But how? When? Without knowing anything about who had kidnapped me or where he held me, I couldn’t form a plan of escape.
Letting out a heavy, slow exhale, I focused on relaxing. Conserving my energy. My mind quieted in the stillness that seemed to go on for hours, my muscles eventually giving in to exhaustion.
* * *
I woke with a jolt, limbs jerking. I was still bound, blindfolded, and desperate for a bathroom, but the panic had severely lessened from the first time I’d woken in my captor’s bed.
How long had I slept?
Tingles slid over my body, heating my skin. Even without seeing or hearing, I recognized the energy in the room as the same from earlier, the same as when I’d felt sure someone followed me and Ciarra.
Whoever it was, he’d been stalking me for days.
My captor watched—if only it was my protector who hated me rather than the asshole who’d taken me from my bed. Longing for Gideon tightened my throat, but it wasn’t his nearness I felt like a whispered breeze, a lick of energy over my skin that lit up every atom in my body.
Warmth.
Swelling.
Need rose inside me, and I couldn’t lay still from arousal and self-hatred at my body’s reaction. I shifted, making me once more aware of the fullness of my bladder.
I licked my lower lip, realizing I had no moisture left in my mouth. “I have to pee,” I croaked out.
He didn’t speak, but I didn’t doubt his presence—whoever the hell he was.
“I have to pee,” I stated louder, firmly enough that he couldn’t mistake my seriousness.
Silence stretched until I gritted my teeth.
“Do you want me to wet this bed? Soak the sheets? I have to pee!”
With a rustle of clothing, I felt him draw nearer.
Cold metal scraped up the inside of my leg, stinging yet not cutting.
A knife.
My breath caught on a gasp as my skin broke into goosebumps.
The scratch deepened along the inside of my thigh, and I bit my lip against the pain, the sure welling of blood.
The fucker had cut me.
And being the sick fuck I was, I liked it. Pulsed for more.
“Any sudden movements, and I’ll slice you to shit.” He sounded dead, a hollow tone as though speaking through a mask.
A shudder rippled over me, and I nodded, telling myself knife play wasn’t my kink, that my brain was still messed up from whatever drug he’d given me.
The restraints around my ankles loosened, and I whimpered while trying to pull my thighs together. My hips ached, my joints on fire.
Even worse, I couldn’t shift my arms once he released them. He grasped my wrist and yanked me toward the bed’s edge, pulling me up and back against him, my arm twisted between us.
Weakness plagued my legs, but he held me against hard, hot muscle.
Bigger—stronger—a beast of a man.
Not my Gideon.