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she noticed the knife in his hand.
    That glint of a blade in his fist seemed to fit him. Everything about him smacked of danger, and she knew she would feel that
     way even if she wasn’t crouching like prey on a bed before him, waiting to be devoured.
    A tide of panic swamped her. She curled back as far as she could go on the bed, pushing into the headboard. She had nothing.
     No weapon of her own. Nowhere to go. No chance to run away. No chance at all. She was at his mercy. Vulnerable to him and
     whatever he was about to do, and it made her angry. Angry because she was always vulnerable, always subject to someone. Never
     free. Heat flushed through her. She twisted her wrists inside the cord binding, ignoring the pain.
    Her stomach twisted sickly and a strange sense of calm descended. The kind of calm that comes with the realization that there
     was nothing left to do.
    She remembered watching shows like Dateline and 48 Hours , when police officers rattled grim statistics about the likelihood of survival once the victim was taken from the site of
     abduction. Well, she’d been taken. She’d let them take her. Hell, she’d made it relatively easy for them, and that burned
     her up most of all. She had become one of those grim statistics.
    He stopped at the edge of the bed directly in front of her. Her gaze scanned up his denim-clad legs to his brutally handsome
     face, hard as granite, eyes like shards of green-shot amber stone.
    After a pause, the long, lean line of him leaned over her. She flinched as his hands closed around her forearms and tugged
     her away from the headboard. He pulled her hands toward him. Her fingers worked on the air, groping helplessly. They’d gone
     numb and bloodless long ago from the tight cord at her wrists.
    The blade flashed and she moaned into the rag, already imagining it cutting into her. Her mind raced. Would it be fast? Painful?
     God, don’t let it hurt.
    He tugged at the tight binding cutting into her wrists, forcing the restraints even tighter. He brought the knife down, snapping
     the thin cord. She looked down, certain he had cut her, too, but there was no flash of red.
    Immediately the pressure eased and blood rushed back into her hands, bringing a fresh onslaught of pain.
    He grabbed the rag sticking out of her mouth and held onto it, locking eyes with her. “I’m going to pull this out, but if
     you scream it’s going back in.” His gaze drilled into her. “Got it?”
    She nodded and then the rag was gone. She worked her dry-as-cotton mouth and brought her hands to her jaw, gently flexing
     the aching muscles in her face with a whimper. She doubted she could scream if she even wanted to. Her mouth was parched as
     the desert.
    Sudden shouts and laughter carried through the door and made her jerk. Her gaze darted in that direction, worry punching her
     chest, making her breath ragged. It sounded like a party was going on out there. She hoped it stayed outside and didn’t find
     its way in here. To her.
    He followed her gaze and then looked back at her. A long beat of silence crackled between them. “Take off your clothes.”
    “Wh-What?”
    He repeated himself, speaking slowly, enunciating each word. “Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
    She glanced down as if needing to reacquaint herself with the notion of clothes. She swallowed against the golf-ball-size
     lump in her throat. He wanted her naked? It didn’t take much imagination to see where that would lead.
    She flushed cold then hot and shook her head swiftly, loose hair pelting her in the face. She started to shake. Slow tremors
     that she couldn’t control. The fear, that ultimate degradation that she had not permitted herself to even contemplate since
     the moment of her abduction, stared her in the face.
    He leaned forward, his fists sinking into the mattress, springs creaking as he brought his nose into almost touching distance
     of hers. He was close. Too close, and her shaking just got worse.
    “You and I