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When he placed his arms around her waist and pressed the side of his face to her abdoain, slow and quiet, over her cheeks Dmitri didn’t bow his head to anyone; he didn’t surrender or submit But he was on his knees before her, vulnerable to a kick, a stab to the neck, the , she ran her fingers through his hair, this man who had been scarred so badly that distrust was an instinctive response

She knew the wildflowers had set him off in the bedroom, but she still had no idea why However, noas not the tiive ive hiun to believe she’d beaten her abusers after all, for the hurt he’d done to her heart, butreduced to a scrabbling animal?

Honor’s hand fisted in his hair

The rain continued to fall outside, but inside there was only silence—and an acuteness of clarity that told her the decision she hout her life If she stepped off the edge on which she currently stood, she could fall hard, perhaps shatter foreveror she could find her way ho but a fantasy built out of her intense and inexorable loneliness, many would say But they didn’t understand the incoth of what she felt for this ave no one All her life she’d searched for him, even when she hadn’t known his nained him to be—was a far more deadly, hardened creature

Still edbut not lost I will not believe hiht the voice that wasn’t her own and yet came from her soul It was a familiar madness by now

Dmitri’s hand spread on her lower back “Don’t end this”

“Would you go?” she asked, unclenching her hand, stroking her fingers through that black silk again as she wiped away her tears with her free hand

A long, long pause “Yes” A single harsh word “If you want your freedoive it to you”

Sothe choice was hers and hers alone

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In the end, the decision wasn’t so difficult after all, because when it came to Dmitri, she had no sense of self-preservation And that, too, was a madness, as relentless as the need she had to touch him, hold himlove him “Stay,” she said, and felt the shudder in the powerful body of the man who’d offered her freedom