CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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I WOKE TO THE scents of carbonara ravioli. A creamy, hearty promise of a full belly and comforting warmth.

Pity it made me dry wretch.

Ouch.

My head pounded as more senses came back online. The light hurt my eyes. The cold floor bruised my bones. The world I’d woken in wasn’t the one I’d just left.

Wait...

Left.

I was leaving—

My heart switched from slow and sluggish to fast and chaotic as I blinked and exploded upright.

Kas sat a couple of feet away against the wall, his broken arm cradling a bowl while his good one operated a fork. Stabbing a piece of pasta, he raised it to his mouth and wrapped his lips around the fork tines.

What the hell is going on?

A second ago, I’d been ready to leave. I was walking out the door—

“Don’t rush,” Kas murmured, chewing slowly. “Let your brain wake up slowly. The drop in your blood pressure probably means you’ll feel a little sick, maybe a headache, most likely jittery and confused.”

“Confused?!” I pushed off the floor, sliding my legs in front of me to sit upright. A blanket followed my motion, sliding over the marble tiles beneath me. “Of course, I’m confused. What did you do? Why am I...?” My questions drifted as my faulty attention switched from him to where he’d imprisoned me yet again.

I rubbed my eyes, focusing on the kitchen from a completely different angle.

The countertop soared above me, the door I’d tried to escape from resolutely closed against the night, and the remnants of an empty packet and abandoned pot revealed evidence that Kas had cooked one of the pastas I’d left him. A warm meal would be good for him. Carbohydrates and salts would be a bonus for his recovering system. I was glad he’d accepted my olive branch and eaten something other than raw vegetables.

But...why am I still here?

How did this happen?

My heart continued to gallop, but my emotions stayed frustratingly dormant. I couldn’t tap into fear or anger, peace or curiosity. I was numb, buried beneath a thick layer of smog that wrapped around my brain, obstructing answers that felt as if they stared me obviously in the face.

Come on, Gem.

Get it together.

You were leaving and...

I looked up, rubbing my temples and the fresh ache there, watching Kas as he took another bite. He never took his eyes off me. His gaze intense like an owl, unmoving and calculating.

“Tell me when it comes back to you.” He dropped his stare and stabbed his fork into the bowl of pasta. With his bare foot, he nudged another bowl of steaming carbonara in my direction. “Eat if you feel up to it. It’s still hot.”

My stomach grumbled with hunger but then churned with sickness.

I winced and pushed the bowl away. Dropping my head into my hands, I ran fingernails over my scalp, urging my brain to—

Oh, my God. I remember!

My head snapped up. All lethargy and wobbliness vanished as I pointed a livid finger in Kas’s direction. “You! You...you kissed me, and then...you strangled me again.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t strangle you.”

“You knocked me out!”

“I did.”

“How could you?!”

“I had no choice.” He stabbed another piece of pasta as if we were enjoying a generic conversation about the weather. “You were leaving, and I’m in no condition to chase you. Therefore, I had to stop you in the quickest way possible.”

“The quickest way possible? Do you hear yourself? I’m a person. Not an inconvenience you have to control.”

He slowly lowered his bowl, his gaze going flat and cold. “Are you coherent to do this now or do you want to wait until you’ve eaten?”

“What the hell are you talking about, you son of a bitch?”

His nostrils flared as his temper appeared. “I’m only going to say this once. I need to know you’re paying attention—that you will take what I say seriously, completely, and be ready to move forward with the knowledge that this is it.”

“What?!” I scrambled to my knees, shoving the blanket away from me. I was too hot. Everything was stifling, cloying. The sound of metal scraping on tile wrenched my eyes from his chilly ones to the floor.

To the floor where a pool of bronze chain rested between us.

No.

Understanding bulldozed through me.

No, no. Please, no.

Kicking away the rest of the blanket, I froze in horror. The leather cuff around my ankle—the same one he’d asked about then looked pleased when I’d admitted to trying to remove and failed—was now linked to the chain curled in the middle of the kitchen.

My head throbbed as I followed the links, chasing the coil, swallowing hard as Kas sat taller and moved his arms, kindly showing me where the chain finished.

Buckled around his waist, it was padlocked into position. A tether from his body to mine.

I grabbed the chain with both hands, investigating how strong it was, searching for a weakness. “Get this thing off me.”

Kas sighed and lowered the bowl of pasta to the floor. “Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

“Get the key. Right now.”

“I won’t do that.”

“I looked after you! I nursed you for ten days, you monster. And this is how you repay me?” I laughed, brutal and borderline hysterical. “You can’t do this. I refuse to let you do this!”

“It’s already done.”

“It can be undone. Get the damn key.”

His eyes tightened as his jaw clenched beneath his scruff. “Are you listening, Gemma Ashford?”

“No. Hell no. I’ll never listen to a thing you say—”

“I suggest you forget everything that ever existed outside of this valley. You no longer have a family, a career, a home. You are simply Gemma, and that is all you’ll ever be. You don’t have to worry about others missing you; you don’t have to run to be free. You no longer exist to anyone but me.”

“You’re delusional!”

He continued as if I hadn’t yelled an insult. “My advice? Don’t resist this. Just accept it. It’s easier that way.”

“Accept? I’ll never accept—”

“You will, eventually.” Brushing aside a strand of long hair that’d fallen by his cheek, he murmured, “I’m telling you from experience that there is no way out of this. The padlocks cannot be opened without a key. The chain can’t be cut, smashed, or broken. You’ve already tested for yourself the impossibility of removing that cuff. We’re bound now. Where you go, I go. Where I go, you go. I am the only thing that matters to you, just like you are the only thing that matters to me.”

“You will never matter to me. You’ve just made sure of that by trapping me again! You’ve chosen my fate on my behalf. You’ve taken away my freedom and my future and you expect me to accept it? No. Just no! You’re as bad as the men who trapped you here. If you know what it’s like to be a prisoner, why are you doing it to me? Why delude yourself into thinking I’ll stay here? Even if you bury me beneath a thousand chains and wrap me in a million padlocks, I’ll never stop searching for a way out. Never! Do you hear me?”

“I’m sorry.” His eyes narrowed, black and merciless. “I truly am. But I’m also not going to let you go.”

“Then you’re not sorry.”

He shrugged. “You’re right. I’m glad.”

“Glad?!”

He had the audacity to half-smile. “I can finally relax. You get what you wanted and have free range of my home. The chain is long enough for you to enter any room you wish on the ground floor. I will feel you as you move. The thread between us will always be there, reminding us that we are not alone. You will never have to step foot in that basement again because I will always be alerted of your presence.”

He leaned forward, eagerness sparking on his wild face. “We’ll work side by side. I’ll show you how to cultivate, how to hunt, how to prepare game, and gather everything else required for the day winter arrives.”

“And if I kill you instead?” I crossed my arms, rage flowing through my veins. “If I murder you in your sleep and hack that belt from your waist, what then?”

“Then...” He rolled his shoulders. “I guess I’ll be dead, and you’ll be free.”

“You don’t sound afraid.”

His chin tipped downward, watching me from brow-shadowed eyes. “Are you listening? Truly listening? This is the part I’ll only say once. I’ve said this before, in fact. I admitted such things in the garden. It hurt then, and it fucking kills now, so pay attention.” Inhaling hard, he said, “You are my greatest enemy, but you are also my only friend. You’ve done things to my heart I never thought possible. You’ve given me back my desire for sex and showed me that, even after everything I’ve endured, I can enjoy pleasure. You’ve made me feel anger and fear, possessiveness and rage. You make me so fucking mad, knowing you’ve learned things about me that you have no right to learn. Your very presence in my home ties me into knots, and I don’t know whether I want to kill you or kiss you most of the time. You, with your damn climbing skills and brazen trespassing, have made me feel again. Live again. And I’m not willing to give that up.”

Pushing to his hands and knees, he crawled toward me across the kitchen floor. His eyes etched with pain from his concussion, his body swaying a little from imbalance. He stalked me as if I was the one already dead, the one whose life hung in his hands for eternity.

He didn’t stop until he kneeled before me and took my jaw in his powerful hand.

I flinched as foreboding and despair made my hair stand on end.

His voice slipped from soft to steely. “I don’t know who you are or why you found me. I don’t know how you made me feel such things or why my thoughts aren’t nearly as black when I’m in your company. I don’t trust you. I don’t know how to figure this shit out. All I know is, I would rather you kill me than live another day without you, so...I’m happy with either option.”

As he ran his thumb over my bottom lip, his eyes caught mine and held. Blazing with truth, with vulnerability, with every dark broken piece of him, he breathed, “That’s how this will end, Gem. The only way. You either accept that it’s just us and learn to give me what I want—to learn to want me in the same way—or you will kill me to be free of me. There is no other path from here. Either way, I get what I need. I get you. For the rest of my godforsaken life.”

Letting me go, he pushed up and stumbled to his feet. Shaking his head from whatever sickness he still felt, he looked down at me.

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe what he’d just said.

He was the worst kind of contradiction. The most dangerous of all men.

He’d ensured I was his for evermore, accepting that if my desire for freedom was stronger than my desire to remain his, I would end up killing him.

It wouldn’t be a terrible master who beat and raped him that snuffed out his life.

It would be me.

The girl who’d spent the past week and a half by his bedside. The girl who believed she was falling for him. The girl who would never have been able to leave anyway.

In that savage flash of truth, I knew that despite my gumption, I would’ve hiked to the cliff face and placed one foot on its rocks, and I wouldn’t have been able to go any farther.

How could I?

I wasn’t cold-hearted enough. I couldn’t have been so callous to leave a concussed man alone in a forgotten valley.

I would’ve come back. I would’ve kissed him, helped him, taken my time to convince him to come with me. To turn his back on this place once and for all.

I would’ve come to him on my own accord.

And wasn’t that the saddest, cruelest thing?

He said he needed me.

Well, I’d needed him.

I’d wanted him.

I’d wanted to be more than just his friend. I wanted to be his savior.

But now?

Now he’d done this? Now he’d taken all choice from me and condemned my mother and brother to think I’d perished in some awful climbing accident?

Now, I hated him.

My heart closed to him. Any emotion I’d felt, any softness, understanding, and kindness all evaporated and hardened into stone.

We continued staring.

And he knew.

He saw the shutting down of my soul. He felt the ice creeping over my heart and nodded painfully as I braced my shoulders and reached for the bowl of pasta. Clinically, coldly, I stabbed a piece of ravioli and shoved it into my mouth.

I chewed as if I chewed his very essence.

I swallowed as if it was his very life I consumed.

And in a way, it was.

Because a sin like this couldn’t go unforgiven.

Need or no need.

Desire or no desire.

I was done being nice to this heathen.

Swooping to my feet, I clutched my pasta and swept past him.

With each step, the chain clinked behind me, making my blood boil with fury.

But he didn’t stop me.

He didn’t chase.

He merely let me go, knowing we were tethered forever.