She stopped only once her body heat kissed mine.

My skin scorched with flames, electricity crackled up my legs and into my balls. My heart lost its structural steadiness and turned demonic instead. It took everything not to sink my hands into her hair and drag her closer.

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know why you’re keeping me prisoner, but I do know that you’re different.” Her hands landed on my naked chest, sending bolts of lightning through my ribs, electrocuting my racing heart. “I will never forgive you for strangling me. Twice. I will never let my guard down around you. I will make it my life’s work to ensure you pay for everything that you’ve done to me. But...I also can’t admit that you’re evil. You’re messed up and clearly have trauma. You’re mean and cruel and believe just because I’m a woman that I was put upon this earth to serve you. But I also know things you can’t hide.”

My back filled with icy lead. “What—”

“Where I come from, people have mastered the art of lies. Social media has taught us to hide our true parts and only show what we want people to see.” Her head turned to the side as if she studied me, judged me, and found me lacking in every fucking way. “And you...whoever you are, you don’t possess those skills.”

“What fucking skills?”

What the hell is she talking about?

My ears rang.

My head swam.

She provided more entertainment and stimulation than any animal, tree, or chore in the decade I’d lived here. She made spaces come alive, she made air tingle with power, she made me wake up from the wordless beast I’d become to a man slowly stretching back into humanity.

But she also confused me, frustrated me, made me furious with her very existence.

Was I supposed to find her this annoying? This fascinating? Was it a by-product of living alone for so long?

I didn’t like it.

I don’t like her—

Her voice lowered to a whisper, made huskier by my second strangulation. “You reveal everything that you’re feeling. I know you want me. I know you think you deserve to hurt me. I know I’m driving you crazy, talking about things you can’t understand. And I know you’ll rationalize raping me because, in your mind, making me live in this damp prison is entirely justified—”

I slapped a hand over her mouth, shutting her up.

I couldn’t listen to another syllable.

My head hurt from her accusations. My body trembled with the war she was determined to have. She backed up, slapping my hand away and sucking in a breath, ready to launch another torrent of words, despite her bruised throat.

No way.

I was done listening to this shit.

I was too quick.

Rushing her, I snatched her around the waist and plucked her from the floor. Up close, she didn’t smell as fresh as my valley anymore. She smelled stale and sad. A cloying despair that did nothing for my desire.

Almost everything she’d said to me was bullshit.

She didn’t know a goddamn thing about me.

But she was right about one thing.

She needed a bathroom.

A shower.

To be clean.

And then, once she was clean, she owed me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“LEAVE.” I CROSSED MY ARMS, ignoring the cramping in my stomach and the filth coating my skin. My eyes wanted to dart around the bathroom where he’d taken me. An opulent silver tiled affair with fluffy white towels waiting for no one, coin-shaped soaps with gold wrapper, and the empty lacquered frame where a mirror used to be.

My ribs still hurt from him carting me up the stairs like a dead cow. His naked chest wedged into my belly, his strong legs swooping me up the marble stairs as if I weighed nothing.

He chuckled coldly. “I’m not leaving.” Slouching against the doorframe, he crossed his arms. “Strip, shower, get on your knees.”

Goosebumps of hate shot down my arms. The way he couldn’t tear his eyes off me made my already painful stomach somersault with repugnance. I’d sucked him this morning for survival. I’d plotted in the darkness of my cell as daylight switched to twilight, hoping to come up with a solid ruse. I’d eaten every morsel of breakfast and done my best to ignore the calls of nature.

I would pee in a bucket, I would sexually obey him, but I would not—could not—do anything more. It wasn’t just the shame of lowering myself to such a level. It was a physical impossibility. My body had shut down. It flatly refused to operate.

Exhausted tears stung my eyes as I mimicked him and crossed my arms. The toilet sat behind a tiled wall, unseen from the doorway but within listening distance.

Who would’ve thought that I could handle blowing a complete stranger, yet the thought of going to the bathroom in front of him...that was what tipped me over the edge.

Hugging myself, I debated how best to get through to him.

He hadn’t appreciated my tidbit that I could read him. That his secrets weren’t so secret. That I knew he felt pride when I’d eaten his food. That he battled between wanting me and doing the right thing.

If he even knows what the right thing is.

His expressive face was the reason I was fumbling in this mess. If he’d worn the mask of a murderer and had soulless, lifeless eyes, I would never have been stupid enough to keep my PLB and phone in visible distance.

I’d been idiotic to believe he didn’t have a clue what they were. He honestly didn’t. His confusion when he’d first seen them hadn’t been faked. But I’d underestimated his need to stay hidden, and I’d miscalculated the aggression hidden beneath the glimmers of kindness in his stare.

He wasn’t cruel by nature but he was by design, and I struggled to remember that, especially when I caught him looking at me as if I was more dangerous to him than he was to me.

Rubbing my arms, I swallowed past the new bruises he’d given me and prepared to use honesty to hurt. To make him understand. To appeal to the boy inside the man who’d obviously been tortured at some point in his life. Who wore his trauma so plainly—too plainly. He was the scarred dog left behind by a family who’d mistreated him. The dog who’d grown up left to his own devices, remembering faint rules on how to behave but far too removed from them to be governed.

He cleared his throat, impatience radiating off him. “Strip, shower, and—”

“Please.” I took a step toward him, allowing my shields to drop. For my bravado to vanish against the true pain and embarrassment I felt. If his honesty could scramble me this badly, then perhaps my honesty could do the same to him.

I wouldn’t lie or threat.

I would be myself.

I won’t betray who I am.

I made another deal. A deal that sounded weak to my ears but was the only way I could think of to win. “Please...” I didn’t know his name so I couldn’t add that as an extra tool of persuasion. “I know you don’t like me, and I did something unforgivable by trespassing in your home, but...I’m begging you. I need some privacy. I need...” I looked over my shoulder at the toilet and flushed with heat. “I need you to close the door and leave me alone.”

He shook his head, his forehead furrowing into harsh skepticism. “If I leave, you’ll climb out the window.”

I glanced at the window in question. The glass wasn’t frosted and showed the convenient vines of ivy and other plant matter that would be a perfect ladder down to the ground. Even if I wasn’t a professional climber, I could’ve scaled the wall and been gone within a matter of moments.