"You will," he snarled in her face. He took her by the shoulders and gave her a quick shake until her eyes snapped open. "Tell me why the fuck not? You plan on taking your own life to escape me, is that it?" His voice escalated as this thought occurred to him. "Because that will never happen, Casey, nunca. I will make you my prisoner, wrap you in chains for the rest of your life if that's what it takes to keep you safe." His voice became a vicious snarl and his fingers bit into her shoulders by the time he finished.Casey placed her hands on his chest, splaying her fingers and ran her hands up and down from his pectoral muscles to his stomach soothingly until she saw his eyes droop in response. "No, Reyes, no baby," she breathed, stepping in close to him. "It's not like that at all. I love it here and I love being with you. This is the best time I've ever had in my life. Please, you have to believe me.""Then why?" he demanded from between gritted teeth, "won't you make this vow to m

Despite the rocky start to their relationship, Casey grew progressively closer to her new doctor, Miguel Garrido, over the following days. She learned far more about neurology and her condition in just a few conversations than she had in almost a decade of unbearable headaches. At first Reyes had hovered over their meetings, relentlessly watching over Casey, pacing and demanding more answers than Dr. Garrido could give.Finally, Casey turned to her lover with irritation while they were eating breakfast and snapped, "You need to leave us alone, Reyes. He can't work when he's under constant threat of death and I'm sick of your never-ending mothering."The look Reyes settled on her promised retribution for her emasculating comment, though his dark eyes caressed her features with amusement and he raised a thick eyebrow. He bent over her chair from behind as she chewed on a piece of melon and bit her ear. He held her still with a hand on her neck when she tried to flinch away from his tee

Casey wasn't happy. And when Casey wasn't happy, Reyes wasn't happy. She was sitting in a private room at the Brazilian clinic with her lover pacing close by and his men standing off to the side, watching over their charges. All these big men in the small room absolutely dwarfed the space, until Reyes finally growled at two of them to take a walk, leaving only Reyes, Alejandro and Casey behind.Casey gripped the edge of the uncomfortable plastic chair until her knuckles were white. She rocked back and forth, back and forth. Her ankles were crossed and tucked under the chair. She wondered why a clinic as expensive as this place didn't invest in better chairs. Maybe they didn't know. Maybe someone should tell them. Maybe they had a comment box. Maybe they spent too much money on their high-end lab equipment and couldn't afford decent chairs. Perhaps she would get Reyes to donate better chairs once they flew back to La Paz and she was safely away from this place. Unless she actually did

"Impossible!" Casey snapped after a moment of silence. "I was in a car wreck. It killed my entire family!"No one moved. No one said anything. They simply waited, statues in a still room as denial crashed over her. She felt hot. Prickles of heat penetrating all down her skin as some kind of truth tried to sweep over her. She shook her head and then she pushed her shoulders up, shrugging Alejandro's hand away. He knew. He knew just as much as Reyes had known. They'd all known. But they were wrong.Her family had died on a highway. She slammed her eyes shut and buried her hands in her hair, gripping the pale blond strands in tight fists as she forced herself to conjure a memory that wouldn't come. Had never come. A memory of a happy family driving, screeching brakes, twisting metal, the smell of fire, people screaming, ambulance sirens. Nothing. There was nothing. There had never been any memories of the accident.Ignacio and his doctor had assured her the trauma was too great and t

Casey shivered helplessly, whimpers of fear erupting from her throat. She managed to bring herself under control enough to ask, "A-are you going to k-kill me?" her voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched as it echoed through the room.She tried to crane her head back to she could see him where he stood behind her, but it put too much strain on her shoulders and she was forced to lay with her cheek against the cool metal staring at her right wrist chained above the bench. She jumped and cried out as his palm landed harshly across first one of her ass cheeks and then the other."Now why, after I have gone through all this trouble to acquire you and assure your health, would I simply dispose of you, nena?" he asked, his voice cool and dark.He was right. She'd asked a stupid question. Of course, he wasn't going to kill her. He'd waited months to get his hands on her. He'd killed and tortured for her. He'd provided for her, flown a doctor in for her and taken her to one of the best clinics