My fault.

My doing.

A tear slipped free. With casual ease, he scooped it up and sucked the moisture off his finger. “Hands at your sides, now.”

I shook my head, and the gesture probably came off as defiant, but really, I just wanted to crawl into myself and die. The thought of putting my body on display for him sent me into a panic. This body betrayed me, it attracted the wrong attention and glorified in it. All it would take was one touch of his hand for him to realize how I wanted him.

“I-I don’t understand.”

“What do you not understand, Alex? Sounds pretty clear to me.”

“Don’t do this,” I pleaded, retreating until I bumped into the bars with nowhere to go. I hid myself as much as possible, thighs pressed together and palms covering my breasts.

He unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his jeans.

“Please—” I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t budge even as adrenaline coursed through me.

“Do as you’re told, or I’ll make you wish you’d listened the first time.”

My arms weren’t part of me. Somehow, all on their own, they dropped to my sides like two sticks of deadweight. His eyes traveled over me, starting at my feet and slowly lifting to my belly before roaming higher.

“Look at the set of tits on you.”

I stood on a precipice of indecision, and taking the plunge could bring about two different outcomes. Fear, the kind that made your heart beat so fast, your mind tricked you into believing you were seconds from death. Or, I could take a free-fall into insanity. Rafe Mason was, essentially, the love of my life. I could lie to everyone else, but not to myself. Nothing he did would change that.

Even now, as his hand formed an angry fist around that belt, I came alive. Or maybe it was because he posed such a threat. God, I was fucked up. I knew what he was capable of. A memory of swollen and bloody flesh sprang to mind, so vividly I could describe it in Technicolor. That last cage fight before they’d arrested him, the one to trump all others, burned in my memory.

His attention lingered on my breasts, and the mere heat of his stare branded me. Here was a man furious, a man few would blame for wanting to do horrible things to the person who’d wrecked his life.

That person was me, and despite the threat in his expression, something about the way he caressed my body with a single glance reduced me to a puddle of need. It pooled between my legs until everything was tight and wet and hot.

With careful patience, he feathered the back of his hand across my nipple, and I felt his touch everywhere, especially between my legs where I ached and burned from the inside out. Until now, I’d never known what it was like to be on the receiving end of Rafe’s attention. He was the only guy capable of making me feel this way.