Why?

His eyebrows rose, flinching at my voice. The fine lines around his eyes deepened, the harsh brackets around his mouth looked like they’d draw blood from his cheeks, even through his scruff. With such naked hate on his face, it revealed he was younger than I first thought. The weathering of his skin hinted at someone in their late thirties, but the stark distress in his eyes made me guess he was more like late twenties.

A very sheltered late twenties.

Someone who’d never learned how to hide his true feelings and wore naked emotion with no knowledge that it could be used against him.

I cocked my head, studying him in a different light. That was what made him different from other men. He hadn’t mastered the art of deception. He didn’t try to mask the obvious lust in his stare. He didn’t cough away the sudden growl of disgust in his chest.

He was readable.

And in that, I had a weapon.

“You want me.”

He stumbled backward, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Shut up.”

I bowed my head, not out of respect but because with knowledge came a plan and that plan meant I had to get him to see me as a person. Not a prisoner. Not someone to use as he saw fit. I was like him. And maybe, if I made him see that, he’d let me go.

“I’m sorry I trespassed.” I looked up between my eyelashes. “I never intended to go where I didn’t belong—”

“Quiet.” His hand slashed through the air. Another dose of scorching fire set his dark eyes flashing, and the air of the cell turned positively thick with need. I couldn’t breathe without tasting it.

Heat rolled off him, kindling little flames over my skin. It wasn’t my body reacting to his; it was the intensity of his own making everything so much more. More intense, more desperate, more strange than I’d ever experienced.

Who is this man?

Breathing hard, he crossed his arms, making the seams of his shirt strain. He didn’t cross his arms like a CEO would, using the stance as dominance. He didn’t use it as aggression or as a cage to contain the obvious rage inside him. Instead, he used it as protection, almost as if he hugged himself—as if clinging to the shreds of his self-control, searching for answers, same as me, trying to figure this out, same as me.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“Stop,” he growled. His nostrils flared as he inhaled, the last remaining buttons down his shirt threatening to pop. The silky material splayed over his chest, giving glimpses of a muscular body with a dark snail trail leading into his trousers and a splattering of hair over his pecs. Apart from those areas, he was smooth—unless I counted the scars.

Then, he wasn’t smooth at all. He was damaged.

“I—”

“Don’t say another fucking word,” he hissed.

I nodded and fell silent. For all my scheming and willingness to fight, I would pick my battles wisely.

The cell throbbed with energy. My nipples tingled as he paced in front of me, his erection stabbing upward in his slacks. He paced through puddles and over cold concrete with bare feet.

More time stretched as he threw me dirty looks, and an animalistic grumble echoed in his chest.

His footfalls thudded in time with my heartbeat, counting down to my end.

Tearing his gaze from me, he shook his head as if fighting every dark instinct inside him. His back braced. His thighs bunched. He walked faster with fury.

Every time his eyes landed on my body, it seared. Every time, he sniffed or bared his teeth, my body stiffened with a primal reaction.

He was a trapped beast, and I didn’t like the sensation of being trapped in here with him. I didn’t like the unpredictability. The real fear that he might snap, and I’d either die or wished I had.

Was he contemplating whether to finish the job?

Did he hate that I hadn’t died in that bedroom?

The way he watched me...it made me think he’d been denied company for decades. He looked woefully unprepared to deal with me, violently reckless to get rid of me, and the undeniable confusion of what he truly wanted.

His dark eyes bounced between palpable lust, explicit hate, downright disgust, and absolute turmoil.

When I couldn’t stand the silence or his pacing anymore, I swallowed and flinched past the hurt. “Who...are you?”

Massaging my throat, I watched him carefully. I expected him to order me to be quiet again. Instead, he stopped. He locked his knees and turned to face me like a soldier conscripted to battle.

Wiping a hand over his scruffy jaw, he once again crossed his arms. With impatient anger, he chewed on words before snapping, “I ask the questions.”

His accent was strange. Almost rusty, it slipped over vowels and lingered on consonants in an unusual manner. He sounded American, but with an edge of gentile sophistication. A level of education that didn’t mesh with the current location of his home or the state of his dishevelment.

We continued to stare, neither of us embarrassed to be so blatantly watching. When our eyes weren’t locked in a battle, they were roaming, imprinting.

He was tall but not too tall. His arms once again causing stress to the seams of his taupe shirt while his thighs bulged in the soft material of his slacks. The clothes didn’t fit him or suit him, almost as if they were never his to begin with.

His erection hadn’t faded, and his hips moved just a little, the faintest physical hint of what his eyes were screaming.

Lust.

Squeezing his eyes shut for a second, he reopened them with black determination. The hunger was still there, but this time, it was desire for answers rather than sex. Whatever existed between us was no longer a debate on whether or not he’d pounce on me, but how bad the interrogation would become.

“Where did you come from?” he snapped.

I linked my fingers together, glancing at the PLB by my feet.

Come on, find me. Hurry.

I swallowed. “Michigan.”

“No.” His forehead furrowed into thick annoyance. “I mean how did you come here? How the fuck did you find me?”

“I climbed.”

He scowled again, harsh and spiteful. “Climbed? What the hell does that mean?”

Swallowing again, I wished I had water for my throat. “It means I was searching for a boulder someone claimed was nearby. I got lost. I saw your house from the cliff. And I...” I swallowed again and again, pushing through the bruising. “I climbed down to investigate.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

I shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

“So you’re not here to take me back? You didn’t come in via the cave?”

I shook my head. “Take you where? What cave? Oh, you mean the one at the end of the valley? No, I didn’t come—”

“Who else is out there?”

“I—” I closed my mouth. This was the part where I could lie and say I had a group of friends all desperately searching for me. I could convince him that if he didn’t let me go, then others would come looking. Police would come. The army would come. He’d be shot if he put one more bruise on me.

And all of that might be true...if my PLB worked.

Even now, my faint little signal could be on some helicopter dashboard, flashing brightly as they flew to find me.

But...if rescue took a few days. If I had to survive here, on my own, totally at his mercy, the threat that we’d have company might make him lose his temper. He might call my bluff and—

“Well?” He bit the word in two. “Who else knows you’re here?”

I couldn’t stop my gaze latching once again onto my PLB. To the outstretched antenna. To the very clear evidence that other people would know and soon.

His eyes tracked mine, landing on the device.

I winced, waiting for him to smash it and then smash me. However, he just cocked his head and nudged it with a toe. “What’s that?”

He...he doesn’t know?