You can never return to the state at which you started.

Blakely and I are inside an isolated system of our making. The cascade of the waterfall. The current of the river. The isolation of the cliffs. The forest and night that surrounds, cocooning us in a sheltered haven.

And yet, the uncertainty is in a state of increase.

The moment Blakely dives into the river, all sure and measurable knowledge of what I know about her, about us, becomes corrupt. Fear is the result of uncertainty, and my fear of the unknown escalates as I jump in after her.

I splash to the surface near her. “What are you doing?”

She wades through the dark water, searching and collecting her clothes. “I’m cold.”

“Wet clothes won’t remedy that.” I reach out for her, but she avoids my touch.

Pain lances sharply, a knife plunged right through my chest wall. She won’t stop moving, searching, running her hands through her tangled, wet hair.

“Blakely, stop.” I try to gain her full attention. “You’re acting erratic.”

She shrugs her shirt on over her head, fighting the soaked material down her body. If she’s trying to hide herself from me, she’s failing, because I can see every beautiful curve of her body, the contour of her breasts, her pebbled nipples.

I look her over, remembering the feel of being inside her, the connection. “You could roll around in mud and you’d still be the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Her breaths are labored, chest heaving as if she’s just swam the length of the river. Her eyes flare and take aim on me like lethal weapons. “And you’re sick. The most sadistic creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

I wipe the water from my face. “Erratic and irrational,” I say, reasoning the lingering side effects. “Your neural pathways are new, like a muscle that needs to be conditioned. We need to take this slow—”

Her mocking laugh clips short. “I think taking it slow failed majorly the moment you sank your cock in me.” She shoves at the water, as if trying to push me farther away. Then, with a resolute expression, she goes still. “Logic won’t explain this, Alex. This is just…fucked up.”

Insult lashes at my pride to wound deep. “You regret it…us. Guilt. It’s what you’re feeling. Still, very natural.”

She claws at her hair, an act of desperation to make whatever is assailing her stop. I did this to her, and if I wasn’t so excited about what it means, I might share some of her shame. But she’s beautiful in her tortured state, feeling emotions she’s never experienced before.

“Guilt doesn’t quantify this, Alex. Disgust. Pure, deplorable revulsion…that’s closer. I fucked my abductor, the guy who tortures me. Like some Stockholm victim.”

“I’m not… That’s not who I am, Blakely. I’m your salvation, if you could just imagine the potential—”

“You’re not a god, Alex!”

My head notches back, her words a smack to my ego.

“You’re not a god,” she says again, her voice more reserved. “And I’m not your goddess. This has to end.”

“You’re right. I’m no god, I’m barely a scientist anymore. I set my whole life’s work aflame the moment I craved your lips.” I stride toward her through the water. “But you’re everything now. The result, the antidote. You’re my salvation, Blakely. I’m…obsessed with you.”

“You’re obsessed with the idea of me,” she fires back.

“We’re all just ideas. Concepts. That doesn’t mean my need for you is any less real. You make me weak, I admit that. I lose all purpose around you. I’m just a man with this insatiable need inside him that will never be sated. All I want is you.”

Her eyes meet mine with steel malice. “You’re deranged. You want me now—now that you think I can have real feelings for you? How sick is that?”

“Oh, you have no idea. You are my sickness, Blakely, and there’s no cure.” I tentatively reach for her, and she allows me to touch her cheek. “I wanted you before you were capable of loathing me.”

Her eyes close briefly as she drags in a breath to fill her lungs. When she opens her eyes, letting me glimpse the green that has tortured me, she spits in my face.

“I wish I could loathe you,” she says, “but that would require an emotional depth I’m not capable of.”

I wipe my face, never taking my gaze off her. Her words implode the air around us, like a sonic boom detonating the moment she releases them. I hate the way the water beads down her lips, so inviting, her mouth the apex of my desire and pain.

“You’re confused,” I say. “Sensory overload. I’ll run tests. I’ll fix it…”

“God, Alex. There’s nothing to fix. I’m the same unfeeling psychopath that I’ve always been, and I thought I could do this, but I just can’t. I’d rather you kill me than try to fake caring for you. It’s pathetic. And humiliating, honestly. So strap me to your torture device. Turn the dial all the way up. Do it now, and let’s end this twisted charade.”

“You’re lying.” She’s lying.

“Am I?” She levels me with unguarded eyes, her stare unflinching. “You said you were willing to risk my hating you in the end…but what about indifference?”

My hands curl into fists beneath the water. I glance over at the fall, to the cliff where we just made love, where I felt her shatter beneath me…

I seal my eyes closed as her admission pangs through my skull. Truth is a blister scraped raw. I was so eager to believe I had cured Blakely—that I had achieved the impossible—I let her manipulate me.

And I relished every indulgent moment.

“Tell me you didn’t feel anything,” I say, my voice raw. “Tell me that what happened back there, between us…that it was all just fiction. That you didn’t feel one ounce of empathy—”

“I felt nothing,” she says. Her eyes are bottomless, dead pools that chill me. “I feel absolutely nothing for you.”

“You deceived me.”

“You deceived yourself.” Blakely looks around the river. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to go for the both of us.

She’s right, of course. I knew who what she was, what she’s capable of, and I allowed her betrayal to become my truth. I wanted it to be, so desperately, I was willing to sacrifice years of research and work…everything…for just the chance to have her.

Lust. Greed. Covet—I’ve committed every deadly sin in the pursuit to own her, and I deserve my damnation.

Blakely has given up on her search. She wades to the shallow riverbank in only her shirt and panties. As she reaches the rocky beach, she says over her shoulder, “You don’t love me, Alex.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“I can, because I saw it in your eyes. When you strapped me to the gurney. When you tortured me. You’re this vile thing that can only feel when you inflict pain.” She faces me. “You once told me you took no enjoyment out of others’ suffering. You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re designed like me. And all this—” she opens her arms wide “—everything you’ve done. It’s not to rid the world of psychopaths. It’s not to avenge your sister’s ruined reputation. You did it to convince yourself that you’re not the monster.”

Chaos increases, driving up uncertainty. Loss of control over the system escalates fear. And fear triggers anger.

I can feel her figuratively slipping through my fingers. The hope for a cure. The need for her to belong with me. All destroyed.

I can’t do this again. I cannot start over. Not with another subject. Not to reach another disappointing failure.

I stalk toward her, sloshing water as my feet find determined purchase on the riverbed. “The only monster here is you,” I say, taking hold of her arms. “You’re a flawed design, wrong from birth. You corrupt everything and everyone around you. There’s only one solution.”

I throw her over my shoulder.

Blakely’s nails scratch at my back as she fights to be set free. I wrap my arm around her thighs, preventing her kicks. She beats her fists against me, and I feel no physical pain. Once we’re in the basement, I climb the staircase and unlock the cabin door, then toss her down in the corner of the black room.