I gave myself a firm mental shake because I knew what he was doing. He wanted to have this conversation while he had all the power. While he was a squeeze away from choking me. While I was the vulnerable one because opening up to me would strip him bare.

I swallowed under the weight of his control, finding my voice. “Why did you leave six months ago?”

His gaze faltered. “I should’ve known you’d start with that.”

Well, duh. I bit my tongue to keep from saying it out loud.

“I killed Perrone,” he said, his strangled admission nearly drowned out by the spray of the shower. He drew in a quick breath. “I snapped, Alex. I stabbed him with his own fucking pen, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to squeeze his damn head off.” He fell silent for a while.

“You’re still not telling me why you left,” I said after the seconds stretched into a full minute.

“I got my memory back.”

“Rafe,” I whispered, freeing my hand from his. I slid my palm along the side of his face. “You could have told me.” Drops of water hung from his thick lashes, bringing out the vulnerability in his eyes. It was hard to believe this was the same guy who’d blasted my ass not more than a half hour ago.

“I remembered every disgusting thing I’d done to you.” Shuttering his eyes, he leaned into my palm and let out a broken sigh. “And even with that bastard’s blood on my hands, his fucking house in flames, I just wanted to lose myself in you, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t trust myself. Those eight years flooded in, and it was just…”

“Too much?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t thinking.”

He’d gone into run mode. I could relate because that’s what I’d done yesterday. The only difference was I’d gotten punished for it. But something told me he’d been punishing himself since the day he’d taken off. He’d stayed away because the guy hiding behind his memory loss had terrified him.

“Next question,” he said, clearly wanting to shut down this particular thread.

I wasn’t about to let him off that easily. “Tell me what happened in prison.”

His body went rigid, and he glared at me. “No.”

“You promised me the truth.”

He slid his hand down my belly and brushed his fingers over my throbbing clit. “How about I take care of this instead?”

“How about you stop using sex to get your way? After everything we’ve been through, I deserve your honesty, don’t you think?”