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.
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.