Over the next few days I devised one escape plan after another, all of which Max easily thwarted. My life had been reduced to a shitty season of Roadrunner cartoons. Years of overachieving had built a health confidence in me that Max smashed relentlessly as he handled me like a toddler straying too far from her crib.

As I sat on the ground feeling especially sorry for myself, Max knelt down and began to unbutton my shirt. I flailed in shock. He pulled back and explained. “You need to wash.”

I couldn’t stand the idea that the only reason I still had clothes on was because he chose to allow it. If he wanted he could have just ripped my clothes to shreds before I had a chance to react. My powerlessness pissed me off and I yelled. “I’m not your fucking pet. I can bathe myself.”

He just watched me silently, as if I’d made a mistake somewhere and he was waiting for me to notice. Oh yeah, my reason for being there. His human pet was exactly what everyone was hoping I’d become. Grumbling, I walked over to the hotspring. I lifted my arm and sniffed. Sure, I’d been wearing the same panties for four days, but I could still smell the floral scent of my deodorant. “It’s not that bad,” I stated defensively.

He tapped his nose. “Heightened senses.”

Absolutely mortified. “Turn around,” I demanded.

“Don’t worry, nudity is sexually neutral to werewolves.”

That explained why I had to beg him to put some pants on. I gestured for him to turn. “Well, I’m not a werewolf and us humans have a thing called modesty, so if you want me to bathe, then you can’t look.”

He rolled his eyes and turned around as if giving me the smallest amount of privacy was too much to ask. I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the water which was on the verge of being too hot to stand. Heat prickled against my skin, but slowly fades as I submerged the rest of my body. After that it became, comfortable.

A indent in the stone held a variety of soaps and shampoos. I picked up a sponge and the lavender soap I’d smelled before. “Why lavender?” I asked as I started to lather up.

“I like the smell of flowers.”

Simple enough answer. Though still, I’d pick something more earthy for him.

“You smell like flowers,” he added. My cheeks reddened. I blamed the heat. “And chemicals, and gun powder and sex when you think I’m not paying attention and you check out my body.”

“Stop talking. Please.” The idea of him smelling my… Oh, God.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s flattering.” He grinned wickedly as he turned to face me. “And if it makes you feel any better, I find your proportions to be ideal.”

I was fortunately neck deep in water. “Are you saying you think I’m hot?”

He stalked towards me. I backed away, which didn’t get me very far considering where I was. All moving back served to do was make sure he got a full view of my ample breasts under the water. And he made no attempt to hide that he was looking. “What I’m saying is that if I was a human, this situation would be far more difficult for me.”

That’s when it hit me. I’d tried every method of pulling away I could think of and they all failed. How about pushing in? Maybe I could find a weakness if I let him think he was getting what he wanted.

I stood up, letting the water cascade down my body. My skin pink from the heat. My nipples hard and jutting in his direction. Was he really unaffected by this? Doubtful. I turned around and grabbed a fistful of hair lifting it up, “Can you wash my back?”

He took the sponge from me and started at the nape of my neck and worked his way down. When he finished with the back, he moved to the front even though I’d already washed those parts, I didn’t stop in. Instead I watched a marveled at how someone so strong could be so gentle. He was a walking contradiction. He could be as unyielding as a wall, and then as soft as a caress.

After he finished washing me, he took the shampoo and squirted it into his hand. I knelt down and leaned back letting my auburn curls fan out in the water. He gathered my hair and washed it, massaging my scalp. I relaxed against the edge of the basin and just let him do his thing. I closed my eyes and melted under his touch. Part of me empathized with Abby. How easy this would be, to just allow yourself to be pampered and cared for at the low, low cost of your free will. If I was a different woman, I might have taken that deal, but I wasn’t and there were things I valued more than my comfort, more than my life.

He dipped my head back and rinsed out the shampoo. I stood up noting a lack of towels. “Do you have anything for me to change into?”

He searched around the room and then walked over to a chest pulling out a couple of t-shirts. They were his, so when I put it on, it fit like an over-sized dress, the other I used to dry my wet hair. “Thanks,” I said tossing the damp shirt at his chest.

“If you’d like, I could borrow some of Abby’s clothes for you.”

I grabbed my boots, slipping them back on. “Those scraps of fabric her ‘Master’ forces her to wear. No thank you. I’d rather go naked.”

He gathered up my dirty clothes along with his wet shirt and tossed them all in a crate. “Why do you assume he’s forcing her to wear it? I’m sure if she hated it he’d buy her new things.”

“Because no woman wants to be some man’s sex object. We don’t want men picking our clothes for us or telling us where we can and can’t go. We don’t want to be handled and if Abby has convinced herself she likes any of it, then it’s a survival mechanism her mind created to endure the constant terror she must have been in.”

Max didn’t seem fully convinced. “I’ll admit vampires tend to take things a little too far, but you’re completely ignoring biology. I’ve never met a woman in my life that didn’t enjoy being handled every now and then.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t.”

He took a step towards me with a look in his eyes that made me nervous. “Never?”

But I hid my fear and stared back at him coolly. “Never.”

“Take off the shirt.” There was a strange change in his tone, as if the shirt was coming off no matter what I said or did.

“What?” I asked laughing nervously.

“Take off the shirt. I won’t tell you a third time.”

I slipped the shirt over my head, standing there damn and naked. Maybe it was a personal favorite of his.

“Turn to the wall and press your palms against it and don’t remove them until I tell you that you can.”

“Huh?”

He didn’t repeat himself. He just stared, his eyes burrowing into me. It was like I faced a different man. Like everything I’d deduced about him was wrong. One horrible miscalculation after another.

Panic flooded my senses as I obeyed his order. Had he been any other man I’d be figuring out a way to take him down. But the past couple of days made it abundantly clear that all I could depend on was his mercy. “Please,” I begged.

He stood behind me, kicking my feet apart until I was spread open before him. Oh God, he was going to take me like a dog, rutting me from behind. His fingers wrapped around my neck and he brought my ear to his lips and whispered in a husky voice I didn’t know he had. “I can smell the fear radiating from your skin.”

I was a doe in the grip of a wild beast. The worst part was how stupid I felt. I thought I had him figured out and he’d played me the entire time with that sweet face and those gentle eyes. He was a monster, just like the vampire.

“But I also hear your heart pounding. Your breath hitching. Even though you’re afraid your thighs are parted wider than I pushed them.”

They were parted wider to keep my balance. If he thought I was turned on by this… okay, maybe a little.

“The shock, the fear, the arousal, it all mixes together, doesn’t it? So should I listen to the woman or her pride?” His warm breath brushed my cheek sending shivers through me.

Were these questions rhetorical?

“Kiera, do you want to come?”

Was he serious? My legs spread a little further, my ass raised a bit higher. Yes. I wanted to come. But not like this. I wanted the Max from before. The one that didn’t terrify me.

His hand trailed across my stomach making its way down. “If you don’t answer me, I’ll stop.”

So all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and all this would end? Done deal. “Yes, make me come.” Oh, fuck you mouth. You had one job. One fucking job.

“Good girl.” His condescension irritated me and turned me on at the same time. I had never been so confused in my life. I wanted him to stop. To let me go, for everything to go back to normal, but at the same time I wanted him to keep going.

His fingers found my nub and rubbed it in slow circles with just enough pressure to make me beg for more. “You think I don’t recognize your strength. I do. But even an alpha female bares her neck to her male.”

All thoughts of escape fled my mind. At that moment there was nowhere I’d have rather been. The things his whispered in my ear as he touched me made me want to be his, to be claimed. He could have fucked me in all three holes and I would have loved every minute of it.

My hips rolled against his erection. He still had his shorts on. I wanted him to take them off, I wanted him to fill me. He was bigger than any man I’d ever been with, it’d probably hurt at first, but I was too far gone to care about that. “I’m coming,” I warned.

He sped up, rubbing my clit until the pressure became to much and I exploded, my body racked with the most powerful orgasm I’d ever experienced in my life.

I collapsed to my knees, panting I looked up at him wondering how long before I was ready for round two.

He watched me as he licked his fingers clean. “See. All women like to be handled. Biology.”

His words were a bucket of cold water. None of it was real, just some experiment. Another game to play with his pet human. I’d never been so humiliated in my life. I needed air. To get away from him.

I reached for the t-shirt I’d taken off, but before I could grab it he was behind me with his arms wrapped around my waist. “Don’t be mad.”

Why wouldn’t I be mad? “I’m not a toy.”

“I know. But if I’d just said you were wrong, you wouldn’t believe me. I had to show you.”

“You think you know more about me than I know about myself?”

“Well no, but some things are universal.”

“Yeah, they are.” Or at least I hoped they were. I slammed my heel into his bare foot with all the force I could muster. I heard the bone break and he released me from his grasp.

I turned and kneed him in the nads so hard that even I felt pain and he crumpled to the ground. Yep, some things were universal. “Biology,” I snarked as I ran from the cave to freedom.