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“Fuck…me…feels so good.”

Good?

Just good.

That’s not good enough.

Snarling right back at him, I move fast and wrap my tied wrists around his neck. With a hard twist of my body, I take him by surprise and roll us over. Alden stares up at me in shock, but he doesn’t push me off.

I move my arms from under his head, then reach up to pull the elastic from my hair and let it fall loose around my face. Bracing my hands on his chest, I wiggle my hips.

“You want to know who I am?”

Alden doesn’t speak.

Crack.

Lightning splits the sky, and the ground shakes as it hits close enough for us to feel the charge and vibration.

“You know me. Look at me and tell me who I am,” I order, letting the hair cover my cheek as I ride him.

His hands tighten on my hips, but his eyes never leave my face.

“Tell me who I am,” I demand louder, riding his hard cock faster.

I grab his hand and slide it up my body to my breast. His fingers roll the hard nub as his eyes burn with lust. He still hasn’t spoken, so I grab the knife, now an arm’s length away, and point it over his heart. The sharp tip scrapes slightly with the rise and fall of his chest.

I carve a shallow line over his heart, then another, and another. He watches me spell my name without trying to stop me.

EMILY

“Tell me who the fuck I am,” I yell.

Alden blinks and stops moving. Then slowly his eyes go wide as his hands reach for my face. He draws my hair away, like he’s peeling back the curtain on a long-forgotten memory.

“It’s…you. The girl I took to the hospital.”

I smile and toss the knife aside.

“Took you long enough.”

Leaning over, I lick the blood from his chest before the rain can rinse it all away, and then I look up into his eyes.

“Yes, it’s me.”

I kiss him, and for the first time, who we really are is there for both of us to see. Now he understands that we were both reborn that night. Flashes explode behind my eyes as every moment of that night comes back in a wave. But it’s different now. I control the ending. I control the pain. I choose the man beneath me.

“I looked for you,” Alden says, against my lips.

“I didn’t want to be found. Not as a pathetic, abused girl worth nothing.”

“You were never worth nothing,” Alden says, and those five words fill in the last broken cracks of my heart.

“Alden…I’ve always been there with you. For twelve years, I’ve watched you from the shadows while you grew into the man you are now.”

His hands grip my waist hard as he pushes up into me, claiming me as much as I’m claiming him.

“I learned everything about you. Studied you. Waited for you. I planned every careful step that would eventually put me here, close enough to touch the man who unknowingly owned the darkest pieces of my soul since I was fifteen.”