She took one more uneven breath, and her grip on my shirt tightened. “Because what I want doesn’t matter. Maybe it never did.”

Her defenses dropped back into place with a thud that jarred my entire existence. She pulled the rag from my hand and bent over her jacket again, and that’s when I noticed the words tattooed in an arc just below her neck and above her collar, bared by the hair she’d swept over one shoulder.

Cedo nulli. Latin for “I yield to no one.” It was the motto of the independents—not a binding mark, but a promise made to one’s self, and a fitting summary of Olivia’s entire life. Or maybe it was her battle cry.

Was that the problem? She couldn’t be with me because I was bound to Tower? But she’d pushed me away long before I accepted my first mark. No matter what else happened, before the day was over, I was going to know the truth.

Eight

I kept scrubbing my jacket long after I’d gotten the spots out, because my hands needed something to do.

Cam kissed me. And I let him.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d spent years pushing him away to make sure that could never happen. I’d only let myself think about him when the only other option was to truly experience the present—forced fealty to Ruben Cavazos. The memory of me and Cam together had become my mental refuge. I’d built him up in my mind, inflated my memories of him so that just the thought of him could block everything else out, and I’d never expected the actual man to live up to what I’d re-created in my head.

It shouldn’t have been possible.

He shouldn’t have had a chance to live up to anything.

But then I tripped, and he was there on the floor with me, and my body remembered what my head was trying so hard to forget—that I wanted him. All of him. That I missed him like I’d never missed anyone in my life.

Sometimes I dreamed about Cam, then woke up heartbroken and tried to go back to sleep immediately, to recapture the fantasy. The what-ifs. What if I didn’t know what I knew? What if I’d never left? What if Noelle was wrong, and I’d spent the past six years running away from the best man I’d ever met—the only one I’d ever loved—and I’d ruined both our lives for nothing?

But Elle wasn’t wrong. She’d never been wrong. Cam and I were dangerous to each other, and every second we spent together was a second ticking away on some countdown I didn’t truly understand. All I really knew was that when we got to zero, someone would die.

Knowing he was alive but I couldn’t have him was infinitely better than knowing I’d gotten him killed because I had the willpower of a nymphet in heat.

What the hell is wrong with me? I was deep in Jake Tower’s territory, sporting an intimately located binding mark from his nemesis, which could easily get me killed—or worse—if exposed. Yet all I could think about was the hurt look on Cam’s face when I let him kiss me, then pushed him away again. The confusion in his eyes when I refused to explain why I’d left.

It wasn’t fair of me to keep that secret from him. I knew it wasn’t fair. But what if telling him only sped up the inevitable? What if telling him caused whatever Elle had seen?

What if not telling him caused it?

The doorbell rang, and my head popped up. I saw my reflection—never a good idea after a day of submission, coercion and sneaking around unfriendly territory—and I looked tired. But that was better than looking scared.

After a long, slow exhale, I ran my fingers through my hair and tossed my damp jacket over one arm instead of putting it back on. Surely meeting Van would be easier if we got this whole mark search out of the way first.

I was halfway down the short hall before I realized something was weird. Cam was laughing, and he wasn’t alone. And the other voice sounded distinctly…feminine.

I stood in the living-room doorway for almost a minute before they realized I was there, watching them, surprised and a little disappointed to realize that Van was a girl. I was kind of ashamed of myself for assuming she’d be male, and even more ashamed of myself for wishing I’d been right.

Then Cam noticed me, and when he stood, she swiveled on her chair to face me. And some fragile part of me withered and died. Van was gorgeous. Not just pretty, like I could be, with a day’s notice and an hour in the bathroom. Gorgeous like Elle had been—effortless, largely oblivious and completely natural. If she wore makeup beyond mascara, I couldn’t tell.

There had to be a reason Cam hadn’t mentioned the fact that Van was a woman.

“Van, this is Liv Warren,” he said as she stood and offered me her hand. I shook it, and held it for maybe a second too long, trying to decide how threatened I should be.

“You’re Van?”

“Vanessa.” She pulled her hand firmly from my grip, but offered me a friendly, if cautious smile. “And that’s all you need to know.”

Smart, for someone unSkilled. But considering that I was evidently the talk of the west side at the moment, it did no good for Cam to withhold my name anymore; I’d just have to be content with the knowledge that—hopefully—my middle names were still my own little secret. Well, mine and Cam’s.

“Cam says you need some technical assistance?” She wore a long, filmy black skirt and a green-and-black-patterned tank top beneath a bulky sweater that couldn’t quite hide how very well built she was. However, it did cover her markings, which left me no way to judge her rank within the Tower organization, or to guess what her job within it was.