“Baby, do you know how many nights I’ve sat up imagining how beautiful you are? Do you know how off I was? You’re a hundred times more gorgeous than I ever dreamed. Tell me you don’t want me, too. Tell me, and I’ll walk out of this room. I won’t try to touch you again, but you should know that I’ll never stop wanting you. You’re the only woman I’ve been able to think of since I met you.”

He brought one hand to her shoulder, his fingers just barely touching her, making her shiver in the most delicious way possible.

She shook her head, trying to come out from under the spell. “You’ve dated since you’ve been here. Don’t try to fool me.”

His head snapped up, and she found herself staring into the warmest chocolate brown eyes she’d ever seen. His handsome face settled into a frown that did nothing to detract from his male-model gorgeousness. “Not once.”

She bit her bottom lip. She wanted to believe him. God, she was standing here naked with him and she couldn’t seem to make herself move. “That’s impossible.”

“That’s the truth.” His fingers made their way down her arm. “I’m worried about touching you. I don’t want to scare you, baby. You have to know I would never, ever want to hurt you.”

He sounded so different from the laughing, sarcastic man she’d come to know. This was the Cooper she’d always suspected hid under his playful exterior. He was so sweet, but it was hard to believe he wasn’t sexually active. He was the only one of the three of Tal’s guards who regularly took weeks off and left the country. “I thought you had a girl back home. I thought that was why you left every six weeks.”

He was staring into her eyes, holding her hostage. “I go to a little hospital in Pakistan. I have an old buddy who runs a clinic there. Baby, I’m not seeing someone. I’m vaccinating babies and running the clinic so he has a little time off. I told you. I haven’t wanted anyone since the minute I laid eyes on you.” He swallowed hard. “Are you ever going to look at me the way I look at you?”

Alea wanted to. She studied him all the time when she was sure he wasn’t looking. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I can do any of this, Cooper. I…I don’t think I function the way other women do. I don’t respond to sex.”

Except she was kind of responding now. Her breathing was ragged. She wasn’t panicked the way she’d been after her rescue. When she’d first come back, she’d pulled away from anyone who tried to touch her. Lately, she’d been wondering if she was missing out. Piper was a hugger. At first it had seemed rude to shove her cousins’ wife away, so she’d endured it, but more and more she found herself initiating the hugs. And she definitely thought about being able to touch her men. In her dreams, she opened to them fully, and they took her in every way. She felt such pleasure, such love… What a far-fetched fantasy.

And just the fact that she thought of them as her men was proof enough that she’d gone half mad. She should shove Cooper away right this second before he found out how cold she was.

“Baby, your nipples are hard.”

He backed up just enough to brush his knuckles over them. Rough, work-callused skin touched her own, lighting a fire deep in her belly. She shivered and gasped, then tried to shrink away. He wrapped an arm loosely around her waist and kept her close.

“You respond just fine.” His voice sounded rough. “Let me kiss you.”

Alea shook her head. “I-I can’t stand too much touch. I can’t close my eyes without…”

“Shh, baby. You can’t stand being tied down or having someone on top of you. We can work on that. It’ll take time and patience, but I’ve got both.”

“It’s more than that.” But he wouldn’t understand, and frustration welled. She needed to grab her robe and run away. She looked around for an escape, but the only way out was through Coop. “I don’t know how I would handle hands really…touching me.”

“Let me do all the worrying. We’ll work it out.”

That sounded nice. No, it sounded like a huge relief, letting someone else bear the strain and horror of all she’d endured. God, she was so deeply lonely, but she feared the risk. What if Coop touched her and she panicked? How could she ever look at him or the other two again if she freaked out and made an idiot of herself? They’d know she was frigid. Hell, she’d confessed it. But they didn’t know she woke up screaming and fighting some invisible attacker far too often.

Slowly, Cooper slid to his knees, somehow making the move deeply graceful. “I won’t touch you with my hands, baby, but I want to show you that there’s not a damn thing wrong with you. You can respond. I can prove it. Let me kiss you.”

He wasn’t talking about her mouth.

Cooper was right there, staring at her. She should be horrified. No one had seen her naked since she’d come home from South America. But there was something heady about the intimacy of being bare and alone with Cooper that she couldn’t deny. She felt frozen, hopeful.

And then she felt desperate because Cooper didn’t wait for an answer. He leaned in, and she felt the heat of his breath right on her pussy.

Alea braced for the panic to set in. She parted her lips to warn him that, any second, she would kick out and try to fight him. She lifted her hands, ready to push him away.

But everything stopped—time, her heart, her breath—as he kissed her with such aching tenderness, placing little butterfly kisses across the mound of her pussy. Women in her culture waxed their bodies, and now Alea was glad she’d kept up the practice because she could feel every press of his lips against her sensitive skin. Heat flared, but she found herself trembling as she looked down, watching his golden brown hair move as he tilted his head, seemingly determined not to miss tasting an inch of her.

“You see, you could handle a little kiss,” he whispered against her thigh, and his words tingled along her flesh. “The key is to go slow so you know you’re safe. But we can push the boundaries just a little. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to taste you, baby?”

She’d been kissed before on the mouth, short, groping attempts at affection when she was younger. Her childhood had been deeply protected. Growing up behind palace walls with three male cousins had ensured she’d gone to college with very little experience, but she’d been kissed a few times. She’d even been touched by two male suitors.

But nothing had ever been like this, a heady, trembling rush of amazing pleasure. Oh god... And no one had ever gently drawn his tongue across her swelling folds.

She couldn’t stop the cry that fell from her mouth. Suddenly she was glad she was leaning against the wall because she was pretty sure her legs nearly dissolved underneath her. She couldn’t quite catch a full breath. His mouth felt so good.

“You taste so sweet, Lea. So fucking sweet.” He drew his tongue right up the center of her pussy, stopping at her clitoris to press little circles there.

Alea could feel herself getting soft and wet, her pussy nearly pulsing with desire. Pleasure drummed behind her clit. And she ached everywhere.

He sucked half of her labia into his mouth, pulling gently, tonguing her with wicked purpose before returning to her clitoris. She’d read about this feeling, but she’d never thought her parts actually worked. Apparently, she’d been wrong because every nerve in her body now stood at attention, expectant as he laved affection all over her pussy. He licked her clit with the tip of his tongue, and she moaned, melted, dying for more.

But he seemed intent on making her wait for it, making her crazy. He tapped her clit, then drew it between his teeth, suckling in gentle passes that had her panting for more. A plea sat on the tip of her tongue. Her head fell back against the wall, and her eyes slid shut. Her fingers filtered into his hair.

“Yes…” she moaned.

Oh, god, she was soaking wet. He was eating her up, sucking down everything she gave him. And still, he seemed hungry for more. These foreign sensations he gave her made her feel powerful and sexy and right. She started rolling her hips with every brush of his tongue, pushing toward him, forcing him to tongue her harder as she silently begged for more. He could make her come. He could give her everything she’d secretly craved. And she would thank him because she’d never felt more free.

So close. As he rubbed her clit with his tongue, worrying the perfect spot over and over, she fisted as much of his hair in her hands as she could. Her eyes were going to cross. She held her breath. Soon—in seconds—she was going to scream his name. She was going to find that bliss everyone talked about and shout her pleasure from the heavens.

Suddenly, he gripped her hips, caging her against the wall and stilling her movements. Her brain blanked and readjusted. Memories catapulted her to a different place. Pleasure vanished.

No love. No affection. Just chains and pain and heartache.

Fat bitch. Stay where you are. They were always telling her how ugly she was. How she wasn’t worth the food they gave her. How some day they would just slit her throat and leave her to the dogs.

She could hear the sound of that hand coming for her. They slapped at her stomach because the skin was thin there. They caned her feet so she couldn’t walk, much less run, for days.

“Lea! Lea, baby, stop!”

She couldn’t. They would kill her, rape her. They told her she was nothing. A piece of trash. Worthless. And they would annihilate everything inside they hadn’t yet destroyed.

A stupid princess without her own family. She was cursed and useless, and it would be better if she’d died.

The worst part was, those words were her own. It was her own voice in her head, in her sleep…when she considered how much easier it would have been if she’d rotted in that jungle.

“Lea!”

Strong arms caged her, and Alea fought harder. She kicked out, determined to get away. They wouldn’t take her this time. She refused to let that happen. No way was she going back to hell. She would rather die. She heard a long, tortured scream, then realized it was her own. She refused to go quietly. Never. She would make them kill her before she’d go back into a cage.

“Please, baby. I won’t touch you again. Please come back to me. Please.”

“What the fuck is going on here?” A deep voice cut through everything.

Authority dripped from that voice. Authority decided how she was punished, how and where she would hurt that particular day. Authority meted out “justice” swiftly.

“Fuck you!” Alea shouted. She was done. They could kill her, but she wouldn’t go meekly. They wouldn’t shove that needle in her arm and make her compliant again. They wouldn’t make her crave the drug that made her kidnappers’ job easy.

Not again. Not again. Please not again.

“Alea!” That voice was insistent, pulling at her. “Alea, you’re in Bezakistan. You’re safe. You’re here. No one is going to hurt you.”

Strong arms shook her, forcing her to open her eyes.

Dane? When had Dane come to South America? Had he come for her? He couldn’t see her this weak and pathetic. She tried to push at him, but he was a massive brick wall. “Go away.”

He refused to budge.

Tears ran down her face as she thrashed violently for freedom.

A sharp shock hit her skin, and the fleshy part of her ass flared with a stinging heat, forcing her into the present.

Then reality hit her harder than any smack to her ass.

She was in the palace, and she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by all three of them. Cooper was on his butt on the floor, staring up at her, guilt carved into his face. Lan had a hand on Coop’s shirt as though he’d pulled his friend back. And Dane stood in front of her, his gorgeous face stern and tormented as he stared down at her. His blue eyes were steady as he braced his big hands on her shoulders, seemingly ready to shake her back into reality. He was the one who had slapped at her ass, jarring her long enough to return to the present.

And suddenly, Alea realized that she was naked in every sense of the word. “Get out of here!”

None of them moved.

What had she been thinking? What the hell had she been doing? A sob formed in the back of her throat. She couldn’t handle this. Panic was still there, rolling in the pit of her stomach. Those memories were so close to the surface, she could smell the dank sheets and hear the cries of the women around her. She shoved out at Dane, but he was a tower of pure muscle.

He didn’t even register her pitiful attempts at freedom. “Calm down, Princess. Do you know where you are?”

Alea hated his perfectly sensible tone. She was past sanity, and he sounded so completely cool. She tried to calm down, but they were all so close. “I need you to back off. Back off!”

It wasn’t fair to lash out at them, but she needed to be alone so she could regroup. She had to get them out of here before she lost it again. She’d humiliated herself enough. And more panic hovered at the edge of her consciousness, stuck in her throat, threatening to escape in a long scream.