Page 215 of Ride With Me

He gets the door unlocked, pushes it open, and a light winks on, illuminating the entrance to the cabin. Then he lets go of me and steps back so that I’m between him and the threshold.

“You have ten seconds to decide whether you’re going to walk into this cabin on your own.”

Theoris implied.

Or he’ll stick the knife in the small of my back and I’ll walk in at knifepoint.

Or he’ll shove me inside, with or without the help of the knife.

Or I can try to get past him and run. I don’t know if he’ll chase me. He said he didn’t want to run in this heat and I don’t blame him. The temperature has dropped several degrees with the sun and we’re in some sort of forest where it was probably cooler during the day than it was on the side of the road. But the air is still thick and muggy and there’s sweat running down my sides and along the column of my spine.

The sweat could also be from fear, though.

“Five,” he says. Crap, ten seconds is really not very long to decide whether to give in or be forced.

Or I could end this whole thing right now. One magic word and all the fear stops.

But so does everything else.

“Four.”

My mind is racing, cycling through my options. I can’t go through with this.

“Three.”

I want to know what happens next. Okay, my mind is having trouble admitting to what I want, but my dick sure as hell knows. It’s up for anything. All the things.

“Two, Silas.”

There’s a rustle of cloth behind me, like he’s uncrossed his arms or brought the hand holding the knife forward and brushed his sleeve against his shirt. Will it be the knife he uses to push me forward or his hands?

My skin prickles, anticipating the sharp tip of the blade. Instead, there’s a puff of air at my ear and his low voice says, “One. Last chance to voluntarily step inside, boy.”

“No.” The word escapes on an exhale—I can’t do it; my legs are locked and I can’t get them to move—and at first, I think he doesn’t hear me, but then I hear a snort and feel another puff of air at my ear.

Then a flick of his tongue at my earlobe and I shiver at the arousal that floods through me. My earlobes are super-sensitive and he’s not playing fair.

But then he whispers in a low voice that somehow conveys both threat and glee. “I have to admit, I was sort of hoping you’d say no.”

CHAPTER 5

He licks my earlobe again,then grazes his teeth over it. He’s breathing into my ear and nibbling all around the shell of it. My knees go weak and my breath stutters in my chest.

I sway backwards but the comforting bulk of his body suddenly isn’t there to catch me. Instead, he steps back, grabs my shoulder, and jerks me around to face him. Then he braces one leg behind him, bends forward a little, grabs the knot at my wrists, lifts my arms enough to duck under them, and rams his shoulder into my stomach.

At the same time, he wraps his arms around my hips, then slings me over his shoulder like a freaking sack of potatoes. He grunts a little when he lifts me, but he’s got the advantage of surprise and decades of a five-day-a-week workout schedule with a personal trainer, so he’s plenty strong enough to carry me.

And he doesn’t have far to carry me, just over the threshold and into the cabin’s main room, where he stops and lets me slide down his body until I land on my feet. All the blood that rushed into my head when he tossed me over his shoulder drains back down and I sway on my feet, light-headed and tingly.

His big hands around my upper arms steady me and I’m just gazing into his hazel eyes, kinda stupidly. His hands tighten evenas his eyes crinkle into a fond look that’s at odds with what we’re supposed to be doing here.

But then he reaches overhead for something that rattles and clinks, and holy shit. There are freakinghooksdangling from the ceiling, on chains, attached to pulley systems near the ceiling.

He pulls one of the chains down enough to fasten the trailing ends of the rope around my wrists to the hook at the end of it. Then he yanks on the chain to raise the hook and keeps pulling the rope so my arms are pulled higher and higher, stretched over my head, and I’m balanced on my tiptoes.

He takes a step back, cocks his head as he assesses me, then adjusts the chain so that I settle firmly on my own feet. The tension pulling at my arms lessens enough that I’m not…well, I’m notcomfortable, that’s for damn sure, but I’m not reallyuncomfortable.

When he steps away, I’m able to get my first real view of the cabin’s interior. A huge stone fireplace dominates one wall, and the opposite wall is mostly windows. It’s too dark to see what they look out at, though, and anyway, I’m too distracted by what’s in the cabin to pay much attention to what’s outside.

---