Focus.

‘Trust me, Jacqueline. It works. Will you let me show you?’ I held her hands in mine – they’d gone cold again – and watched a swarm of emotions hurtle across her face. Fear was foremost, and I prayed that her fear stemmed from those memories and not from me. If she couldn’t trust me with this, I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t help her. Trust me.

She nodded – the barest inclination of her head.

I brought her to an empty space on my living-room floor, going to my knees with her, our eyes connected. If I read her wrong … I couldn’t think about the consequences of that. I knew this girl. I trusted my instincts that this was right. ‘Lie flat. On your stomach,’ I told her, and she complied.

I reminded her of everything Lieutenant Watts said in class, knowing that she’d missed some of it when she’d mentally checked out. I’d watched her do it. ‘The key is to get away,’ I said, and she nodded.

I asked if she remembered the moves, and she closed her eyes and shook her head, as if she was ashamed. I took a deep breath and forced my fists to loosen. My rage at the degradation forced on her would not help her, and that was all that mattered. If this was going to work, she’d have to go through it several times. It needed to be a programmed response that her body simply executed, without a lot of thought.

‘If you find yourself in this position, you want to do these moves automatically, without wasting time or energy trying to buck him off.’

When she went stiff, I asked, ‘What?’ I searched my words for the one that could cause that response and came up empty.

‘That’s his name. Buck,’ she said, her voice thin as a thread.

I found myself fighting for control again, and I knew that it would be best if I never ran into Buck on campus – or anywhere else. There was a high likelihood that he wouldn’t live through a reunion. ‘I will remember that.’

The move was one of leverage, backed up by simple physics – something very clear to me, but not necessarily so to most people. Dislodging a bigger, stronger foe meant impairing his leverage first. I had her perform the move without my weight on her, and then I suggested trying it with me holding her down, promising that she could say the word and I’d let go.

She was so clearly panicked, her shoulders rising and falling beneath my hands. She shut her eyes to hide tears I’d already noted. Goddammit, I wanted to murder that son of a bitch.

I was careful each time, but increased the pressure as she gained confidence, until finally I put my full weight on her. She got flustered and pushed up with her hips instead of rolling to one side – which she’d been doing perfectly moments before. I reminded her to fight that inclination. ‘Yes. Okay.’ Her voice was noticeably stronger, and I locked on to that.

‘Ready to try it for real?’ I asked, watching her closely. She nodded. ‘I won’t hurt you, but you’ll feel the force behind it more than before. It will be fast and hard – are you sure you’re ready for that?’ She nodded again. Her pulse thrummed, just under her ear, and I prayed she could do it. I had to know she could. She had to know she could.

I grabbed her shoulders and shoved her down, and one arm shot up over her head, but she couldn’t get the other one under her. She struggled, and I waited for her sign of surrender, but it didn’t come. Instead, she switched arms, pushing the one beneath her above her head and shoving the floor with her free arm, propelling me off.

I lay on my side, amazed and laughing. ‘Shit! You swapped sides on me!’

She smiled, and my gaze swung to her lips.

Mistake.

I told her this is where she’d get up and run, but she didn’t take the hint.

‘Won’t he chase me?’ she asked, and I gave the answer Watts always gave – that most ra**sts don’t want to chase a screaming, fleeing target. They don’t want a challenge. I knew from experience as a guy that Buck probably wasn’t one of these, though I would not say this to her. In all probability, she knew it already.

‘I was supposed to show you your portrait, I think,’ I said, taking her hand as we lay on our sides, facing each other.

In a small, teasing voice she asked, ‘So it won’t seem like you brought me here under completely false pretences?’

I admitted that I wanted her to see the charcoal sketch, but that fact was secondary to what we’d just done. I asked if she felt more confident, and she said, ‘Yes.’

Her hand gripped mine. My thumb lay across her wrist, and I was soothed by the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. The expression in her eyes – the faith and the expectation – was too strong to ignore. I brought my free hand up to her face. ‘I did have one other concealed motive for bringing you here.’ Slowly, carefully, I angled towards her and leaned in, staring into her eyes, measuring her response.

When my lips touched hers, she shut her eyes, kissing me back, parting her lips, inviting me inside. I stroked my tongue across hers, gently. Exploring her mouth was all I wanted to do – sucking her full lower lip, so sweet, and then the upper, my tongue tracing the heart-shaped curve before diving back inside and teasing across her teeth.

She gasped, and I released her hand to tuck her to my shoulder, my hands skimming down to her hips and holding her close. There wasn’t a millimetre of space between us, but I couldn’t get her close enough. I kneaded her hip and she pressed into me while my fingers meandered across the base of her spine.

I felt her hand on the bare skin of my abdomen just before she leaned up on one elbow and asked to see my tattoos.

When I found that she’d unbuttoned my flannel shirt without my notice, I laughed softly and her cheeks flushed a rosy pink. Chucking the shirt, I pulled the thin thermal I’d worn underneath over my head and tossed it aside, too, reclining and letting her eyes and fingers peruse the ink beneath my skin.

My first tattoos – the ones ringing my wrists – were seven years old. I’d added a few since then, but not many since I left home, and nothing at all in the last couple of years. Tattoo artists are like doctors. You have to trust them – not just their skill with the needle, but their ability to read you, personally. To know what you need, and what you don’t. I’d never found anyone I trusted as much as Arianna.

I waited for questions that didn’t come, as if Jacqueline knew they were more than body art to me. As if she knew their significance to me ran deeper than the ink.

Finally, her fingers brushed lightly over the hair trailing below my navel, and I was instantly ready to answer that touch – an answer she might not have meant to invite. I sat up. ‘Your turn, I think.’ I wanted that sweater off. I wanted my fingers roaming over her, exploring.