“Never ask me that.”

“Jada—Dani is like you.”

“Dani is a genetically mutated human. Not like us at all. There’s a price for what we are. We pay it every day.”

“What kind of price?”

He doesn’t reply.

I try a side approach. “Why does it take you so much longer than Ryodan to transform from beast back to man?”

“I enjoy the beast. He enjoys the man. The beast has little desire to resume human form, resists it.”

“Yet you live mostly as a man. Why?”

Again he doesn’t reply. I resume pondering my position on the asshole and how to get off it.

“Fuck me,” he says softly.

I stare at him through the dim light as instant lust eclipses anger, will, time, place. My knees weaken in anticipation of ceasing their function, ready to drop me back on the floor so I can wrap my legs around Barrons when he spreads his big hard body over me. Master to slave: when he says “Fuck me,” my body softens and I get wet. It’s visceral. Inescapable. I love the way he says “Fuck me,” as if his body will explode if I don’t touch him, slam down on him and take him inside me, meld our flesh together in that place we both find the only peace we ever know. Out of bed, we’re a storm. In bed, we find the eye. The detritus of our world, of our complex and difficult personalities, gets swept up into the various supercells eternally raging around us and vanishes.

I want to. Especially after what I just saw. But that he suffers doesn’t absolve him for an action he shouldn’t have taken. “Why?” I say pissily. “So you can erase my memory again?”

“And there it is. Go ahead, Ms. Lane. Air your grievances. Tell me what a big bad bastard I am that I tucked away a truth you couldn’t face and gave you time to come to terms with it. But reflect on this: it wasn’t the only time. You did the same when you were Pri-ya. Twice I got under your skin, and both times you couldn’t shut me out fast enough.”

“Bullshit. You don’t get to cast it in some sunny, kind light when there’s nothing sunny and kind about it.” I don’t acknowledge his second comment because he has a somewhat valid point and this is about my irritation, not his.

“I didn’t say it was sunny and kind. It was self-serving, as is all I do. One would think by now you know who I am.”

“You had no right.”

“Ah, the morally outraged cry of the weak: You’re not ‘allowed’ to do that. One is allowed to do anything one can get away with. Only when you understand that will you know your place in this world. And your power. Might is right.”

“Ah,” I mock, “the morally bankrupt howl of the predator.”

“Guilty as charged. I’m not the only one that howled that night.”

“You don’t know for certain that I wouldn’t have—”

“Bullshit,” he cuts me off impatiently. “You don’t get to pretend you would have done anything but despise me. It was already there in your eyes. You were young, so bloody young. Untouched by tragedy until your sister’s death. You came to Dublin, avenging angel, and what’s the first thing you did? Fucked the devil. Oops, shit, eh? You felt more alive with me that night than you’ve ever felt in your life. You were fucking born in that run-down rented room with me. I watched it happen, saw the woman you really are tear her constrictive, circumscribing skin right down the middle and strip it off. And I’m not talking about fucking. I’m talking about a way of existence. That night. You. Me. No fear. No holds barred. No rules. Watching you change was an epiphany. How did it feel to come alive in the city that killed your sister? Like the biggest fucking betrayal in the world?”

I snarl like an enraged animal. Yes, yes, and yes. It abso-fucking-lutely did. Alina was cold in a grave and I was on fire. I was glad I’d come to Dublin, glad I’d gotten lost and stumbled into his bookstore, because something in me that had slumbered all my life was waking up. How can you be glad you came to the city that killed your sister? How can you feel exhilarated to be alive when she’s dead? How could I let anything ever make me feel good again?

“You couldn’t deal with it, and you couldn’t despise yourself any more than you already did, so you turned it on me. You want to hate me for taking that memory and stashing it away for a while, go ahead.”

I snap, “I don’t want to hate you for it. I want to find a way to forgive you for it. And that’s what scares me. You took my memory, my choice to deal with or refuse to deal with what happened. You took a slice of my reality.”