Sia moved into his touch as Julian untangled one of his hands from her hair and moved it gently down her spine. It gave him relief that Sia wasn’t just doing this to get Arthur off her mind; she was reacting to him. He would love nothing more than to erase him from Sia’s consciousness, to make sure that she would never remember him again.

This wasn’t how Julian had planned their first night together to be like. Yes, he’d wanted her to come to him of her own free will—and she had—but she had done so with shadows in her eyes and Julian’s guilty conscience weighing down heavily on...