“Tell me to stop.” He waits a moment. When I don’t speak, he lowers his head and kisses me much more gently—my forehead, my cheeks, my chin. Everywhere except my lips. And I can’t not do this, because I want him so damn badly. He kisses his way from my jaw to my throat, still holding me down. Which gets to me big-time.

When his lips return to mine, I open my mouth to let him in, except he teases me, giving me his tongue only briefly, then swapping it for his fingertip. I wanted to see him lose control, but I’m the one who’s losing it, bucking underneath him and trying to tug my hands free because I need more.

At last he lets me have his tongue. I’m sucking in air through my nose and it feels like we’re underwater. From the way he’s breathing, his control might finally be slipping.

He wouldn’t kiss me like this if he knew what I did to his sister.

I need to tell him, before we go any further. But he’ll hate me.

And it feels so good.

When I finally get a hand free, I pull at his thermal top. He breaks the kiss to sit up astride me and peel it over his head. I take in his torso in the half-light. These are not the pumped-up, unbalanced muscles of the bodybuilders I see in the gym but the strong, functional muscles of an athlete. Even now, ten years on.

He looks down at me with faint amusement as I explore.

I slide my fingers over the taut, smooth skin, tracing the mounds and hollows. And the scars. He’s beautiful.

“Can I?” He reaches for the hem of my thermal top.

“Yeah.”

He lifts it off. My nipples are tight in the cold air, and when he touches them with a fingertip they tighten more. He snatches his hand away and sits upright over me, shoulders rising and falling.

What just happened?

“I need to tell you something, Milla.” His thighs grip my sides. “I tried to tell you in the bathroom earlier.”

My mouth goes dry. I think I know what he’s going to tell me. But it doesn’t make sense. Unless it was all lies. How he thinks she’s still alive and out there, and asking me who I thought killed her. Telling me the lift pass was planted. My stomach turns. He must have taken it from her pocket as some sort of sick keepsake.

His blue eyes look down at me, apprehensive. “Before I tell you, I want you to know I’m so sorry for what I did.”

There’s only one thing he can mean. Images flash through my mind. His large hands tightening around his sister’s throat. Or stabbing her with one of his large kitchen knives. Or pushing her off a big drop. Or—