Page 30 of Mine

“Why?”

“Only I know the passwords.”

A heavy silence settles between us. Him assessing, assessing, assessing. Me lusting, lusting, lusting.

Get it together, Sabine.

I tilt my head to the side. “What are your intentions with me?”

“In simple terms? To use you, Miss Hart.”

To use me.

“Turn around,” he demands before I can speak. When I don’t, his voice takes a sharper edge. “I said, turn around.”

Like a dog in training, I obey, slowly turning like a ballerina on a spindle.

Using his knife, he cuts the binds that secure my wrists. The moment the plastic falls from my skin, I spin around and slap him across the face. The sharp pop of skin against skin echoes against the bathroom walls.

I’m as shocked as he is. I don’t know why I did it other than I’m hangry, overwhelmed, and out-of-my-mind confused, all at once. I’ve never hit another person in my life.

There is the briefest flash of surprise, but just as quickly, his eyes narrow. As if someone flipped a switch inside him, his expression heats like fire. Now he’s looking at me the way he did when we first saw each other—times ten.

He begins flexing his fingers, shifting his weight. The cool, composed Astor Stone is gone. What stands before me now is a wild animal sizing up its prey—and I’m in trouble.

“You cannot keep me here against my will,” I say, growing increasingly alert and wary of the sudden shift in him. “I will not be bait in a ridiculous game between two men with egos as large as their bank accounts. I want nothing to do with you, or with this.”

My pulse kicks up as my emotions begin to boil over.

“You’ve kept me restrained for hours. I haven’t been able to eat, drink, or pee this whole time. My God, I could eat a cow right now—no, an entire family-size bag of potato chips. I could drink a gallon of water, and I have a godawful headache. You are going to jail for this, do you know that? You kidnapped me ...”

Though Astor is looking at me, he’s not listening to a word I’m saying. His expression has gone so dark that goose bumps ripple my arms, so intense that the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I stop talking and stand totally still.

Slowly, he steps forward like a lion about to pounce. My instinct is to run, but instead, I hold my own.

My entire body braces for whatever is about to come, but nothing could have prepared me for what he says next.

“Slap me again.”

I blink, rendered speechless by the request. Slap him again? The man wants me to slap him again? What the bloody hell?

“Slap me,” he growls, his black-as-night eyes boring into mine. His chest is beginning to rise and fall heavily.

I’ve triggered something in him, something dangerous, something uncontrollable.

Something exciting.

His body begins to tremble. I feel the pheromones pouring off him.

“Again, Sabine.”

The moment my palm connects with his face, his eyes flash with feral electricity. He grabs my shoulders, spins me around, and slams my back against the glass shower wall. My head bounces off the pane, the breath knocked out of my lungs.

I gasp as he pins my wrists above my head.

Fifteen

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