His face hardens, his jaw clenches again. “So that you can move on without any regrets.” His voice is sharp. He scowls at me. Then something catches his eye to my right. He frowns and tilts his head to the side. I follow his gaze and freeze. Oh, bloody hell, my clinical psychopathology book! My PTSD list!

I watch in slow motion as he treads to the table and picks up the list with his long fingers. His eyes change as he reads it, from confusion to horror to fury to relief until the plates settle in their neutral, guarded spot. In the silence, I can only hear my heart pounding in my ears. He picks up the textbook and reads through it in seconds. At last, he looks up at me.

“How long have you known about my defect?” His voice is even, but I don’t know if the storm has passed or it’s coming.

Defect? It’s not a defect, it’s an illness. “I just put the pieces together right before you came over. After I heard you were in the war.” My voice is faint.

He nods, and with slow, deliberate motions, tucks the list back in the exact page and position he found it. Then he sits on the ottoman in front of me, at the very edge.

“And you’ve been sitting here, with this knowledge, seriously contemplating being with me?” Still even voice.

I nod and swallow.

His jaw clenches again. “Elisa, what you’ve read in this book and these symptoms are all true. But it’s one thing to read about them, and it’s quite another to live with them. And I cannot permit under any circumstances that your life is tainted with this. You need to grasp that, so listen very carefully to my words.” He pauses, waiting for me to look at his mouth where the words will materialize. I have a strange compulsion to close my eyes and ears because I know the words will make no difference. I will still want him and I will try to save him. Much like he is trying to save me.

“Look at me,” he says.

“I am.”

“No, look at me, not at what you see in your head. Put aside all the obligations you feel toward me, what we’ve shared, and listen like a scientist. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’re young, intelligent, beautiful, loving—despite all that life has thrown your way. Hopefully your immigration will work out, and you can finally move on from your past. I cannot. I will not. Whether I’m thirty-five or ninety-five, this is my reality: I am a trained killer, volatile and dangerous. And you—need—to stay—away.”

Every punctuated word feels like a stab in my chest. Not for myself but for him. Because under all his concern for me lies a big truth: his inability to see any good things about himself, his belief that he is a defective machine. Odd that after all he has told me, it took this moment to grasp the enormity of his struggle. And no matter what it may cost me, now all I want to do is soothe him. I stand, my decision made.

He frowns, but stands as well. I watch his face, feeling as though I broke through chains. Ever since I first saw him, I have been trying to fight him so I don’t get hurt. How little that matters now that I truly see his pain!

I take his hand in both of mine. It’s ice cold. “You also have goodness in you and you need to see it. I’m in awe of you.”

“That’s because you don’t know me.” He sounds defiant.

“I know more than you think. I know what’s here,” I say, putting my hand on his chest. His heart is breaking through his ribs in a strong, jagged rhythm. Like mine.

“I know the circles under your eyes.” I trace them with my finger. “I know the laugh with no sound.” I caress his lips. “I know that in one week, you’ve saved all my dreams.”

“With sex and money,” he says with contempt.

“No. With your humanity.” I take his right hand and put it over his frantic heart.

“Listen,” I tell him. The defiant boy leaves his eyes, and the man stills as he listens to his own heartbeat.

“Now listen here.” I take his other hand and put it over my own heart. His touch sends tremors along my spine but I don’t move.

Our heartbeats spike under our hands in harmony, and then our lungs fall in sync too. At that precise moment, I reach on my tiptoes for his lips and kiss him.

His shoulders relax under my touch, and now I know why. His lips start moving with mine. Light and hesitant, like questions. I answer them as best I can. Then his kiss changes. His hands fly to my face. I press myself against him, fisting my fingers in his hair. He responds so forcefully that we stagger across the room until I feel the wall at my back. His hips pin me against it. My feet leave the ground as his kiss literally sweeps me off my feet.

I bite his lip like the taste of his mouth is not enough. He lifts me and wraps my legs around his waist. His erection finds its spot and presses against me.

“You will not make this easy, will you?” he asks, his breathing harsh. His eyes are scorching.

I shake my head.

“Ceasefire,” he says and kisses me hard.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Boy, Man, God

I flex my thighs to bring him closer. He moans. My dress has bunched up on my hips and the thin layer of my knickers is not enough to block him. He starts grinding against me and rolling his hips slowly. He brings his lips to my ear. His words start. Different words. Not hard, not dirty. Loving. Between each whispered word, he nibbles, kisses, bites and grinds.

“I missed you… I missed the way you smell…the way you moan. Speak up, baby… I love the way you say my name. Don’t ever call me Mr. Hale again. I hate it… Yes, like that… It sounds good when you say it… I love the way you look when you’re about to come. Eyes open. Look at me… What do you want? Tell me… No, not yet. This one is for you. Only you… I know, I know… Here, shh. I’ll take over.”

He picks up his tempo against my knickers. The throbbing increases with each grind until the tension in my body becomes unbearable. Every muscle flexes and snaps. My insides convulse violently and I soar.

When I float back to earth, the only thought I can form is extraordinary. I open my eyes. He looks triumphant as always but his jaw is locked and his fingers dig into my buttocks. The sight is both predatory and hunted. I realize now that he stopped himself from coming. This was all mine.

“Where is your room?” he says, kissing along my jaw. I don’t have the power of speech back so I point behind him across the living room. He strides there, with me wrapped around him, his tongue speaking with strokes now instead of words. My body, already sensitized, inflates again.

In my room, he leans me against the closed door and lowers me to the floor. When my feet touch the ground, he steps back. He doesn’t look anywhere else but at me. He takes off all his clothes except his trousers. I stare at him, apple-and-Eve again. With one step, he closes the distance and lowers his mouth to my ear.

“You get more beautiful by the hour. Even my memory can’t do you justice.”

His hands roam my body and trail up along my spine. He finds the zipper there and lowers it slowly. The nail of his thumb grazes my spine as my dress comes undone. He caresses my back and slides the dress off my shoulders. As my skin is exposed, he kisses it. His lips are hot, his breath fire.

In one move, my bra and knickers come off. He runs his thumb over my lips and, like the first time he did this, I have an urge to taste him. I part my mouth and he pushes his thumb inside. He tastes like nothing and yet, like everything. He repeats the process with his index and middle fingers, then with his other hand. The gesture is so erotic that the buzz in my body becomes tangible.

Wet now, his hands mold my breasts. He is gentle at first, then rougher and, finally, I feel the delicious pinch that I have started to know well. I lean against the door as my weight becomes too heavy. His mouth closes around my nipple. Slow strokes of his tongue change to bites and back again in a heavenly pattern. He moves not like my body is the end, but like it is the beginning.