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him become her boyfriend. Have fun with him, then have it lead someplace wonderful and permanent. Ahhh. The normal girl’s dream. Classic. Romantic.
    But she was not normal. Reliving that kiss in Bruno’s office always ended with her huddled in bed, hot face shoved into her pillow, following one of her many erotic Sam fantasies that always led to orgasms like thunderclaps. Knowing perfectly well what came next. Feeling so stupid for inflicting it upon herself, again and again.
    Her punishment was always swift and brutal. If she saw Sam, or fantasized about him, it unleashed her worst nightmares, and often stress flashbacks during the day as well. It was like a cruel spell, to crave him so much when giving in to the craving was so self-destructive. Their hot tryst in Bruno’s office had touched off a period of waking flashbacks so violent and awful, she’d considered checking herself into a mental facility. Same thing, after Sam had gotten shot last year, and she’d spent all those nights in Intensive Care. She’d paid for that. During the day, she saw Yuri, her captor from the days of her imprisonment, leering at her everywhere. He was at the DMV, behind the counter at Starbucks, foaming her latte, pumping her gas at the 7-Eleven. At night, it was nightmares from the bad old days. She was naked, chained to a table. They were coming at her, raising the sacrificial knife, and she woke screaming as it was about to plunge into her chest. Or the other classic, where she was making love to Sam, and it was marvelous, and suddenly, he morphed into Yuri. That one was particularly hideous.
    It wasn’t fair. Sam deserved someone less fucked up than she was, even if she weren’t leaving the country. Even if he didn’t have checkmarks next to every characteristic she could not possibly accept in a lover. He was a homicide detective, like her father. He was addicted to danger, he liked bourbon, he had multiple bullet scars.
    That, she did not need, on top of her other complicated shit. Thanks, but no. It would be like painting a target on her chest that said, Yes, hurt me, please. Go ahead. I was genetically engineered for it.
    Hell with that. She wasn’t going to play out that sad, sick drama. No matter how deeply she’d been programmed to do so.
    Maybe she’d just skip sleep from now on. Maybe she could just stay awake forever. She ran her fingers through her hair. Found two pins that clung to the remnants of her updo and twisted the thick rope up again. A temporary measure. It would tumble down soon enough.
    Sam never gave up, never lost interest. His laser focus was unnerving. A normal man would have written her off by now. His focused intensity cut through her defenses, to secret places she’d forgotten were there. But she was not that terrified twelve-year-old, locked in stinking darkness. She did not appreciate being forced to feel like that again. Remembering it was painful. The way the little ones had clung to her. Needing her to be strong, needing her to love them. She’d hated herself for lying to them, even as she soothed or reassured them.
    But she had, by God, learned how to put on a good show.
    Sam brought those feelings back. No defenses. Back to the wall.
    Not that Sam was cruel or frightening. On the contrary. It was the rawness she could not endure. It hurt, to be so bare. Buzzing with lethal voltage. She couldn’t breathe, think, function in this condition. She would melt down, go nuts, totally lose it. Not even during her long, historic crush on Josh had she felt like that, but she’d been too clueless and innocent at the time to know the difference.
    She’d drawn some conclusions about sex, pre-Sam, after her hopes for Josh had come to nothing and her college dating adventures had gone nowhere. What she’d taken away from it all in the end was that there were far more important things in life to fuss about.
    It made her squirm, to hear Sam echo