Garrett’s growl, as feral as any animal’s, rippled through the dark wood. I slipped behind the nearest tree and tried to plot my next move. I’d have to get the drop on him somehow. Maybe some sort of a distraction? I leaned down and grabbed a pine cone.

“Garrett, please—” The woman was out of breath.

“Shut the fuck up.” He slapped her, the sound like a shot. I clutched the pine cone and waited for my chance to lob it far enough to get his attention away from the woman.

“Yes, sir.” She quieted except for her large inhales and shaking exhales.

“I told you not to come tonight.” His voice was low, angry. “I fucking told you.”

I cocked my head, not sure if I was hearing correctly.

“I know, sir. But I wanted to see you. I needed you.”

“No, Melinda. You don’t need me. You just want what I can give you. I told you no, and you disobeyed me to try to force my hand.” He released one of her wrists and ran a hand through his wild hair. “I don’t work that way. You know I don’t.”

“I want to play.” Her voice turned into a whine. “I need you to hurt me. I’ve been very bad. Touching myself at work while thinking about you.”

“No.”

She huffed out a breath and tried a different tack. “I disobeyed you tonight, sir. You should punish me.”

“You’re right.” He leaned down until his face was only inches from hers. “Leave, and don’t come back.”

“What?” Panic turned her voice into a shrill whisper. “No. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I promise. Please—”

“When we started this, we laid down our rules. Remember that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have I ever violated one of your rules, ever broken a hard limit?”

She whimpered. I wasn’t close enough to see if there were tears, but I sensed them in her tone. “No.”

“You just broke one of mine, and you know it. That’s a violation of my trust. I can’t allow it.” He shook his head, and his tone softened. “You have to go, Melinda. You and I are through.”

“No!” She slapped him with a vehemence that shocked me.

He leaned back and rose, then offered her a hand up. She didn’t take it, instead scrambling to her feet. Melinda, whoever she was, was tall and thin, her body like that of a ghostly dancer. Her blonde hair flowed around her heart-shaped face as she advanced on Garrett. She slapped him again and beat on his chest, but he stood stoic, refusing to fight back or even speak.

After she exhausted her rage, she wept and leaned into him. “I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry. Don’t do this.”

“Just go.”

She took a step back and wiped the dirty sleeves of her dress across her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know. Doesn’t change anything. Go.”

She sniffled and walked past him, back toward the house. I stared as he let his head drop to his chest and rested his hands on his hips. Even in that pose, he was an imposing figure. I wanted to ask him what was going on, question him about lying to me that first night when I’d heard screams—screams that obviously belonged to Melinda. But what was there to ask?

Melinda’s footsteps faded, and I waited for Garrett to follow. He didn’t. Instead, he raised his head and stared right at where I was hiding.

Fuck.

I held my breath, desperate to stay hidden as Garrett’s dark gaze swept the area.

“I know you’re there, Red.”

No. Maybe if I just stayed still—

“Come out. Don’t try to pretend you’re invisible.”

I tightened my grip on the kitchen knife and eased out from behind the tree. He tracked me, his eyes in shadow as I backed away from him. My leg had reached a new level of ache as I’d watched the scene unfold, and my limp grew worse with each step.

He walked toward me, and a primal fear rushed through me. I was in the dark woods with a wolf in the middle of the night.

“Stop.” I held the knife out in front of me. “Don’t come any closer.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He put his palms up, promising peace, and his tone was even and free of anger. But I’d seen the way he’d slapped Melinda.

“Stay back.” I tried to hurry backward, but the throb in my leg grew more vicious with each beat of my heart.

“You need help.” He kept coming.

“Not from you.” I feinted left and then ran right. My leg burned and stung as I struggled to escape him.

I hadn’t gone a dozen steps before he grabbed my upper arms.

“Red, please. Your leg isn’t well enough for this.” The pleading in his voice shocked me almost as much as the scene I’d just witnessed.

My head swam, and I fought to stay upright despite the dizziness. He gentled his grip on my arms, then walked around to face me. I brought the knife up and held it out in front of me.

He walked forward until the tip of my blade pressed into his chest. “You can stab me all you want, but I suggest you wait until I get you back to the house, warm you up, and check on your leg.”

“You hit her. I saw you.” My teeth chattered.

“You don’t know what you saw.” He leaned forward, as if daring me to hurt him.

“I saw you chasing a girl, pinning her, and hitting her. I heard her screams!”

“Did you see her hit me?” He grabbed my hand but didn’t force me to drop the knife, just held me in place. “Did you hear her beg me to hurt her?”

“Y-yes.” My teeth chattered so hard I wondered if I might have cracked one.

“I would never hurt you.” His eyes softened. “Not unless you wanted it like she did.” He squeezed my hand. “Okay? I wouldn’t take something that wasn’t willingly given.”

My leg felt colder than the rest of me. I glanced down. The side of my jeans were dyed dark crimson. My wounds must have reopened as I ran. Shit.

He gently eased the blade away and stepped closer. “Look, you can hold on to the knife if it makes you feel better.”

The realization hit me hard—if he wanted to take the knife, he could. I was too weak to do anything about it. If I tried to limp back to the house, I had no doubt I’d make it, but it would take a lot of struggling out in the cold woods to make it happen. I could chance the walk or rely on the man offering to help me.

I brought the knife to his neck and rested the blade against his pulse. “If you try anything, I won’t hesitate.”

“I got it.” No fear. “Now, may I?” He raised his eyebrows.

I dropped the knife to my side but maintained a death grip on it. He scooped me up and headed toward the house with long strides.

“What was that? What did I see?” I stared up at him as the trees cast ever-changing shadows across his face.

He sighed. “Melinda and I have an arrangement.”

“Where you think it’s okay to hit her?”

He ducked under a low branch and kept walking. “She wants me to hit her, just as much as I want to hit her.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “It gets her off.”

“Does it get you off?”

He tensed and glanced into my eyes. “Yes.”

I’d heard about this sort of thing but never seen it firsthand. “So it’s BDSM? And you’re like a dom or something?”

“Not as simple.” He shook his head.

“Then what?”

His grip tightened as he stepped over a fallen tree. “I’ve always been… I guess strange is the word, when it comes to sex.”

“Don’t get vague on me.” I glared at him. “I need you to explain what the hell I just saw.”

“Why? Why isn’t it enough for you to know I won’t hurt you?”

“You almost choked me out earlier!” My voice cracked in the cold air.

“But I didn’t, and I never would. Not unless you asked.”

Not unless I asked? “Are you fucking kidding me? You explain and you do it fast. If I’m not satisfied by the time we get to the house, I’m calling the sheriff. Give me every detail. Make me understand.”

“God, this is worse than seeing a therapist.”

“You’ve been to a therapist for this?” I couldn’t imagine Garrett sitting in a staid office and telling his kinky sex fantasies to a guy in a smoking jacket.

“When I was a teenager, my mom found some of my porn—not your average centerfolds. She freaked out and sent me to a specialist in Columbus.” He wrinkled his nose. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“Keep going or I’ll be telling Sheriff Crow all about Melinda.”

He grimaced. “The therapist said I was fine, just different. He was actually helpful, taught me that I wasn’t the freak I feared I was. I mean, still a freak, but not some sort of psychopath or something.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I wanted him to keep talking, so I stayed quiet.

“I always enjoyed the idea of women in bondage, women who liked pain. Horror movies turned me on—”

I stiffened in his arms.

“Not the blood or the killing.” He hopped over a small stream. “The fear. I wanted to be the psycho killer, the hot girl afraid and screaming, but instead of slashing her to bits, I wanted to fuck her.”

I shuddered. “Rape.”

“Yes, but no. I’d never take a woman against her will.” He peered down at me. “That night when I choked you—” His gaze fluttered to my throat. “—that was a warning, just a taste of what I’m capable of. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about touching you. I’ve wanted…”

I swallowed hard as my emotions went to war with each other. Pain, longing, and my burning desire to understand how his mind worked. “Have you thought about hurting me?”

He walked out of the woods and carried me toward the house. “Yes.”

Each long stride seemed an eternity, the dead grass and fallen leaves whispering beneath his boots.

“Did you hurt the dean’s wife?”

He swung the back door open, and the screen smacked onto the side of the house as he pushed inside. “Yes. She was like Melinda. She craved it.”

“And Melinda? Was she a regular thing?” The twinge of jealousy that shot through me was completely at odds with the knife in my hand and the fear in my heart.

“Yes.” He carried me through the house. “We had appointments, more or less. Once a month. She’s who you heard that night when I found you. I hadn’t even caught her yet by the time I heard you screaming for help. I told her to leave, then set out to find you.”

I knew it. I wasn’t crazy after all. The screams that brought me to Garrett were real.

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t elaborate.”

“That’s the same thing.” I shook my head.

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.” I needed to know more, my curiosity overcoming my irritation with his deception. “Why would she scream in the woods? Why not come to the house and let you tie her up or something?”

“That’s not my thing.” He powered up the stairs.

“I think my wrists that first night would beg to differ.” I sighed with relief as he set me on my bed. My leg still stung and throbbed, but at least the house was warm and the bed was soft—and I still had the knife.

“Let me rephrase.” He rubbed his jaw and avoided my gaze. “I enjoy rigging, but that’s not my main thing.”

“What is your main thing?” I already knew, all the puzzle pieces falling into place, but I wanted to hear it from him.

He sat back on his haunches and began unlacing my boots. “It’s best described as consensual non-consent.”

I rolled the terms around in my mind. “So, pretend rape?”

He tossed one boot, then gently pulled the other off my injured leg. “The only thing pretend about it is the non-consent. The rest of it is real.”

“So Melinda would come and run from you like a victim in a slasher flick?” I should have been repulsed, but I understood the excitement. Those movies were popular for a reason. Each of us had a little killer or victim inside. Even me.

“Yeah, we had an agreement.”

“Are there others?” I hated how badly I needed to know the answer. “Other women?”

“No, just Melinda, and that’s over.” He tried to roll my jeans leg up to see the wound, but it was too skinny to cooperate.

With shaking fingers, I reached for my waist. The more I thought about it, if raping me had been his goal, he’d had plenty of opportunities. He’d never harmed me.

I ignored the chaotic jumble of thoughts rumbling through my mind and unbuttoned my jeans. He glanced up, surprise crossing his eyes before he dropped his gaze again. I dragged my zipper down and started wriggling out of the jeans.

He helped me peel them off and kept his eyes on my injured leg instead of my pink panties. Quasi-rapist yet also perfect gentleman. My head spun.

“This is a mess. I may need to stitch you again, but I’ll have to clean it up first so I can see.” He rose and walked to the bathroom. The cabinet squeaked open as he gathered supplies.

“What was your and Melinda’s agreement?” Shrugging out of my coat, I adjusted my leg away from the bed. I didn’t want to get blood on the handmade quilt.

He walked back to me, his dirty boots clunking along the floor and his arms full of gauze, tape, and alcohol. “She would come to the house, knock on the door, and then take off running into the woods. I’d be waiting at the door and give her a head start. Then I’d chase her.”

The image of him running through the woods like a predator spoke to the darker parts of my soul, the ones I’d never explored for fear of enjoying what I found there. What had I gotten myself into?

I tried to seem nonchalant. “And once you catch her?”

He knelt down and wet a washcloth with alcohol. “You saw.” Glancing to the knife in my hand, he asked, “Could you put that down? This is going to hurt, and I don’t want to die by my own kitchen knife.”

I narrowed my eyes at him but dropped the blade on the bed.

“Thanks. Brace yourself.”

When he touched my bloody calf, I brought my hand to my mouth to stifle the scream.

“I’m sorry.”

When I could finally breathe again, I asked, “Does that turn you on?”

He shook his head. “Not even a little. The kind of pain I give is wanted. And there’s always a reward.” He glanced up at me, the dark depths of his eyes making my stomach clench.

My mind whirled around the thought of the “reward.” Fuck. “So this pain is…”

“Different.” He wiped again, and this time I couldn’t keep the sound inside.

“You have a great scream, though.” He lifted my calf and inspected the wounds. “It’s close, but I don’t think you need more stitches. The separations aren’t consistent. I think they’ll sew themselves back up after you rest it for a while.”

I didn’t make it past his initial comment. “A great scream?”

“Never mind that.” He began to place gauze on the bad spots, his dark hair falling along either side of his face. “Now that you’ve questioned me, I have something I’d like to ask you.”

“What?” I wanted to push his hair back so I could see his face, but I kept my hands in my lap.

He turned his face to mine, his stare cold. “Why are you really here?”