“Stop! James, please!” I cried out. I couldn’t stand watching him hurt Kade.

James turned to look at me.

“Please,” I begged. “Don’t hurt him any more.”

He seemed to consider this, then glanced back at Kade. “He killed my father,” he said. “He should be punished for that.” His fist clenched like he was going to hit Kade again.

“Your father tried to kill me,” I said quickly. “He wasn’t a good man, James.”

After a moment and to my relief, James turned away from Kade and walked back over to me. “You’re right,” he said. “I should listen to you.” He reached out and I flinched as he drew his fingers through my damp hair.

“How could I not have known?” James said, his words so quiet it seemed he was talking to himself more than me. “You’re beautiful, an angel. How could I not have seen that you were sent to save me, just like you saved Kirk?”

His words were crazy, as was the way he was looking at me, his gaze drifting from my face down my body. Fear sent a dose of cold adrenaline through my veins.

James unbuttoned his pants, then continued shedding his clothes until he was naked. I dared not look at Kade again and tears leaked from my eyes to trail down the sides of my face, wetting the bedding underneath my head. Was James going to rape me? Kill me? All while Kade watched?

The horror of it made me nearly pass out, which I knew wouldn’t help me at all. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep, shuddering breath. I would survive. I had to. For Kade’s and the baby’s sakes. I had no doubt that if James killed me, Kade would be utterly lost to the darkness inside him.

When I opened my eyes, James was naked and holding a revolver.

“Put the gun away, James,” I said, my eyes wide. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just put the gun down.”

He ignored me, emptying the chamber of bullets. I watched in confusion and saw him put one bullet back in, then spin the chamber and lock it in place.

“Me and you,” he said, kneeling next to me on the bed. “We kept coming together like magnets. You see the scar you gave me?” He indicated the long white line on his chest. “It’s your brand on my skin, forever marking me as yours.”

James reached out, his touch almost reverent as his fingers trailed from my cheek and down my neck to between my breasts.

“I still see the mark I gave you,” he mused, tracing the faint outline of the J he’d carved into my skin. “See? We’re tied together in blood.” He flattened his palm over the mark.

I swallowed. “What are you doing, James?”

Reaching for the table, James picked up a knife he must’ve placed there. My heart rate must have tripled, but he didn’t turn the knife on me. Instead, he held up his arm and drew a long cut from his wrist to his elbow. Blood began flowing and he held the cut over me. The thick, warm fluid dripped onto my stomach and chest. James was saying something, murmuring words I couldn’t hear or understand, and his eyes drifted out of focus.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” I said helplessly, trying to stay calm, which was becoming more and more difficult.

James brandished the gun. “One bullet. Fate determines who dies.”

Noise erupted again from Kade’s chair as he fought the bonds and gag. James jerked toward him, his eyes narrowing dangerously, and I panicked.

“James,” I said, then had to repeat, “James, look at me.” I had to keep his attention from Kade, which wouldn’t be easy if Kade kept it up. “James!”

He finally looked down at me.

“Dennon first,” he said, and before I could say anything to stop him, he pointed the gun at Kade and pulled the trigger.

“No!” I screamed, but the click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber chased my cry.

Kade’s face was like granite as he stared at James, his eyes promising death.

Relief that James hadn’t killed Kade was followed by more fear as he turned the gun on me.

“Your turn,” he said.

Kade was yelling around the gag, but James ignored him, his entire focus on me. He placed the barrel of the gun between my breasts, then drew it down through the blood he’d spilled on my skin.

“Don’t do this, James,” I said. “You don’t want to hurt me. I’m your angel, remember?” I was babbling, trying to figure out anything I could say that would end this nightmare.

James’s finger tightened on the trigger and my muscles tensed, as though I was bracing myself. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Another click of an empty chamber.

My breath let out in a loud gasp and I snapped my eyes open. James looked pleased.

He reached out again, and I had to steel my resolve as he began to touch me, his hand painting blood over my breasts and stomach. Bile rose in my throat and each second that passed felt like an eternity.

“You should untie me,” I managed to choke out. “So I can . . . touch you, too.”

But James just shook his head. “You’re an angel,” he murmured. “You’ll disappear if I untie you.” His words were nonsensical and I began to fear that he was on some kind of drug, which meant reasoning with him was going to be impossible.

“The last test,” he murmured.

My arms strained at the ties holding me as James reached for the knife again. To my surprise, he sliced through the bonds holding my wrists, then carelessly tossed the knife away. Grabbing the back of my neck, he pulled me up so our chests were pressed together. He placed his head alongside mine and held the muzzle of the gun to my ear.

“Decide our fate, angel,” he said. “I’ll pull the trigger and we’ll see if we die together, or not at all.”

The blood slickened our bodies and my ankles were still tied, preventing me from getting away. My hands were free now, but his hold was too tight, the muzzle of the gun pressed painfully hard against my head.

“Decide our fate,” he repeated. “Decide . . .”

He had already pulled the trigger twice. With a six-round chamber, my chances didn’t look good.

I didn’t want to die.

The sharp click of the hammer falling made me flinch, a whimper escaping from between my lips. Three pulls. Three empty chambers.

I had no idea why James had decided to free my arms, but now that I could move, a blood lust like I’d never felt before rose in me. He’d pulled that trigger one too many times. A haze of red filled my eyes as rage consumed me—and if I’d never before slept in Blane’s bed, I wouldn’t have known how to save myself.

Blane was an extremely cautious man who’d spent too much time in a war zone, sleeping in places that could go from relatively safe to highly dangerous in minutes. It was the ingrained SEAL in him that had made him hide a knife behind the center of the headboard. The first time I’d spotted it, he’d been up-front and unapologetic about why it was there, acknowledging that while it didn’t make a lot of sense outside a war zone, it helped him sleep better at night.

I reached up, my hand unerringly finding the knife and pulling it from its sheath. I didn’t hesitate, despite the gun still held to my head, and put all my strength into driving the blade down, straight into James’s chest.

James froze. His face was creased in lines of pain as he looked down at the knife protruding from his chest. His fingers seemed to go numb, the gun falling from his hand. I grabbed it, pointing it at him.

As he looked at me, his face cleared. “How can I hate you and love you at the same time?” he asked.

“You don’t love me,” I hissed. “You’re a monster. You don’t know what love is.”

Suddenly, Kade was there, beside me. I had no idea how he’d gotten free, but his hand settled over mine.

“Don’t kill him,” Kade said. “You can’t take something like that back. I’ll do it.”

“No,” I said, pushing his hand away. “He would’ve killed you, me, and our baby. He deserves to die.” Hatred coursed through my veins and I didn’t take my eyes off James.

“Yes, he does, but you don’t need to be the one to do it,” Kade insisted.

“In this case, yes, I do.”

James closed his eyes, raising his face heavenward. “I’m ready. Kill me, my angel.”

“Go to hell.” I pulled the trigger, the report of the one bullet left in the chamber reverberating through the room. The aim couldn’t be off, not this close, and the wound was dead center in his chest.

James’s body collapsed.

Kade lifted me bodily from the bed, holding me so tight I could barely breathe, but I didn’t mind. Shock was setting in and my skin felt ice-cold.

“How did you get free?” I asked, twisting to look at the chair he’d been taped to.

“James tossed that knife and it landed near me,” Kade said. “He hadn’t taped my legs, so I got bendy and managed to get the knife up to my hand.”

“I want the blood off,” I said.

It took three washings before I felt clean, Kade grabbing Blane’s robe and wrapping me in its depths once I was through.

“Come on,” he said, helping me from the room.

My gaze caught on James’s body lying on Blane’s bed, blood pooling underneath him, his sightless eyes staring. Never again would he be able to terrorize me or the ones I loved. I didn’t have an ounce of regret for killing him.

From the den, Kade called Chance. It took him less than fifteen minutes to get there, and he brought Lucy, too.

Lucy sat with me on the couch, holding my hand, while Kade took Chance upstairs and explained what had happened. The kitchen door had been the one James had broken in through, then hitting Kade with a stun gun before searching the house for me.

It took a couple of hours for Chance to call it in, the ME to come collect the body, and for Kade and me to give our statements. Chance looked grim as he took my statement, giving me a long hug when I was through.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said roughly, his eyes wet.

“Me too.”

Mona and Gerard came to see what the fuss was about, alarmed that the police had come to the house in the middle of the night. I kept things vague. No need for Mona to know the details of what had transpired in Blane’s bedroom. She made me a cup of tea, which helped warm me up.

I refused to go to the hospital. I was all right. Nothing damaged that wouldn’t heal. I just wanted to be alone with Kade. I kept looking at him as he handled the police and the questions and the paramedics.

James could so easily have killed Kade. I knew that if he had, I wouldn’t have been able to fight James off. I’d have made him keep pulling that trigger until both of us had a hole in our heads.

Finally, Kade was bundling me into his car. I think we both knew we didn’t want to stay at the house tonight. He drove us to a hotel, and not one that rented rooms by the hour.

The guy at the desk didn’t bat an eye at the robe I was wearing, and soon Kade had whisked me up the elevator. I wanted another shower—I still felt like James’s blood was on me. Kade set me gently on the bed in the suite before running a bath. He helped me into the steaming water, then sank to his knees on the floor next to the tub. His hands dipped into the water as he tenderly washed me, his touch so careful, as though he thought I would break apart.

Afterward, he lifted me from the tub, the water soaking his shirt, then patted my skin dry with a towel and wrapped a hotel robe around me. He carried me to the bed and tucked me against him as he sat with his back to the headboard. I noticed that his free hand, resting on the mattress, held a gun.

“Put that away,” I said quietly. “Rest with me.”

“I let down my guard once and look what happened,” Kade rasped. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear it.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, twisting to look up at him. He glanced down at me and the pain and guilt I saw in his eyes made my heart hurt. “You couldn’t have known what James was going to do,” I continued. “He had a crazy fixation on me. You can’t predict crazy.”

“If he hadn’t emptied the gun of five bullets, you’d be dead right now.”

I sat up and took Kade’s face in my hands. “I refuse to let what happened tonight poison our lives,” I said. “James has taken away my peace of mind before, has hurt me before. None of it was your fault or your responsibility to prevent. He’s dead now. It’s over. Now I just want to forget.

“Only you can help me do that,” I said. “So stop blaming yourself. Put away the gun and hold me. I love you. You’re safe. I’m safe. The baby’s safe. That’s all I want to think about.”

To my relief, Kade reluctantly set aside the gun and wrapped both arms around me. It seemed we couldn’t get close enough, and even though I knew Kade would probably lie awake all night, I heaved a sigh of contentment and drifted to sleep almost immediately.