It kept my life less like the sum of who I was and more like a sad, poorly directed movie that I’d barely watched and didn’t care at all about the main character.

If she continued to ask, to push me closer into remembering, those walls would crumble, the movie would absorb me, and I would be the main character screaming out his agony with no one around to care.

Stuffing the rest of the chocolate into my mouth, I threw away the wrapper and reached for another.

“You’re having another one? A third and you’ll turn diabetic.”

I scowled. “There’s plenty. For once in my life, I’m not having to conserve.” I gave her a thin smile. “Thanks to your stash, I can be a glutton.”

Her huff of annoyance was loud, followed by the faint rock of the vehicle as she spun in her seat, awkwardly opened the door with the rope still imprisoning her, and leaped out.

I exploded out of the tailgate, planting myself in front of her. “And where do you think you’re going?” Soft rain slicked us, gracing her nakedness with goosebumps.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re hard work?” Pushing me out of the way, she opened the passenger back door. “You’re eating my food, idiot. I’m starving. I’m not exactly going to let you have a car picnic without me.” Scrambling into the back, she crawled with her hands together, unashamedly with her ass in the air and flashes of her pussy making me rock fucking hard until she leaned against the opposite side of the Jeep.

The back seats had been laid flat, leaving the rear with more room for gear and possibly a sleeping space. Her boxes of supplies dotted like life-giving islands in a sea of scratchy carpeting.

Tilting her head at me, still standing in the rain with my cock standing to attention, she asked sickly sweet, “Enjoying your shower, dearest? You’ve had your dinner and now getting ready for bed?”

I gave her the finger, aware chocolate smeared my fingerprints. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a pain in the ass?”

“Yes. Regularly.” She flashed a pained smile. “Joshua.”

Jealousy heaved through me. “And who the hell is Joshua? Boyfriend?” I searched her left hand even though I knew there was no ring there. I’d noticed when she’d been unconscious within a few minutes of meeting her.

She wasn’t bound to another, which made it scarily easy to bind her to me.

Wiping her arms free from the fine haze of rain, she sighed as if my temper grated on her nerves. “You’ve strangled me, hunted me, fucked me, and stolen my food, yet you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?” Her eyes shot up, locking me in place.

My forehead furrowed. My memory knocked to deliver things she’d told me in the past. Things that were now firmly locked behind a door I could not, would not open.

Something about a brother, perhaps?

Bracing myself, I shrugged as if I didn’t care and slammed the car door shut. Marching back to the tailgate, I hopped inside, shoved away the mess I’d made, and adopted her position.

Back against the vehicle, legs spread out in front.

Two naked, dirty people who despised each other, sharing a respite from the rain with chocolate.

The only lie in that sentence was I didn’t think I despised her.

I fucking hungered for her.

Licking her lips, she reached for the box full of candy, managing to fend for herself despite her wrists roped together. Her breasts swelled to the side as she rummaged for a Snickers bar. Her nipples hard from the chill in the air, her hair sticking to her stunning skin.

And fuck, I suddenly no longer wanted chocolate.

My balls ached, and my cock twitched, demanding some sort of friction. Without thinking, I dropped my eyes to it, fisting my hands so they wouldn’t get any ideas of touching it.

The usual faint marks from my past had been replaced with bright wounds from our fight. Indents of her nails and bruises forming at the bottom of my shaft blazed in the gloom.

It ought to have summoned my temper. To have me cursing her very presence.

Instead, it granted a strange kind of kinship. She might not wear anyone’s ring. She might be tied in my rope. But in some sick way, I now belonged to her. She’d been the first in a decade to brand me. And, for the first time, seeing her punishment still embedded in my flesh filled me with lust instead of horror.

“I’m sorry...by the way.”

Her soft voice wrenched my head up. Her hazel stare on my cock only made my belly clench harder.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, unwrapping her chosen meal and taking a huge bite.

Christ, yes, it hurts.

Hurts for you, goddammit.

“No,” I snapped.

“To be fair, I wouldn’t have had to hurt you if you didn’t have such a fascination with wrapping your fingers around my throat.”

“If you stopped being such a menace, perhaps I’d stop trying to kill you.”

“I’m the menace?” She pointed at herself with the half-eaten Snickers. “I think if others were watching this twisted relationship of ours, they would disagree.”

“If others were watching, I’d tear out their eyes for seeing you bare.” I dragged my gaze down her mud-filthy beauty. “I’m debating between torturing myself watching you eat that chocolate bar or demanding you get on your knees.”

She inhaled sharply. Her hands shook, wrapped around her chocolate.

The small space of the car switched from awareness into lust-laced senselessness. The air was tiny fireworks, the oxygen we breathed electricity, and the carbon dioxide we exhaled a drug slowly drowning us.

Ever so slowly, she took another bite.

Her tongue licked her lips, her teeth bit down, her throat worked as she chewed.

And I almost came.

I throbbed, wanting inside her mouth, wanting to be the chocolate bar as she swallowed and devoured.

Turned out, giving a woman to a sexually repressed, starving man was not a good idea.

Snatching the half-full water bottle I’d drank from, I leaped from the vehicle and into the rain.

“What are you—?” Her confused question halted as I tipped the bottle over my cock and gritted my teeth against the grotesque sensation of touching myself.

I performed a perfunctory cleaning. That was all. Wrapping my hand around my hardness, washing away the dirt and mud from rolling around in the storm.

A crest of sickness tried to push up through my guts, shoving aside cocoa and sugar, replacing good with bad, tainting everything with sordid reminders.

I tore my hand away, tipping the rest of the bottle over my length, letting droplets trail to my balls.

The second I was clean, I tossed the bottle to the side, crawled into the tailgate, and didn’t stop until I kneeled before her. Kneeled with trembling muscles and rapid heartbeats. Kneeled with desperation and a shitload of pain.

I kneeled before her.

Now, it’s her turn.

My voice had gotten lost in the darkness inside me, echoing through my chest as I growled, “Kneel.”

She froze. Her chocolate bar fell from her bound hands. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you.”

I merely shook my head. “You’re wrong. I’m already inside you.”

She gasped.

For the longest second, we stared at each other. I physically felt as if her eyes were chains, slinking around me, holding me immobile as locks snapped into place. Padlocks with no keys, chains with no weaknesses, a cage of knots and fastenings that would never be undone.