I didn't scream. Because of the knife at my throat. But I made a shuddering noise as I inhaled, as close to a wail as I dared without risking my life, and the blade trembled against my skin, my heart pounding underneath it.

I might've thought this was a dream, that I'd fallen asleep on the ride home and this was yet another one of the frequent nightmares I'd had over the years about Theodore Sheridan coming after me. I’d had so many.

As real as those had felt in the moment, when I woke with sweat pouring from my skin, my heart pounding against my rib cage, the hair raised on the back of my neck, I could see now how very different reality was from the nightmare. I could see how it really felt to have a predator at your back, threatening, in control. I remembered now. Remembered how much more terrible the real thing was.

"Careful," Theo warned, pressing the metal against my jugular. "You won't make another sound now, will you." It wasn't a question. It was a command. It was a directive.

"No." But that was a sound, so I shook my head carefully, quickly, both erasing the word uttered and acknowledging that I would do as he said. The feel of the blade against my neck as I made the movement was nearly paralyzing. But I couldn’t let it be. I had to do what he said.

Because if I didn’t…

I couldn’t think about what would happen if I didn’t do what he wanted. I couldn’t think about what would happen period.

"Good girl." Those familiar words, a phrase I loved to hear from Donovan, now made my stomach turn, and I had to fight not to throw up. He eased the knife away. "Now put the key back in the lock and let us in."

Sound rushed in my ears like I was in a wind tunnel. The hallway felt like it was closing in around me. Like soon there wouldn’t even be enough room to take a full breath. I knew if I went into that apartment with him, alone, my chances of walking away unharmed decreased exponentially.

Yet there wasn't a single alternative action I could think to take. A dozen self-defense classes over a decade and I was stumped. Any move I made, he’d have that knife on me. He’d cut me where it hurt.

I had no chance. No choice.

I nodded and lifted my trembling hand back to the lock. Though I intended to keep silent, a long whimpering sound came from my mouth as I tried to align the key. What was he doing here? Why was he out of jail? I sent up a quick furtive prayer to whoever would listen that someone would walk down the hall and discover us. Maybe if I took my time…

The metal of the blade scraped my skin again and I jolted.

"Hurry it up, Sabrina," he warned. "I'm telling you right now, I'm not putting up with any games from you."

I hurried, got the key in the lock, turned it, heard it click. I moved my hand to the knob and opened the door.

I didn't move until Theo nudged me with his knee. I couldn’t bring myself to enter my dungeon so willingly. That’s what it would be now. A place I couldn’t escape. A place that was no longer safe.

I choked back a sob as I started across the threshold.

"Take your suitcase," he said when I'd made to leave it in the hall. "Grab the delivery bag, too."

He moved away from me so that I could grab the items and I wondered if this was my chance to escape, but I couldn't think fast enough. He was too big. And I was too scared.

And now he had me at another disadvantage—when I walked into the apartment, my hands were full. My purse was on one shoulder, my hand clasped the suitcase handle, and the other arm held the delivery bag. I stood frozen, unmoving, waiting for his next order.

Theo shut the door behind me and locked it, not bothering with the deadbolt. The sound the lock made was a simple click, but in my ears, it clanged like the closing of a cell. He flipped on a couple of lights, then scanned the interior of my apartment, looking at my things. At my life. At pieces of me he had no right to look at.

How had this happened? How had he gotten past my doorman?

The overwhelming scent of curry coming from the bag I held gave a clue. "Is this how you got in here?" I asked.

"Yeah." He was visibly proud of himself. "I hung around until someone else was walking in. Then slipped in with them. No one shuts the door on food delivery."

He’d planned this. It wasn't just a whim. He'd carefully planned this.

Theo took the bag from my arms and laid it on the ground. "Drop the suitcase. Where's your phone?"

I blinked. The question was easy, thinking was not. "My purse. It's in my purse." My phone was in my purse! I was so close to a way of communication. It felt like I was handcuffed, having it so near and not being able to use it.

"Hand it over." He held his palm out, waiting.

Slowly, I dragged the strap from my shoulder and looked inside. I was still shaking, but I made more of the production, going slower than I needed to. If I could find it, if I could call Donovan with a swipe of my thumb…

"What's taking so long?" He was too smart. He pointed the knife at me like a gun.

I stayed focused on my goal, peering into my bag, doing my best to ignore the weapon aimed at me. "I have a lot of stuff in here. I'm looking." I already had it in my grasp. Just couldn't get it unlocked.

"Give it to me." He yanked the purse from me and the phone dropped into the belly of the bag. He found it easily and swiped at the screen. "What's the code?"

I hung my head, defeated. My defeat was in losing the phone, not in surrendering the code to get into it. I didn’t really have anything in there that I was afraid of Theo finding. What I feared was already standing right in front of me. "1123."

He punched the numbers in and smiled when he got access. "Sit on the couch," he said without looking at me, distracted by the contents of my cell.

I shuffled to do his bidding, but was this my chance while he was distracted? I looked around the room for an opportunity, for something that could be used as a weapon against his knife. The lamp next to the couch—was it too heavy? The fire poker—was it too far?

A rustling of paper caught my attention. Theo had reached into the delivery bag and pulled out a bottle of beer. He snapped off the bottle top and took a swig as he came around the couch.

The beer was in one hand, my phone in his other. Then where was the knife?

I quickly searched down his body, my eyes landing on the sheath fastened at his hip.

"Don't even think about it, Bri." He caught me looking. "I'm a fast draw. And I'm not too bad at improvising, either."

His expression said he wouldn't mind if I tested him. I had a feeling he enjoyed the idea of improvising. I was sure I wouldn't.

So I wouldn't cause trouble right now. Not until I was sure it was trouble I could get away with, or at least trouble that had a chance.

"When did you get out of jail?" I didn't want to talk to him, but just like the delivery question, I wanted to know. I needed to know how all of the things that had been set up to keep me safe had failed. It was a less terrible form of torture than imagining the things he was about to do to me, and anytime I stopped thinking about the how’s, my mind immediately went to the what’s next’s.

"So you knew about that? I wondered." He paced a couple steps in front of me. "Was that your idea? Sending me away in the first place."

He said it casually, but the subtext was undeniably filled with vengeance.

Oh shit.

Was that why he was here? Revenge?

"I didn't know anything about that until just recently. I promise." I sounded desperate for him to believe me. I was desperate.

I pulled my coat tighter around me. It was warm in the apartment, and I didn't need it, but it was a barrier between him and me. Small, but I’d take any barrier I could get.

"Doesn't really matter.” He shrugged. "See, I know it was Kincaid who put me in a jail cell."

"No. It was you. You put yourself in that jail cell when you raped that woman." I regretted the words as soon as I said them, true as they were. It wasn't a good idea to provoke him.

Yet, here he was provoked. He slid my phone into his back pocket, and stared at me hard with greedy eyes. "What's with the coat? Hiding something?"

"Just…” myself. “Cold.”

"I don't like it. Take it off. Make yourself comfortable. We're going to be together a while.” He set his beer bottle on the coffee table.

I trembled so much it was hard to slip the buttons through the holes as I removed my coat like he’d asked. I kept my focus on my task, but I knew he watched me the whole time. I could feel the weight of his disgusting, captivated gaze. When it was off and bunched up around me where I sat, I felt naked, even though I was still completely dressed in my leggings and the thin nylon sweater I'd been wearing all day. I suddenly wished I'd worn something heavier. Something not so light. Something that didn't show my form or the line of my breasts. Something much more difficult to remove.

I forced myself to look at him, and my vulnerable feelings only intensified. His expression, though still dark, was now also terrifyingly excited.

"Much better." His smile was gleeful as he pulled out his knife and came around the coffee table to bend down in front of me.

I cowered back involuntarily.

He grabbed my sweater and fisted the material in his hand. Then pressed the knife down at the V of my neckline.

There was nowhere to go, but I tried, I really tried to press myself into that couch, to make myself smaller as he cut down the center of my sweater with his knife. To make myself not exist. To make myself nothing because if I was nothing I couldn’t feel this or know this or ever remember what it was like to feel a madman breathing over me, sawing through my clothing with the blade. It was a really sharp blade I discovered. He nicked me a couple of times with the tip.

Because he wasn't careful.

Because he didn't care.

Because he wanted me to know just how sharp the blade was.

When the entire front of my sweater hung open, he leaned back to look at his work. "I think I'd like it better if you didn't have the bra." He looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to do something.

I was already trying to be someplace else. Where did I want to be? Anywhere was better than here. But if I could find the perfect place, I could lose myself completely, and not be here at all.

After I didn't move, he said, "Are you going to take it off, or am I?"

I shook myself from the daze. He wanted me to do something. Something gross and terrible and I couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t let him do it more. “Just take off the bra?" I asked.

"Stop procrastinating. Take it off or I will."

I reached behind my back and somehow managed to undo the clasp. Then I slid the straps down one sleeve of my sweater and pulled the whole thing out of the other sleeve.

Theo bent forward toward me, and I shrunk away.

“Stay fucking still.” He flashed the knife, and now I had to do his bidding. My face crumpled, but I didn’t move this time when he leaned in and arranged my clothing, pulling the sweater open wide enough that the inside curves of my breasts could be seen.

I felt disgusting. Like trash. Used, and he hadn’t even used me yet.

Yet.

I sat silent for him, but inside I was screaming.

He sat back on the coffee table, and studied me appraisingly. His eyes darkened. “That's really nice."

I tried to imagine what he liked most about what he saw. The damaged clothing that proved non-consent? The blood trickling down my skin? The hint of flesh that he would soon take as he willed?

I had to lose myself. Where could I go? I could be in the cold, in the snowdrifts of Washington, Connecticut, holding onto Donovan, letting him kiss me warm.

"I would've gotten off,” Theo said, turning back to the earlier conversation. “I had the better lawyers. That woman couldn't afford shit for lawyers. And that's what really matters in these cases."

Jesus, he was such a sick fuck.

I wanted to ignore him, and I tried, tried to live in Donovan's arms, in the cold, in the snow. But I could still hear Theo's voice penetrating my fantasy.

"Then Donovan Kincaid shows up with his million-dollar law team and suddenly the trial goes an entirely different direction. That is not how that should've gone down.  What the fuck was with that? Why did Donovan care about me? It didn't make any sense." He was angry and animated.

He paused to pull on his beer bottle before going on. "So I’ve been in jail. And I've had time to think about it. You have a lot of time to think in there. I thought about you—about that night outside The Keep clear back at Harvard. I have to admit I couldn't remember your name for a while. I wasn't sure that you were the connection, even with that history."

He set the bottle down, and leaned forward again, his elbows on his thighs. "But then two things happened." With one hand he held up a single finger. "First, I was told I was getting early parole at the end of the week.” He held up a second finger. “Second, the day after I came home, my brother said he'd been at a wedding with Donovan, and his girlfriend was some chick named Sabrina Lind."

I'd been scared about how he’d violate my body since the minute he’d shown up in the hallway. Now I was terrified that wasn’t all he had in mind.

"Yeah," Theo said registering my fear with a new gleam in his eye. "All the pieces fell together for me.” He stretched forward and set one finger at the base of my throat, right where my pulse was. My heart was pounding, and now he could feel it. He could actually feel my fear.

I didn't move.

I didn't breathe.

I tried to will my heart not to beat.

After a few seconds, he trailed his finger downward, between my breasts where sweat had gathered, through the blood that stained my skin. “Kincaid put me in jail as some sort of revenge for you. Which is bullshit." His volume increased sharply on the word bullshit, making me jump.

He sat back again and brought his finger to his mouth to suck on. Calmer, he said, "I never even got to fuck you. There was no reason for revenge."

I was shaking again, or shaking more; I’d never really stopped.

How could I get out of this? How could I possibly get out of this?

“You don't want to do anything to me. You just got out of jail. You don't want to go back." Jesus, I was begging. Did begging even work with predators? I couldn't remember what I'd read over the years.

"Why not? Did you know I have to register as a sex offender for the rest of my life? No one's going to give me a job on Wall Street. I'll never get to work with money with a prison history. I really don’t have much to look forward to, Sabrina, besides this." His eyes narrowed into slits as he hissed, “Nothing's fucking taking it away from me."

He had nothing to lose. That made him more dangerous now than he’d been a decade ago.

I sucked my lower lip under my teeth, and tried not to cry.

He retrieved my phone from his pocket. "What was the code again?"

I told him, and he entered it into the screen.

"This wasn't me though," I said, trying to find a way to reason with him. "I wasn't the one who stopped you that night, even. And I had nothing to do with Donovan getting involved in your case." It was all true, but I felt like the most terrible person in the world to pretend I hadn't wanted Donovan to save me. To pretend I wasn't proud of the actions he'd taken against Theodore.

But this was about survival. Whatever I needed to do to get out of this. Whatever I needed to say, I’d say it.

"That doesn't really matter, like I said. This is about what will hurt Kincaid." He glanced at me. "I'm pretty sure hurting you is going to hurt him more than anything else I could do to him. Plus, this is going to be pretty damn fun for me. I haven’t been able to play in a long, long time."

He slipped my phone back into his pocket. "You and Kincaid don't text much, huh? Was sure a sweet shot of your pussy you sent him, though. Makes me nice and hard." He rubbed a hand over his erection.

Bile crept into the back of my throat. I swallowed it down.

I’d only sent one picture in all the time I’d been with Donovan. The picture with his initials drawn on my skin in an intimate region. It was probably the only naughty picture on my phone. Of course that's what Theo would find.

I started rocking back and forth now, hugging myself. And the whimper I’d been trying to hold down returned.

"What are you going to do to me?" I knew already. He’d basically already said. But I didn't know the details, and maybe if I knew them, maybe if I heard him say the words, I could better prepare myself for what was coming.

Who was I fooling? There was nothing that would prepare me for this. Tears streamed down my face.

Theo cocked his head. "I haven't decided yet."

"Really?" I could hear the stupid waver of hope in my voice.

He laughed, a big hearty laugh. "Oh, I'm going to fuck you. I just haven't decided how I'm going to like it most."

I pressed my thighs together instinctively.

And then, when I saw how much my fear and panic turned him on, I jumped and ran, darting for my bedroom. It was automatic. Spontaneous. I didn’t think; I just did. It wasn't like the bedroom was any safer. It was simply… away.

I didn't make it very far before he grabbed me. Wrapping his arms around my waist, he lifted me off the ground in a horrible parody of the scene with Donovan at Weston’s wedding. I kicked and screamed, which earned me his hand on my throat. My scream transformed into a choked gurgle.

"I told you to shut the fuck up." He dumped me face down on the couch, and held me with one hand at my neck, while the other pinned one of my arms at the small of my back.

I managed to turn my face so I could breathe, so I could see the room. He had knocked over the beer bottle when he bolted after me. It lay only a couple of feet from me now, the remains spilled but unbroken. I watched it roll towards the fireplace and wondered if that would be my focal point while this asshole raped me.

And I was mad at myself now, too. By running, I'd made it more fun for Theo. He might've waited a while before deciding he was ready.

Not that waiting would've mattered. He would've raped me eventually, and this time I didn't have Donovan watching from above.

Or did I?

A new flame of hope kindled inside me. There are cameras in my bedroom. I didn't know if they were in the main part of my apartment. I'd made Donovan promise not to watch me on them anymore. But I'd learned tonight that he'd broken promises before—and wouldn't he be more likely to want to watch me when it was the only way he had access to me? When we were fighting, and I wasn't answering his calls?

If I could get Theo to the bedroom, maybe I would have a chance. It was a small chance, but a chance.

"I'm sorry," I said, trying my best to feign obedience. I gave him my other trembling hand voluntarily to demonstrate how sorry I was. "I was just thinking you might like it better in the bedroom."

"I like it better when you don't do any thinking," Theo responded gruffly.

Right. I knew that.

"I meant," oh God, oh God, it was so hard not to sob as I said it, "I thought you'd like it better if you had to chase me."

He had moved his hand from my throat so he could hold my wrists while he undid his jeans. At least, I was guessing that's what he was doing from the sound of the belt and the zipper—I couldn't see him from this position. But at my words, he stilled.

"Sabrina," he said, a note of awe in his tone. "If we play chase, you're likely going to get hurt."

As if I wasn't going to get hurt anyway.

"I'm not advocating against it. I'm just telling you how the game works." He pressed against me, and even though I still had my leggings on, I could feel he was bare. His naked penis rubbed up and down along the crevice of my ass. He felt thick and gross.

I started crying harder. He was going to put that inside me. I didn't even know where he was going to put it inside me. He could put it in so many places. He was going to hurt me. He was going to violate me.

And I had to fight.

He let go of my hands, to maneuver my pants, and with everything I had I pushed up off the sofa, shoving him backward and off of me.

He was slightly surprised, but he knew I was his captive. And he enjoyed the chase. So he was more amused than upset.

Like before, I made a beeline for the bedroom. If I could just get in there, if Donovan could see us, he would call the cops or the doorman—someone who could get here immediately. I believed it. I had to believe it.

But Theo jumped in front of me, cutting off my pathway to the door.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I pivoted and ran in the other direction. Acting as much on instinct as anything else, I bent down as I ran past the fireplace, grabbing the beer bottle that had rolled over there, then circled around the sofa with the item behind my back. Suddenly, I could see his moves in my head. Theo would double back and head me off. I had him pinned, and he didn't know it.

He did exactly as I’d guessed. He doubled back.

And when I came face-to-face with him, I pulled the bottle from behind my back and swung with all my might, hitting him across the face.

Check.

He stumbled backwards, cursing incomprehensibly.

Just then my front door burst open and Donovan stood there. "Get the fuck away from her, Sheridan," he shouted.

Checkmate.