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clenching at the thought of being handcuffed to the bed while this male stripped off her clothes.
    Would he be quick or slow?
    Would he want to torment her by licking and stroking down her quivering form? Or would he take her with a swift fury that would leave them both aching from pleasure?
    And what did he mean by bedroom toys ?
    A strangled groan was wrenched from her throat as she tried to squash the treacherous images searing through her brain. What was wrong with her?
    “I meant, do you intend to beat the truth out of me?” She forced the words past her stiff lips.
    He hissed, as if offended by her question. Then his jaw tightened.
    “I could torture you like you did to Reny and Sév and a hundred other Pantera,” he accused.
    “Don’t,” she breathed, not bothering to explain she’d never been involved in torturing anyone.
    Whether she’d personally caused the patients pain or not, she’d been a part of Benson Enterprises. That made her guilty by association.
    “Then explain,” he snapped.
    Stepping back, she wrapped her arms around her waist. She hated talking about the past.
    It dredged up all the pain and guilt that stained her soul like a cancer.
    “I was thirteen when our house caught on fire and burned to the ground,” she said, grimacing at the memory of acrid smoke that had blanketed her bedroom, waking her in the middle of the night. “When I heard the alarm I tried to find my parents and younger brother, but the flames were too intense.” She touched the scars that marred her face. The agony of her burns had taken months to fade. “Eventually I jumped out my bedroom window.”
    She thought she heard Michel suck in a startled breath. “They died?”
    “Yes.” She kept her gaze averted, feeling painfully vulnerable. “I went to live with my grandmother, but it wasn’t easy.” She gave a humorless laugh. That was the understatement of the century. Her grandmother could barely stand to look at her, and enduring the horror of her classmates…yeah, not fun. “Not only did the scars make me different from the other students, but they were a constant reminder to my grandmother of her loss.” She shrugged. “I had a crazy idea that if I could erase the scars I could somehow erase the pain.”
    Michel moved toward her, but thankfully, he didn’t try to touch her. She didn’t think she could concentrate if she was battling her intense reaction to him.
    “That’s why you agreed to help Locke,” he murmured.
    She nodded. “He approached me after I published a paper on my research in genetic engineering. He promised me the sort of funding I could only dream of.”
    “And it didn’t bother you when you discovered he was holding innocent people captive for your experiments?”
    She hunched her shoulders, knowing that he would never understand. Not just her desperation to heal her face, but to satisfy her scientific curiosity.
    The mere thought that she could create an antidote that could help heal almost any wound or disease was intoxicating.
    “At first I had no idea where the blood came from,” she admitted, unable to believe how naive she’d been. “Then when I eventually learned the truth I was so close to a breakthrough that I didn’t let myself consider who was being hurt.”
    He made a sound of disgust. “The end justified the means?”
    “Something like that.”
    “And you were in love with Locke?” he accused.
    There was a strange edge in his voice that made her at last lift her head to meet his smoldering gaze.
    “No.” She shook her head. “I was in love with the man he might have been if he could have walked away from his master.”
    The cat was briefly visible in his eyes. Watchful. Hungry.
    Then the male regained control.
    “You mean Christopher?”
    “Yes.” She’d already shared all the information she had on Christopher, although it wasn’t much.
    “Why did they make you a prisoner?”
    She blinked at the unexpected question. She didn’t think he cared why