Keeping control—not possible. He’d never had control with her, and he doubted he ever would.

“Meet me tonight.” A man’s gruff demand.

Luke’s brows shot up, and he glanced over to see Vance stroking the arm of the blond waitress. “When you get off work, come meet me.”

She laughed and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. From the looks of things, the lady had to be whispering a “yes” before she eased back and hurried behind the bar.

His brows rose. Seriously? That guy was scoring? Luke’s fingers closed around the cold neck of his beer as Vance sauntered toward him. Luke shook his head and said, “Didn’t take you for a Romeo, deputy—”

Romeo. Not likely. Not that sick, twisted sonofabitch killer who’d carved up his girls and marked them. Marked them.

An image of the bloody flower flashed through his mind.

Luke stilled, a memory from an old crime scene photo pushing through his thoughts. That flower. Romeo had marked his victims with a flower. He’d branded the mark onto their flesh within hours of taking the girls. A mark to last forever.

A mark on the back of their shoulders, a raised, rigid rose.

Oh, shit. The beer glass shattered beneath his fingers.

“Whoa, man!” Vance’s eyes bulged. “You all right?”

Hell, no. He threw a wad of bills onto the bar. Didn’t bother answering Vance. Red coated his vision. His body vibrated with fury.

Monica came toward him, slowly easing her way through the crowd.

He just shoved the drunks out of his way. I touched her body, every inch. Should have known.

Then she was there. “Luke, I wanted to—”

“Come with me.” He could barely get the words out as he locked his fingers around her wrist and pulled her back toward the front door. They had to talk, fast, and not here, with all the eyes and ears surrounding them.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

His fist slammed into the front door, and he thrust it open. Lee Pope jumped and spun around, a cigar dangling from his fingers. “What’s the—”

Luke glared at him and pulled Monica around the side of the building. No audience. Not for this. No damn way.

Voices were muted, drifting in the air and through the thin walls of the bar. He had to go farther, get her away and—

“Stop it, Luke!” Monica jerked her hand free. “Just—stop!”

He whirled on her, his body tight. “I can’t believe I didn’t f**king see it. All the signs were there, staring me right in the face!” He caged her between him and the wooden wall of the bar. “He knew, he knows everything.”

Her face seemed to pale in the moonlight. “What are you talking about? What did Hyde say?”

“That we can f**k, but I can’t lose control.” Control? Yeah, what was that? He slammed his fist into the building behind her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rage. Pain.

For her.

Christ, her. “Why?” he snarled.

Her eyes were so wide. So deep. They looked black in the moonlight, but they were blue. Such a beautiful blue. That’s right, because he’d had a type and Romeo liked—

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to calm down.”

He kissed her. Crushed his mouth to hers and just took.

Because nothing was going to change between them. He still wanted her more than breath. It didn’t matter what had come before or what would come after him. He still wanted her.

Always.

At first, she seemed to freeze beneath his touch. No, no, just—

Then she kissed him back with a fury to match his. Her lips sucked his tongue. She tasted. She took. Her h*ps rocked against his. His c*ck was up, swollen and ready, for her.

Monica.

His hands closed over her shoulders. Squeezed. Held tight.

How many times had he seen her roll her shoulders? When she was working a case, when she was pressured at the Academy—

Her shirt had a long, V-necked collar, one that dipped to reveal sweet cl**vage. His fingers slipped under the collar, found her soft skin.

His mouth hardened on hers. All these years.

His fingers curved around her right shoulder, pushed the fabric down, yanked it. Heard it rip.

Her mouth tore from his. “Luke, you can’t—”

He’d bared her shoulder. Creamy skin. Soft flesh. Choking back the lust, he spun her around and saw the mark on her right shoulder blade.

Just enough light to see. The raised skin. White. An old scar. In the rough shape of a rose.

The mark of the Romeo Killer. The same f**king rose that had been in that godforsaken cabin.

His hands were shaking. He was shaking, about to splinter apart. He touched the mark—no, not a mark, a brand—because Romeo had used a homemade brand on his girls. Burned their flesh as they screamed.

As she’d screamed.

“Baby…” His head fell toward her. His lips hovered over the mark. He’d touched the brand in the darkness before. Skimmed his fingers right over it and never realized.

She whirled around and shoved him back a good two feet. “Get your hands off me!” A voice he’d never heard from her. No control. Just fury.

He shook his head and stepped toward her, closing that distance. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her chin came up fast. “Tell you what? That I have a scar on my back? Big deal, you’ve got—”

Oh, she wasn’t going to bullshit him. Not anymore. “That’s Romeo’s mark.” That bit hadn’t ever made it to the press. The cops and agents had held the detail about the branding out of the briefings to the media. They always held something back in a case like that, something to try and trip up the killer later.

Luke had learned about the brand at Quantico. A profiler, Dr. Mark Brown, had been doing a talk on serials for the Atlanta office.

He’d said some of those killers liked to collect souvenirs from their kills. They’d take out the tokens and relive the murders, over and over.

But some serials preferred to mark their prey. A way of forever claiming the victims.

“Romeo believed he owned his victims. Their bodies were his to do with what he wanted. He cut them, he carved them, but first, he marked them with a brand. A rose on their flesh, a gift from their lover.”

“Get away from me,” Monica told him, her voice shaking.

But he didn’t move back an inch. “That newspaper clipping—the one this freak left—it was about you, wasn’t it?” Sole survivor. Oh, Jesus, how had she survived? He knew what Romeo had done to his girls. The torture that would last for days. “I thought it was about the town, but it was about you.”

She exhaled on a hard breath. “I’m not talking to you here, I’m not—”

“You’ve never f**king talked to me!” Too loud, he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. “This bastard out there knew. He’s been using this against you all this time.” What scares you? The bastard had been tormenting her. “Monica, he’s coming for you! You needed to tell me. Shit, this is your life!”

Her lips seemed to tremble. “You’re wrong, this mark isn’t what you think.”

“You’ve got his brand.” And he remembered Romeo’s type: Young girls between fifteen and seventeen, dark hair, blue eyes.

Monica. Years ago, she would have been Romeo’s perfect prey. “You were the girl who got away from Romeo.” The girl he’d kept with him for months. While he slaughtered the others.

A tear slid down her cheek.

Fuck. Luke yanked her into his arms, ignoring the push of her hands, and held her close.

But her tears were wetting his shirt, and her body shuddered against him. The unbreakable, broken.

She froze against him. Not fighting now, but not holding him. “I didn’t want you to know,” she whispered. “Not you.”

He raised his head. She wasn’t looking at him. He caught her chin and forced her head back so she had to see him. “You should have told me years ago.”

“Told you what?” Her lips twisted, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. Too sad. “That I’m so good at my job because I’m just like them? Exactly like the killers we hunt?”

What? No, she wasn’t—

She shook her head. “Luke, how do you think I got him to keep me alive?”

His heart stopped, then started drumming way too fast. “You didn’t—”

“I learned something from Romeo. No, I learned a hell of a lot from him.” A deep breath. “The first lesson… people will do anything to stay alive.”

How long had she been with Romeo? He couldn’t remember, but he’d find out. He’d find out everything. But there was one thing she needed to know, now. “It doesn’t matter, baby. Whatever happened, doesn’t matter.” What mattered was that he had her in his arms, he could feel her flesh and—

“Yes, it does. He turned me into a monster, but you can’t see that, can you?” Anger began to boil in her voice. “You look at me, and you can’t see it!”

No, he couldn’t. He just saw her. The woman he’d always wanted and needed far too much.

She shook her head again, then broke free of his arms.

“Monica—”

She shoved past him.

“Monica, shit, wait!” His hands balled into fists. Monica wasn’t waiting. She was running now.

“She’s not for you.…” The whisper came from behind him. A man’s voice. Luke whirled back around—

Too late.

Something slammed into the side of his head. Something heavy and strong and Luke went down, fast, with the taste of blood on his tongue and Monica’s name on his lips.

The last thing he heard was that whisper. Grating in his ears, saying, “I see the monster in her, even if you don’t.…”

She left him. Monica jumped in the SUV and floored the gas and she didn’t look back. Luke had his own car now, courtesy of Hyde. It wasn’t like she was leaving him stranded, she was just—

Running. Yeah, that was what she was doing. So what? She couldn’t handle him right then. Couldn’t deal with his questions.

Because she didn’t want to face her past.

Or him.

Her trembling fingers tightened around the steering wheel. All the years of keeping her dirty little secret, and the killer out there knew about her past.

What did she fear?

The truth coming out.

But he’d taken care of that for her.

So what else was the bastard going to do?

She drove to the hospital, skating fast through yellow lights and coming to a screeching stop near the back entrance.

What does he think of me? If Luke knew what she’d done, what she’d seen…

What Romeo had done to her.

That f**king brand! She should have gotten the thing removed years before. But she hadn’t wanted anyone else cutting her. She’d had enough of that with Romeo.

Her eyes squeezed shut. She’d been fifteen. Fifteen freaking years old, and she’d missed her bus that morning. Just missed the damn bus…

It was gone. She jerked to a stop at the corner, a stitch in her side, and stared at the disappearing back of that yellow bus.

Her mom would kill her. If she had to call her home from the hospital so that she could get a ride to school…

No, she’d just walk it. It wasn’t that far, not really. So she’d miss first period. Big deal. Mr. Matthew sucked as a science teacher. She’d make second. She had to make it; she had her English exam today—

A sleek black Corvette eased to the curve beside her. She glanced over, saw the tinted windows. Too dark to see inside. Her hand tightened around the strap of her backpack.

A soft whir of sound and the passenger side window began to ease down. She walked faster.

“Aren’t you… Mary Jane?” A man’s voice. Strong, sure, friendly.

She shot him a glance from the corner of her eye. The Corvette crept down the road, keeping perfect pace with her. No one else was around. Gone to work. Taking the kids to school.

All alone.

She swallowed when she saw his face, startled. Hot. Seriously hot. Twinkling blue eyes, hard jaw, full lips, and dimples! Dimples… because he was smiling at her. His hair was dark, thick, just brushing the collar of his black leather jacket.

He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her. Probably in college or something and—

And he knew her name.

She stumbled to a stop. “H-How do you—”

That smile widened. “You don’t know me, do you?”

No. Like she would have forgotten him. She shook her head, hard.

“I’m Ryan’s older brother.”

Ryan? Ryan who? There was a Ryan Thompson in her grade, real class-A jerk who tried to look up her skirt all the time. And then there was Ryan Jennings, but he talked to no one and—

The guy laughed. “I remember seeing you at some of the ball games. Mary Jane, you sure have grown up.”

She hunched her shoulders a bit at that, all too aware that parts of her were still, um, growing.

“You missed the bus, didn’t you?” Knowing.

Well, of course he knew. There she was, walking past the bus stop with no bus in sight.

“I can give you a ride, if you want. I’ve got to head over to Williams High anyway. My idiot brother forgot his lunch. Again.”

Her lips wanted to curl because that sounded like Ryan Thompson. He was forever bumming off people. She turned fully toward him and hesitated.

The car braked. He leaned toward her, that smile stretching ever more. “Come on, Mary Jane. It’s like, five miles to the school. You don’t want to walk that.”