Elena woke before the light changed.

Marcus’s arm was still heavy across her waist, his palm resting over the lowest cluster of bruises on her ribs. The sheets smelled like skin and sex and the faint salt of everything that had happened in the dark. Between her legs she felt the thick, combined evidence of both loads he had left in her. The bruises ached in a deep, claimed way that was different from the hollow distance of the previous two days.

She did not move right away. She lay still and let the fact of the night settle: she had gone to him. She had said she hated the...