He nodded absentmindedly for a few seconds, then mumbled, “I don’t know who to go to. I don’t know who is on his side, I don’t know who will believe you—or even if they do, if he’s paying to keep them quiet. But I swear to you, we will find something.”

“I know,” I replied, and then softer, “I didn’t want you brought into this.”

“I didn’t exactly give you a choice, Low,” he reminded me, but that didn’t change anything. Knox was still in danger; he was already risking his life to save me. “Harlow,” he said, and waited until he had my attention again. “You told me yesterday that you couldn’t leave Collin, but you came here last night.”

I nodded. He hadn’t asked a question, but I didn’t need him to in order to answer. “Yesterday I was sure I was going to die soon. Last night I knew I was going to die then. When that knowledge hit me I realized how many mistakes I’d made by not letting you take me away. So when I woke up in the bathtub with somehow another chance in life, I left.”

“You left him?” he asked, trying to clarify what I was saying by putting the slightest emphasis on his last word.

I pulled myself up until I was on my knees, straddling his hips. Bringing my hands together, I grabbed my engagement ring and wedding band. “If I never see him again it will still be too soon.”

My eyes filled with tears as I slowly slid the rings off my finger. It wasn’t physically hard to remove them, they were too large for my bony finger, but emotionally, it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I was letting go of a life filled with hate and fear. I was saying goodbye to a man who had ruined me. And I was leaving behind a part of myself I felt like I didn’t even know—a part I wish I’d never had to embrace.

With each centimeter my rings slid on my finger, I felt more weight lifting off my body. My shoulders, my chest, my back . . . my heart. “Yesterday wasn’t fair to you,” I mumbled when I was finally holding the rings in my palm. Glancing up at Knox’s intense eyes, I said, “I should’ve never given myself to you when he still had his sick hold on me—when I was so sure I would never be able to get away from him. I will never regret any time that is with you, Knox Alexander, but after how long we waited, you deserved all of me the way I got all of you.”

His dark eyes remained on my face, his features unreadable even when he asked in a low voice, “And now?”

Cupping my hand holding the rings, I tossed them over the side of the bed. “As much as your kisses healed me, after last night I feel like I’m still broken,” I confessed, and my cheeks heated from embarrassment.

“Cracked,” he corrected.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find myself again,” I admitted, and hated that it was the truth.

But Knox’s lips twitched in amusement, like there was something I didn’t know. “I’ll find you.”

I smiled shakily and cradled his face in my hands. “Then if you want me, you can have me. All of me.”

Knox sat up and crushed his mouth to mine in a kiss unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. We’d shared a kiss that had been a deliberate claim on each other, but this . . . this kiss was his soul claiming my own.

He moved his legs so he could roll onto his knees, and slowly lowered me onto the bed without ever breaking the kiss. Once I was lying down, he moved his mouth down my throat and pressed the tips of his fingers to my hips, just underneath the shirt I was wearing. With a soft dragging motion, he lifted the shirt higher and higher up my body as his fingers trailed along my skin. Then he broke away from where he was kissing behind my ear to pull the shirt off me and toss it away.

My hands moved over the tightening muscles in his back when he covered my body again, and I shivered when his teeth grazed my throat. His hips rocked against mine, eliciting a moan from me. With one last searing kiss, he moved down my body, and pressed openmouthed kisses all the way down, causing me to tremble when he slowly—so slowly—pulled the boxers down my legs while his mouth followed the cloth.

I felt the faint brush of his lips as they raced back up my leg, and stopped near my hip long enough for a soft kiss, then continued until his face was directly above mine again. His dark eyes captured mine and conveyed all of his need, all the words that he wasn’t saying, when his fingers began gently teasing me.

I was his, and he was never letting me go.

My back arched away from the bed, and my eyes fluttered shut as he brought me closer to an orgasm—but his touches were just light enough that it felt like I wouldn’t get there. It was driving me crazy in the most amazing way. From the soft laugh in my ear when Knox bent over me again, he knew it. I had been so focused on trying to get closer to his touch that I hadn’t noticed when he’d pulled down his boxer briefs, and Knox had to cover my mouth with his own when I cried out in surprise and pleasure when he quickly filled me—forcing me over the edge I’d been barely hanging on to.

Every inch of my body felt like it was buzzing, tingling, floating as my orgasm surged through me. A deep growl rumbled through Knox’s chest and passed from his mouth to mine when my fingernails dug into his back as he moved inside me and my second one started before I could even be sure that my first one had ended.

Just like the day before, our bodies moved in a way I’d never known they could—like they knew they’d been made for each other. Every move from him was met with one of my own. It was perfect, harmonized . . . beautiful. But I should’ve known it would’ve been perfect with Knox, whereas everything with Collin had been tainted, even from the beginning.

I tilted my head away from him, exposing more of my neck as his lips ghosted down it and his movements quickened. It was all I could do at that point just to hold on to him—my body was spent and still trembling, but I wrapped my legs around his back and held on to his shoulders as tight as I could. The soft lips on my neck were replaced with his teeth, and my eyes rolled back at the erotic combination of the bite, the vibration and sound of his groan, and the way his fingers dug into the bed—just barely gripping my arms—as his body stilled above mine.

His. Everything about his position then screamed that, just as the way I clung to him showed he was mine.

“I love you,” I whispered into the dark room as he continued to hold me—not willing to let this moment end, while I wasn’t willing to let him go.