I felt like I’d shatter from stress and shivering.

I rocked against the wall. I crawled around the perimeter until I found a blanket that itched and prickled. I bundled myself up and did my best not to slip deeper into fear.

Tears prickled my hazy stare as the bright lightbulb flickered above me, bringing my jumpy attention back to the present. The bulb seemed to glow brighter, glinting off the antenna of the PLB, mocking me.

Will someone come?

Or am I on my own?

Pressure built in my already sore throat. My pulse shot skyward, sending blood to pound in my fingertips and toes.

Why had the lights come on?

Was he coming?

What is he going to do?

My mother was wrong.

I wasn’t blessed.

Not anymore.

I’d made a stupid, stupid choice. A choice that’d totally derailed my safety and success and left me alone, in pain, and—

The door clanged as if something heavy bashed against it, followed by the screech of metal pulling through metal.

Stand up.

Stand up!

Scurrying to my feet, swaying as light-headedness caught me, I blinked in panic.

The door opened.

I braced myself against the wall, tilting my chin and balling my hands. My knees quaked, and nausea bubbled in my belly. I was weak and lost and dreadfully afraid.

I’d always thought I’d be brave when faced with danger. I’d never shied away from risk and received praise from my self-defense teacher. I even remembered bragging to my good friend Katie, from my local bouldering gym, that I would beat up any man before he could touch me. If I could master stone, I could master men.

How wrong I’d been.

How stupidly, awfully wrong.

This wasn’t just a man. He wasn’t some overweight jerk on the street. He wasn’t some nerd from an online dating site. He was...feral.

Don’t be weak, Gem.

Get ready to fight.

I held my breath as he stalked into the small cell, his bare feet whispering over dank concrete. Unlike when I’d first seen him, he wasn’t naked. The shirt he wore looked as if he’d crawled through caves and gotten into a fight with thorns, and his slacks weren’t much better. The cuffs were torn around his ankles, ragged and discolored with dirt. His long hair had been scraped back to his nape, and his skin once again glittered with scars.

Thick ones, fine ones, crisscross ones, and ones that looked like round pennies along his jaw. Each wound had lost the redness of healing and turned silvery with age. His pain wasn’t recent. Whatever he’d lived through was in the past, but it’d scarred his soul as well as his body.

Needing oxygen, I sucked in a shaky breath as he closed the door behind him. He didn’t have a common scent. Once again, a faint whisper of rivers and woods entered my nose. He seemed to have adopted the earthiness, the ivy sharpness, and the fragrant subtleness of the valley’s neglected wildflowers.

He made a show of inserting a key into his pocket before crossing the small space and stopping a few feet from me.

He didn’t speak.

I didn’t speak.

I hated that my fight had fled before I’d even tried. That curse words and shouted slurs for my freedom remained stubbornly out of reach. If he hadn’t talked to me when he’d strangled me, I would’ve been adamant he wouldn’t understand me.

It wasn’t that he looked uneducated or not smart enough to converse, more like he was above such practices. The way he watched me spoke of an undomesticated creature who didn’t use words often. His wildness and aura of viciousness hinted that he hadn’t been around another human in a very, very long time. Perhaps so long, he’d forgotten he was human himself.

It’s just shock, Gem.

Stop making him scarier than he is.

He’s just a man.

He’s a hermit with bad clothes and overgrown hair.

A nudist most likely who lives in a cult.

Oh, God.

That thought brought a trailer load of other worries. Maybe I had it all wrong, and this place wasn’t just his, after all. Maybe it was some secret coven that was hidden for a reason. What if I’d stumbled onto something I was never meant to see?

My chest rose and fell as my breathing accelerated.

Even if I do fight and get free, who else is out there?  

He noticed.

His dark eyes fell to my chest, narrowing as my breasts moved beneath my windbreaker. A scalding intensity drenched his stare, making my body flinch to get away.

I pressed harder against the wall, wishing I could dissolve right through it.

Licking his bottom lip, he dropped his stare, scanning me from head to toe. Slowly, carefully, so thoroughly it felt like a violation and seduction all at once, he drank me in.

The front of his slacks tightened as he hardened. He made no move to hide his reaction. Nor did he move to unbutton and use me.

He merely kept staring, his eyes scratching over my skin.

I kept my head up and lips pressed together. I didn’t let him see that his stare affected me. That the sheer potency of being alone in a tiny cell with him made me sick to my stomach.

I didn’t know him. What I did know of him was violent and cruel. He’d told me to die. He’d wrapped his awful fingers around my throat and squeezed the very life out of my lungs.

I hated him.

So why did my stomach clench on its own accord? Why did the air shimmer with heat the longer he studied me? Why, why, did I feel hot and cold and itchy and confused the longer we stood in silence?

He had a power.

An awful talent at making my heart rabbit and wordlessly putting me in my place. Our power dynamics were obvious. Hunter versus hunted.

His gaze crept back up my body to linger on my bruised neck. His eyebrows drew together, and his jaw clenched as the ripple of anger flowed from his face down to his hands as they curled into fists by his sides.

He looked utterly untamed and unpredictable.

He made dread seep into my veins. How was I supposed to survive this? How could I get a rational response when he wasn’t a rational human being?

Running a hand over his tied-up hair, he sniffed as if debating his own runaway thoughts. At least, with his hair back, he didn’t look so completely savage, not that it softened any of his harsh edges.

His cheekbones were sharp. His nose severe. His eyes demonic. The scruff around his jaw hinted he didn’t believe in shaving, leaving personal grooming to a more tameless style.

The silence between us continued to thicken until the entire cell throbbed with awareness.

I’d never been so on edge, so poised for pain or pleading.

I wanted to go home.

To run.

That overwhelming need to get away from him ensured a levelheaded coldness settled inside me.

The way he watched me.

The way his tongue moved over his bottom lip and his gaze lingered on my feminine attributes.

I might not have been blessed in romance, but I knew what that look meant.

He wanted me.

He didn’t want to want me, but he did. And it compounded his temper. It tightened his fists. It doused fuel on his rage.

I wasn’t above using any trick I had to get free, and that included letting him believe I was open to the black desire glowing in his gaze...however, it will cost me everything. It went against everything I was as an independent, successful woman.

You’re successful because you don’t shy away from difficulty.

Fine.

Bracing my shoulders, I shoved away my weakness and prepared to fight.

“What do...you want?” I winced and swallowed past the swelling in my throat. His fingers had been ruthless. He could’ve killed me in that bedroom, yet he’d stopped and shoved me in here instead.