“Please tell me you know where the key is?”

“If I had to guess,” he said, taking a step closer, “it’s on my keyring.” He gestured toward me. “Why are you doing this?”

“You know all my secrets, all my shame.” I glanced at the cement floor, remembering how I’d awakened, naked and cold, with my hands restrained to the bars. “This is where you first brought me. You wanted to make me suffer the way you did. But we shared something, Rafe, and I want that back so badly.” I shut my eyes, disturbed by the utter shock in his.

“I don’t remember.” I heard him come closer.

“I have faith you will.” A tear slipped from beneath my closed lids, and the brush of his thumb caught it. I sucked in a breath. “I crave your touch so much. Please…make his disappear.”

He grazed his fingers across my breasts. “He hurt you.” His words came out strangled. He inched lower, hands drifting over the evidence of my brother’s brutality, and smoothed a palm along my stomach, where Zach had branded me with his name. “And though I don’t remember it, I hurt you too.”

“Rafe—”

“Look at me,” he interrupted.

I opened my eyes, and my insides melted from the heat in his. His palms cradled my cheeks with a tenderness that masked his need to conquer. He might not recognize the hunger in himself, but I did. That need colored the command in his tone, was evident in the wide stance of his feet and the bulge behind his zipper.

My heartbeat rocketed. What if he remembered and went back to hating me? “Please don’t hate—”

He silenced me with his mouth, his unyielding hands holding my head in place as his lips forced mine open, tongue thrusting in gentle possession that claimed, commanded, owned. My lids shuttered, and I lost myself to his taste. His kiss infused me with a raging, burning need. An explosion went off at my core, spreading from my belly down to my thighs, all the way to the soles of my feet. I spread them and gained better traction on the ground. Cool air drifted between my legs, where I ached for him—for his touch, for his hot mouth kissing so intimately, for the girth of his cock.

He inched away, breaths puffing across my swollen lips. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.”

My heart jumped at the endearment, and my lashes fluttered open. “You remember,” I whispered, both fear and hope warring in my soul.

“No.” His thumbs caressed my damp cheeks. “I don’t need to remember to know that I want you.” His brows narrowed, and he frowned. “It’s the way I want you that worries me.”

“Tell me.”