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?
How sheltered was he?
What sort of world had I stumbled into?
I bit my tongue. I didn’t want to tell him. Why would I give up my only hope? But could I lie? Would he believe me?
“It’s a useless cell phone.” I held my breath. “The battery is dead.”
His eyes narrowed, and for a second, I thought for sure he was playing with me. Pretending not to know but knowing full well that I’d activated a locator beacon. But he nodded and scoffed under his breath. “I remember those.” Kicking it across the floor, he added, “Even if it had a charge, it wouldn’t do you any good out here. There’s never been phone reception. Not even in the beginning.”
My mind exploded with questions. What beginning? How long ago was the beginning? If he’d seen a cell phone, that meant he’d had access to technology at some point, even if he lived an almost archaic existence now. And if he had seen things like phones, then why was he living mostly naked in a house consumed by ivy?
Exhaustion suddenly crushed my shoulders.
I was hungry and cold and I wanted to go home. Who cared who this guy was? He was keeping me prisoner, and I was done.
Drawing myself up, I let ice slip into my voice. “Let me go. I want to leave.”
With speed that seemed otherworldly, he grabbed my chin and pressed my head against the stone wall behind me. My bruised neck cried in agony as his fingers dug into my cheeks, locking me in place. His nose almost kissed mine. The tension between us returned a thousandfold as his anger consumed me.
“You’re not allowed to leave.” He kept squeezing me, his eyes almost feverish. “Ever. Do you hear me?”
I’d felt panic before. I’d fallen and broken bones. I’d scaled mountaintops and stood on the edge of the world. I’d suffered grief when my dad died. I’d endured hardships as well as successes. Yet nothing, nothing had prepared me for the undiluted wave of foreboding.
“I can’t stay here.” I grabbed at his wrist, doing my best to get free. “I won’t.”
“You don’t have a choice.” His stare dropped to my mouth. His other hand came up, running his forefinger over my bottom lip. It didn’t matter to him that I struggled. He didn’t notice or care. He inserted the tip of his finger into my mouth.
He groaned.
I bit him.
Hard.
“Fuck.” Ripping his hand back, he snarled, “Are you trying to die?”
“I’m trying to live!” I bared my teeth and rubbed the indents he’d left behind on my cheeks. “Don’t touch me.”
“I can do more than touch you.” He sucked on the finger that I’d bitten, a trace of blood staining his teeth as he hissed, “You walked into my home uninvited. I didn’t seek you out. I didn’t bring you here against your will. This is your fault. Not mine. Your fault that you’ll die in this valley, same as me.” Planting both hands on the stone behind my head, he crushed his body over mine.