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herself for everything that went wrong, for taking the responsibility for things that were truly beyond her control. That was ending, right now. That Annie was dead, never to raise her meek, curly, black-haired head again.
    “Screw you,” she whispered, swiping the back of her trembling hand across her mouth and coming to stand on wobbly legs. She slammed the car door shut behind her, suddenly not at all concerned about the dark. From now on, Annie Theophilus was going to be tougher, scarier than anything loose in the night.
    Screw them, screw them all. Screw that clown car for taking her parents, screw her great-aunt for treating her like a dirty inconvenience, screw Roger for not loving her enough, and screw herself for being enough of a wimp to take it. And most importantly, screw her luck, her damned fucking bad luck she most certainly had never deserved. She didn’t believe in reincarnation and she had done nothing in her sad little life to deserve such a blighted, cursed, loveless existence. So if that’s all that God/The Great Spirit/The Universe thought she was worth, than he/she/it could screw off too. Forever.
    “Screw you!” Annie screamed, her hysterical sob bouncing off the walls of the garage and echoing out into the condo complex, triggering a round of barking from the dog three doors down.
    But who cared? She didn’t. Dogs were against HOA regulations, but screams of outrage, as far as she knew, weren’t expressly addressed in the Copper Head Condominiums Charter.
    “Screw me?” A deep, resonant voice suddenly sounded from one of the darkened corners of the garage. Annie gasped with surprise and something else she couldn’t quite identify.
    “Were you speaking to me?” it asked again. The velvety voice reached out into the night, caressing things deep inside of her no mere voice should be able to touch.
    In spite of the fear rising within her, her body responded in ways that could never be attributed to anxiety. Anxiety had never made her nipples tighten, rubbing erotically against the thin cotton of her lavender T-shirt. Tension had never made her belly ache low and deep inside her, in a place that could never be simple hunger. And fear most certainly had never triggered a rush of wetness between her thighs, or a throbbing in her core that demanded to be penetrated, ravished. Satisfied.
    “Who’s there?” Annie turned toward the stranger in her garage with an odd peacefulness. Whether it was the deep-seated, private rage she had just recognized inside of herself, or something entirely different, she was shocked to find fear subsiding as she confronted the incredibly large and imposing shadow.
    “I’ve had many names,” the man said, his voice soft and comforting, as if he were talking to a frightened child.
    Annie felt a burst of hysterical laughter threaten as she wondered if even the man who had broken into her garage thought she was out of her mind. Maybe she was, maybe Roger was right and she did deserve to be committed, but dammit if she’d go quietly. The fighting spirit she had suppressed for so long had surged to the surface, and it wasn’t about to meekly submit to anyone else’s idea of what was good, or right, or sane.
    “Stop right there,” Annie ordered, holding up one small hand, realizing as she did how utterly useless any kind of physical protest would be against the man slowly approaching through the shadows of the darkened garage.
    He was enormous, at least a foot taller than her own five three, with shoulders wider than any she had ever seen. If someone had told her shoulders like that on a real man were possible she would have called them a liar. Surely such rampant masculinity, such undeniable physical strength was nearly extinct in this age of desk jobs and rush hours. What kind of job must this man have, what kind of person must he be that his raw physical power would dwarf even the buffest body builders down at Venice beach?
    “I won’t hurt you,” he said,