, hoping he wasn’t having a heart attack and it was just penance for betraying her. She had been such a damn innocent and he’d ripped that away from her as well.

“If I trust you again, Eli, you could destroy me. That’s what I’d be giving to you. The power to destroy me. That’s what you’re really asking of me.”

There it was. She saw what he was asking—no, demanding—of her. She knew what the ultimate price would be. She was going in with both eyes open, no rose-colored glasses like she’d had in the warehouse. She knew what he was and now, what he was capable of. Still, Catarina was holding out the world to him. That was the one piece she didn’t get. What she would be giving to him.

She could bring him to his knees without even trying. He didn’t deserve her. He had a hell of a lot of sins on his soul, and she didn’t. She was clean and good and damn it all, he was keeping her anyway, even when he knew he shouldn’t. That wasn’t his leopard talking, that was the man.