An unbearable pressure built behind her clit. Her breathing quickened. Her heartbeat roared in her ears.

  The end was near.

  He tugged on her hair again until she opened her eyes to him. “You’re going to come for me.”

  Zy knew her so well he didn’t have to ask. It was as if he owned her body, as if he commanded her heart, as if all he had to do to unravel her was touch her.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to drag this out and make you suffer.” He gritted his teeth. “But fuck…”

  Tessa wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Zy pounded into her with more fervor. His entire body tightened. His cock hardened. He closed his eyes, shutting himself off from her.

  The severed connection panicked her. “Look at me.”

  His eyes zipped open. Their gazes joined. The connection yanked on her heart and sent her pleasure soaring even as she wanted to sob that the end had come.

  “Zy!” she screamed as her ecstasy crested, her womb clenched hard. She splintered into so many pieces she knew no one but him would ever be able to put her back together.

  I love you. I love you. I love you.

  “Tessa…baby.” The deep furrow between his brows bespoke the unrivaled pleasure and the horrible pain. “Fuck. Fuck! Yessss!”

  As he filled her with everything he had in a hot jet of need, he crashed into her body over and over with a growl that drilled her ears and filled her head. Then they were panting together, Tessa limp against his chest. She fought to drag in enough air even as she tried to stave off inevitable tears. But it was useless. Drops were already rolling down her cheeks when he cried out one last time, then looked at her with wet, accusing eyes.

  That one look told her she’d crushed him.

  “Zy… I’m sorry. So sorry,” she sobbed. “I never wanted to hurt you. I—”

  “You destroyed us both, and now you have to live with it.”

  Of course he thought that. And with all the anger, betrayal, and lies between them, he would never trust her again.

  Tessa didn’t know what would happen next. All she knew was that she loved Zy more than she thought possible, that fate and criminals had put them on opposite sides of this mess…and there was no way out.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” he said abruptly as he lifted her off his still-hard cock, then set her in a heap at his feet and stood.

  She scrambled up from the concrete. “I didn’t do it to hurt you. If you believe anything at all, believe that.”

  “You still betrayed me. You lied to me. You played me,” he muttered as he buttoned his fly with shaking hands.

  “I didn’t. I never played you. I never would,” she hurled, hot tears clawing at her eyes. “Everything I felt for you was real.”

  “Bullshit. Every time I fucked you, you were really fucking me.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You don’t know what happened, what they did…”

  “I do, and you’re going to explain everything because everyone we work with deserves to know the truth. But your words don’t mean anything to me anymore.”

  His harshness took her apart. She didn’t want to cry in front of him, but she couldn’t help herself. The pain of losing him—on top of everything else—was more than she could bear. It was all she could do not to fall to her knees.

  But she refused. She didn’t want to regret everything. All she could control was the way she reacted.

  “Stop crying.” His voice sounded strained, as if her pain caused his.

  “I’m trying,” she sobbed out.

  “I can’t take it. Jesus…” He grabbed her shoulders and tried to keep her at arm’s length, but a handful of seconds later, he shook his head. “Fuck.”

  Then he pulled her closer, giving her his comfort. Tessa clung to him, grateful for his warmth. Until she realized it was nothing more than pity.

  Gathering all her strength, she sniffled and wrenched free. “I’ll be fine. What do you want to know?”

  He swallowed, not quite meeting her gaze. “Did you have anything to do with Kimber’s kidnapping? You better tell me the fucking truth. I will find out and—”

  “No. Absolutely nothing. I swear.” Even the idea horrified her. “I was as shocked as you were. I would never… She’s my friend.”

  Zy just raised a brow at her.

  “Whatever you believe, if you ever loved me at all, the me you know”—she slapped an earnest palm to her bare chest—“then believe I would never have hurt her. Ever.”

  “Right. You’d just hurt me. Got it.”

  Did he not understand? “What the fuck did you expect me to do?”

  “Honestly? I expected you to love me someday. I expected you to be my goddamn wife, let me be a father to Hallie, and to let me give you more children so we could spend fifty fucking years together. But I never expected you to look me in the face and smile while you stabbed me in the back.”

  “If you think I gave the enemy secrets just to hurt you, then you don’t understand me at all. You never loved me. And you’re right; we don’t have anything to say. Get Trees in here. I’ll explain everything I’ve done. Maybe he won’t throw my mistakes in my face.”

  Then, because it hurt too much to look at him, she scampered to her blanket, wrapped it around herself, and held back the tears tightening her throat.

  She’d cried for the last time for Chase Garrett.

  Zy raked a hand through his hair as he stared at Tessa’s stiff back, wrapped protectively in the quilt again. She’d shut him out. No surprise. He’d said things designed to cut her as much as her lies had shredded him. Now, seeing that he’d hurt her, he wished he’d kept his fucking mouth shut.

  Was it even possible he’d misread everything and fucked up? Or was that his stupid, hopeful heart trying to absolve her of guilt for his own sanity?

  Probably. She’d sold him out; they both knew it. Still, she wasn’t the sort to act as if she’d been wronged without a damn good reason, and now he had a nagging feeling he didn’t know the whole story.

  Zy wasn’t sure what to believe anymore except that Tessa wasn’t the only one he couldn’t trust. He’d come to interrogate her…and ended up violating her instead. He shouldn’t have, but he hadn’t been able to control himself for even ten fucking minutes. Now, he seethed with anger. He didn’t know what to do next, how to handle her, or how to make the goddamn pain ravaging his chest stop. He wanted to trust her…but didn’t. He tried to hate her…but he couldn’t.

  He loved her too damn much.

  And tonight had only underscored one indisputable fact: he was totally compromised. And no matter what she’d done, he belonged to Tessa.

  Fuck, he needed to make some decisions.

  As soon as he got some answers.

  With a ragged breath, he stepped toward her. “You swear to God you had nothing to do with Kimber’s abduction?”

  She turned even more tense. “Nothing. I promise.”

  “Is that your final answer? Think carefully. Trees has your computer and your phone upstairs. He’s taking both apart now. He’ll know the truth in the next few minutes.”

  “I only passed on information after the fact. I didn’t—” Her shaky voice stopped, and she still wouldn’t face him. “Explanations don’t matter to you, so yes, that’s my final answer.”

  Maybe he wasn’t the best barometer of her sincerity, but everything in his gut—the killer instincts Trees swore he possessed—told him to believe her.

  “Okay. That’s good.” If she’d been honest, there would be no reason to call the police. No trouble with the law. No possibility she was going to prison.

  But that left her in trouble with the Edgington-Muñoz brothers. She would be out of a job by sunrise. She would need money for herself, for her daughter. From somewhere. From someone.

  He could be that person. He could marry her, keep her safe and in comfort. In exchange, she could spend the rest of her life owing him—and paying him back however his cock wanted. Zy would be a lying motherfucker if he said imagining all the ways he could extract repayment from her didn’t make him both happy and hard.

  But that wasn’t why he refused to let her go now. He fucking loved her and that was never going to change.

  “Let’s go back a year, before you went on maternity leave. Who gave you the code for the spyware and remote access software you installed on your computer?”

  That finally had her turning to him, her face so full of confusion he didn’t think she could fake it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Maybe the enemy hadn’t told her what the code did. “Before you left, did someone give you a USB drive or email you a program and tell you to install it? Did you double-click something from whoever you’re sending information to?”

  She gaped as if she couldn’t find the right response, almost as if he was having a conversation she couldn’t comprehend. “I wasn’t passing information back then. No one gave me anything, and I certainly had no reason to betray the colonel.”

  Was she saying her enmity had something to do with Hunter, Logan, and Joaquin? If she didn’t like their hardball management style, she wouldn’t be the only one. But if she hadn’t installed the code onto her computer, who had? Aspen didn’t seem that smart, so it had to have been Tessa. Unwittingly, perhaps. Or maybe she didn’t remember now. It had been over a year ago.

  “What about last March, before we met?”

  “What about it? I was still out.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but were you contacted by someone who wanted information about our mission to Mexico?”

  “No. I didn’t speak to anyone about anything work related until I came back from maternity leave. And no one has ever asked me about our missions to take down Tierra Caliente.”

  “C’mon, Tessa. We found communications from your Gmail account to a secure email service we’re pretty sure belongs to someone in the organization, communicating our mission plans to them.”

  Her eyes went wide with something between abject horror and shock. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t! I swear.”

  “Then how do you explain the emails?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t, and I know that makes me sound guilty as hell, but I didn’t do it.”

  She seemed so fucking earnest. Was it even possible she was telling the truth? Had someone maybe gotten ahold of her computer? Or was she tossing up another smoke screen?

  Her frown deepened. “Zy, you’ve asked me about Kimber and the cartel. What is it you think I’ve done?”

  “For nearly a year, EM Security Management has had a mole. The bosses have talked to me about it off and on for months. Process of elimination has led them to believe it’s either Trees or you. On Monday, they gave me two weeks to figure it out or we’re all fired.”

  She shook her head, eyes going wider with even more distress. “Oh, god. No. No! I didn’t— I had no idea… Is that how Walker was taken and held prisoner?”

  “Yeah. The cartel knew we were coming because someone inside our four walls told them.”

  Tessa shook her head. “I swear it wasn’t me.”

  He cocked his head, wanting to believe her so badly…but logically, he didn’t see how. “The only successful mission we had in Mexico was when we rescued Walker. You’d left town for your father’s funeral.”

  She shrugged like she was at a loss. “It must be a coincidence.”

  That would make it an awfully big one. “Your Gmail account was also used to forward the floor plan of Valeria Montilla’s St. Louis safe house, the one Walker sent to you with instructions to pass on to Trees, over to the cartel.”

  “I don’t know how. But that wasn’t me. Maybe someone who wants me to look guilty hacked my account? But I did nothing with that message except forward it to Trees via my company email, just like Walker asked.”

  Tessa had a point he hadn’t considered sooner. If someone wanted to frame her, how hard would it be to hack a freebie email account and do their dirty work, leaving behind an easy-to-follow trail? As scenarios went, it wasn’t impossible. But why would someone choose her to target?

  He didn’t know, but was that really the important question? He was grilling her about things the bosses would want to know. Fuck that. He had questions of his own.

  Before he told her what he intended for their future, he was going to figure out exactly how much she had betrayed him…and how much he didn’t dare trust her.

  “Let’s talk about something I know you did, and don’t you dare tell me otherwise.” He growled in her face. “You told someone else the ‘plan’ to rescue Kimber. The one I told you about less than eight fucking hours ago. You going to try to deny that?”

  She flinched. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Bullshit. You always have a goddamn choice.” He couldn’t stop his anger any more than he could resist the urge to touch her again, so he gripped her arm and yanked her closer. “Did you understand that, by passing the information on, you could be sending me to my death?”

  “Yes.” Tessa closed her eyes. Anguish twisted her face. “And it was killing me.”

  Zy didn’t want to be moved by her tears. “But you still did it.”

  “Not because I wanted to, and only because you had a chance at surviving. And my choices were so unthinkable that—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You don’t… I thought you said you’d figured this out.”

  Now he was confused. “Are you saying someone’s holding something over your head?”

  Tears pooled in her red-rimmed eyes again and spilled onto cheeks already stained with silvery paths. He, with all his alpha-hole bravado, couldn’t bring her to her knees when he’d tried to make her hurt like he was. But whatever upset her now had her sinking to the concrete with a thud, her face buried in her palms as sobs wracked her.

  Oh, fuck. “Baby?”

  A sudden pounding on the bunker’s lid sent Zy whipping around. Talk about shitty timing…

  “Zy!” Trees shouted, banging on the metal lid again.

  “Damn it,” he growled, then ascended the ladder enough to unlock the portal.

  Trees ripped it open and clambered onto the rungs, then jumped into the bunker. He turned, looking somewhere between stunned and annoyed as he glanced between Tessa, barely clad in the quilt, and him, still sweating and half-dressed.

  “I guess you didn’t spend your time with Tessa finding out what the fuck has been going on.” And Trees sounded more than a little pissed.

  “Can it,” Zy barked as he bent to cup her shoulders and help her to her feet.

  Trees slanted an incredulous stare at Tessa. “Why haven’t you told him? Why haven’t you told anyone?”

  She reared back. “You know?”

  “Yeah, I do. And—”

  “Know what?” Zy roared, looking back and forth between them. “Stop fucking talking circles around me and spill.”

  Neither spoke for a long moment.

  Tessa bit her lip, like she was terrified to say a word, then she blinked away her tears, stifling another sob. “The man who accosted me in the parking lot on Tuesday?”

  “Yeah, I remember. I’m still trying to identify him.”

  “That night, he abducted Hallie. When I woke up Wednesday morning, she was…g-gone.”

  Zy felt his stomach drop to his feet. He scrubbed a hand down his face as the implications of her words rammed him in the solar plexus. “Oh, god. Tessa…baby. You’ve been passing on information to save Hallie’s life?”

  “Exactly,” Trees confirmed when Tessa was too broken to answer.

  Fuck. She’d done what she thought necessary to keep her daughter alive. He’d had no idea…

  But he still had a thousand questions.

  If Tierra Caliente had Kimber, why did they need Hallie, too? And why hadn’t Tessa come to him the minute she’d realized her baby was gone? Last but not least, if the girl had only been gone a handful of days, who had engaged in the espionage that had fucked EM Security for nearly a year?

  Zy turned to Trees. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Not much since I didn’t get to finish the forensic deep dive on her devices. Madison started texting me about ten minutes ago. She went to peek in on Hallie and found an empty crib. She panicked and—”

  “You tried to make sure my baby would be looked after?” Tessa blinked up at him in shock.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.” But he had. And he’d been so fucking absorbed in his own pain and betrayal that he hadn’t even stopped to think her daughter might be in danger. Then he’d heaped blame, shame, and fury on top because why not win asshole-of-the-year honors?

  Suddenly, so many things made sense. Why Tessa had refused to let him in the house when he’d come by Wednesday night. Why she’d lied Friday about her dinner with Cash’s dad. Why she’d seemed suddenly lukewarm about moving in with him. Why she’d betrayed him.

  “Tessa, I’m so fucking sorry.” He lifted her face to his, crushed to see her red-rimmed eyes haunted with fear and grief. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because they threatened to kill Hallie if Tessa said a word to anyone,” Trees supplied. “As soon as I talked Madison off a ledge, I started reading Tessa’s Gmail account.”

  When he whipped Tessa’s phone from his back pocket, opened it to the first video the abductor had sent of her baby girl, and pressed play, Zy watched in horror. “You’ve been dealing with this, completely on your own, since Wednesday?”

  “I couldn’t risk her by telling anyone.” Her broken voice hurt like a stab in the chest.

  “Oh, baby. If I’d known, I would have moved mountains to help you.”

  “They’re watching me. They threatened… I didn’t know the bosses think we have a mole, but I knew some things hadn’t gone right. I’d overheard conversations that suggested information that shouldn’t get out somehow was. I was too afraid of what would happen to my baby if I opened my mouth.”