“I’ve given you food so you don’t die on an empty stomach. It’s called being kind.”

Her nose scrunched in disgust. “Kind is letting me go. Kind is not touching me. Kind is letting me live.”

“Then eat, and you’ll live a little longer.”

She held up the berry I’d painstakingly nurtured from seed to fruit. “Is it poisoned?”

I turned to chilly stone. “I’d never tamper with food that way.”

“Yet you’ll tamper with my life.”

“Different.”

“How is that different?” She glared at me as if her hatred had just grown a thousandfold.

“I want the strawberry. I don’t want you.”

Her shoulders went to slouch, only for steel to force her straight. “You wanted me last night.”

My hands curled around my plate. “That won’t happen again.” Those four words were spoken in honesty, but they tasted like the worst lie I’d ever told. Would I be able to end her life before touching her a final time? Would I truly deny myself the chance to be inside her before she turned lifeless and cold?

She studied me silently, dropping the strawberry back onto her plate. She scanned the breakfast I’d generously provided, her eyes slowly filling with an empty darkness.

Once again, I was familiar with that look.

I’d seen it staring back at me in mirrors before I’d smashed them, and I’d seen it in the eyes of my prey. She’d stopped fighting against the inevitable. Her instincts sensed there was no way out. She was dead, regardless if she wanted to be or not.

Normally, with that realization came a hollow kind of peace. But in her case, she looked lost, terrified, and painfully alone.

Eating another snow pea, I tried to ignore the tug in my chest. The sensation of empathy that I’d long since crushed.

She placed her plate silently onto the floor.

That affected me to the core.

She’d been so grateful for the food only moments ago. And now, even in her immense hunger, she refused to take a single thing from me.

A stalemate sprang between us.

Her despondency made impatience and annoyance fill me, but beneath that, a minor trace of compassion burned.

Silence ticked for a while.

Her stomach grumbled.

I snapped, “Nothing is poisoned.”

It was her turn to ignore me.

“Would I be eating if it was?” I growled.

She didn’t look up, staring at her hands in her lap. “You could have just poisoned my share.”

“I value food too highly to ruin it. On that you have my word.”

Her hair slid forward, obscuring her face.

Needing her to look at me, I said coldly, “And why would I poison you, anyway? It would deny me the pleasure of squeezing your delicate neck again.”

She swallowed hard, her swirling eyes flashing up to mine. “You’re a monster.”

“No, I’m dealing with a problem.”

“Let me go, and I’ll no longer be a problem.”

“Let you go, and you’ll bring a thousand problems in return.”

She crossed her arms, trembling hard. “Go on then. Finish the job. Kill me.”

I tore off a piece of bread, a sudden coldness flashing through my heart. In the few short minutes of conversation, I’d remembered something that I’d so successfully forgotten.

With her trespassing, she’d brought life back into this place. She’d chased away the quietness that’d settled so deeply inside me.

After years alone, you tended to forget.

If enough time passed, you could even pretend it never existed.

But thanks to her, I remembered why I’d struggled so much in those first few years. Why I’d spent a year catatonically drunk before I’d had to make the choice to live or die. Why I’d turned my back on those who’d turned their back on me.

Loneliness.

It was a disease that once caught, there was no cure.

Its endless vacuum sucked up every emotion and thought until the only thing left was a husk. A wordless husk with bones so hollow, I expected one day just to shatter into dust and be done with it.

“Well?” she snarled. “I’m done waiting. You made me wait all night. If you’ve made up your mind to become a murderer, then just do it already.” Tears glittered in her angry eyes, a final attempt at hope blazing. “But...if you’re still looking at your options, I have money. I...I’ll pay you to free me. What do you want? A million? Two? Put a price on my life, and I’ll pay it.”

I paused. “You expect me to believe you have that sort of money?”

“I do.” She balled her hands, warming to her crusade. “I’m successful online. I haven’t had anything to spend my income on. I’m...a good saver. If I have to buy my life from you, then so be it. You can have every penny I have if you let me go.”

I sat back, stunned once again at her beauty. This time, it wasn’t her looks that made me hard but her fierceness. Her fury and skills at negotiation. She hadn’t accepted her end, after all.

When I didn’t speak, she licked her lips and rubbed her arms. “Well? Do we have a deal?”

She didn’t need to know that money meant nothing to me. What would I spend it on out here? It couldn’t be used to buy food, not when I couldn’t afford to reveal my existence. I couldn’t plant a dollar bill and have it sprout into parsnips.

It wasn’t the money that she was willing to give me that made interest and hesitation billow. It was the fact she was willing to offer me anything at all.

It made my cock twitch.

It made me wonder...

Picking up my final strawberry, I ate it slowly, savoring the sugar and licking at its juice. “I don’t know.”

She froze. “But...you’re open to discussing it?”

I shrugged. “I’m unsure at this point.”

“What would make you sure? Why are you so intent on killing me? Tell me that, and maybe I can—”

“You don’t belong here. I need you gone because I don’t know any other solution. Because you have nothing to offer me other than complication and will end up demanding more than I can afford.”

Silence tumbled between us, heavy with thought and consequence.

She let her arms uncross and hands settle into her lap. Her breathing turned slow and deep as her forehead scrunched. I watched it all as she shook her head, her eyes narrowing on the puddle next to her.

I couldn’t guess what she was thinking, but whatever it was took all her concentration. All her courage. Everything she was.

Finally, after what felt like forever, she lifted her chin and captured my eyes.

She studied me. Her gaze dropped to my mouth, swept to my hair, then glided down my body.

She nodded once.

Inhaled hard.

Then murmured, “I have something else to offer.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I ALMOST CHOKED.

I have something else to offer.

Six simple words yet the worst sentence of my life.

My captor stiffened before me. Ever so slowly, he pushed away the remnants of his strange breakfast.

I’d never been a stickler for meal plans and rarely stuck to menu suggestions, but his odd combination of celery, peas, and strawberries made me wonder if he truly was uneducated, or at the very least, uncaring about routines and practices.