Hazed by pleasure, Nix still had to know. This could be his last chance. “Nikolai,” he said thickly. “Tell me about Nikolai.”Roark’s hand drifted down over Nix’s pale torso. He eyed Nix wryly. “You have his persistence,” he allowed wryly. His eyes flickered on Nix’s hot face. Everything hidden behind them even as he spoke. “Very well. He was a genius. He was a … thug. He was night and day. He could be kindness itself to a stranger, and yet the next day would bathe in that stranger’s blood. And if you tear the shirt from Henley’s back, you will doubtless find Nikolai’s name carved there. Nikolai became mine, and I his, for five hundred years.” Roark’s striking face was smooth, expressionless. Enigmatic. “They were five hundred years of heaven. Five hundred years of hell. I can tell you no more. Not right now. Is that enough?

Just drive, rock star. Drive fast. Very fast. Because I’ve got a shopping list ten miles long of the things you’re going to be doing to me.

Rough love. Hard, edgy love. Love that made you bleed. Love hard to find, the kind of love you fought to keep.

... it’s you. You with that bloody obsession, that love of other that runs like a seam of gold through you. That life unlike any other. That wild, endless curiosity. Obsession. Even that maddening fucking code of honor. All of it. You, Benedict. You–