I dragged my bleary eyes open.

Then my brow furrowed.

Where am I?

I wasn’t in my bed in my tiny studio apartment. The view from the window wasn’t the ugly, pigeon-filled alley I woke up to every morning. In fact, there was no view at all. There was no window—just a large door and several expensive-looking paintings hanging on walls painted a tasteful cream.

Swallowing hard, I moved to sit up, but a tug on my arms stopped me. Soft leather straps were wrapped around my wrists and secured to the headboard of the large four-poster bed.

“What the hell…?”

My shocked whisper was rough and gravelly. My breath came faster as I twisted as far as my binds would allow, craning my neck to take in my surroundings. This room was bigger than my entire apartment, and if I weren’t scared out of my mind I probably would’ve admired the luxurious setting.

Where on earth am I?

My brain felt mushy, like cereal left to sit in milk for too long. I would’ve suspected a hangover, but I hardly ever drank at work—and besides, my body felt fine. No pounding headache accompanied my disorientation.

I struggled to sort through the previous night’s events. Work had been busy, but not insane. An annoying creep had been hitting on a blonde girl, and I’d swooped in to rescue her. Then the guy had transferred his attention to me, following me around and staring down my shirt as if that might somehow charm me into going home with him. He’d been a pain in the ass, I could remember that well enough.

Right. I stayed late at the bar to make sure he was gone before I headed home.

Then…

My memory skipped. There was a blank, a black hole.

Pushing down my rising anxiety, I forced myself to work slowly through every minute I remembered.

I decided to walk home to save on cab fare. It was quiet, though a little cold. A nice enough night for a walk. Then there was a cold breeze, a noise behind me, and—

A rush of images suddenly flooded my brain, making my breath hitch.

The figure.

Shadowy and dark, yet somehow corporeal.

My fists striking its solid form. The crack of bone as it broke my ankle. Cold concrete beneath my body.

Nausea welled in my stomach as I recalled the pain and fear. Blood had gushed from my wounds as the dark shadow of a monster stooped over me, its claws tipped with red. I had felt the life slipping from my body.

I remembered the overwhelming sense of defeat. Like I’d failed. Death had found me.

Or had it?

I felt plenty alive right now. The bite of the restraints digging into my skin reassured me I was still here.

Then a new memory struck me, sharper than the others.

A man’s face.

The image flashed in my mind, and my body warmed. He’d been big and broad-shouldered. Handsome, with dark hair and bewitching, deep brown eyes. I could remember what his skin tasted like. Coppery. Salty.

How the hell do I know that?

We had been so close together. I remembered his face hovering over mine, the warmth of his breath wafting over my lips.

Then more pain.

Two other faces flashed through my mind.

One was a man with penetrating blue eyes, an eyebrow and lip piercing, and black hair that was shaved tight to his head on one side and long on top. He looked as wild and untamed as a rock star, but his eyes were kind.

Had he helped me? Or had he tried to harm me?

My skin chilled. Monsters like that shadowy thing I’d seen weren’t real. Maybe the massive brown eyed man or the man with blue eyes had been the one who really attacked me, and my brain had dealt with the assault by recasting him as something supernatural.

The third man had wavy blond hair and tanned skin. There had been something strange about his mesmerizing, light green eyes. What was it?

And who were those men? Why did I remember them so vividly? Where had I seen them before?

They weren’t the type of people who frequented Osiris. The bar’s clientele was mostly frat guys and businessmen trying to get lucky. Those three didn’t fit into either of those categories.

My stomach dipped precipitously as a new thought rose to the surface of my fuzzy brain. Whether the shadow creature was real or a hallucination, those men’s faces were the last thing I could remember before waking up in a strange room, strapped to a bed.

They were the reason I was here.

Panic shot through me, and I jerked my arms, fighting against my restraints.

I forced my body to stop struggling, forced myself to draw in long breaths through my nose. If I was going to get out of here alive, I needed to think rationally. Be strategic.

Slowly, I inched up the bed toward the headboard, giving the restraints on my wrists a little slack. My hands were bound too far apart for me to reach one with the other, so I couldn’t do much to untie the straps. But maybe I could shimmy them loose.

Making a fist with my right hand, I rotated it slowly, giving a sustained pull against the strap binding me.

If I can just get a little more wiggle room, I can—

The thought died as a flash of intense, white-hot pain shot through me. My body bowed off the bed, and I thrashed against my bondage. My arms were wrenched behind me with a pop, and new pain flared. I’d nearly dislocated them.

An intense emptiness filled me, hunger I was sure would never be satisfied. I could consume the entire world, and the pain would never stop.

Sharp stabs of agony ripped through me, like someone had stuck a hot knife into my stomach and was driving it up and down. I didn’t care about the men, didn’t care about the creature made of shadow. All I could think about was ending this torture.

I need… something. I need it now.

Just when I thought I would pass out from the pain, the stabbing pangs of hunger faded, leaving me shaky and sweaty. I curled into a ball the best I could with my arms bound, as if making my stomach smaller would keep the gnawing hunger from returning.

I lay there for several long minutes, my breath returning to normal, my heart rate slowing.

A key turned in the lock of the large oak door.

My head whipped over in time to see the door handle rotating.

Shit! I was out of time. I didn’t know what the men who’d taken me wanted from me, but it couldn’t be anything good. You don’t attack and kidnap a stranger and then strap them to a bed because you want to be friends.

As the door began to open, I let my head loll to one side, pressing my eyelids shut. Maybe if my captor thought I was asleep, I could take him by surprise when he got close enough. It probably wouldn’t give me much of an upper hand, but it was the only hope I had right now.

Fear and despair tugged at me. Whoever had made these restraints was no beginner. They knew what they were doing.

They’d done this before.

I listened as my captor stepped into the room. The ache in my stomach was building again, that strange longing for something I didn’t understand cutting through me so sharply I had to clench my jaw to keep from crying out.

Light footsteps approached me—lighter than they should’ve been to belong to any of the men I remembered. They’d all been so big, muscular, and solid. I tried to let my breathing deepen, to keep my arms from straining at the bonds.

The bed dipped, and a shock of awareness washed over me. I could feel the man’s gaze on me like a physical weight. It tracked down my body, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

The mattress shifted again as he leaned toward me, and I moved.

My eyelids flew open as I turned my head sharply to face the intruder. It was the dark-haired man whose skin I could still taste. His striking brown eyes widened in surprise.

Moving on pure instinct, I lashed out. My arms were bound, but I still had my legs. I twisted and caught him off guard with a hard kick to his side. He grunted in pain, stumbling off the bed.

Holy shit. Maybe it was the adrenaline pumping through my body, but my kick had made more of an impact on this giant man than I’d expected.

Even so, it didn’t stop him for long.

In the blink of an eye, he had me pinned to the bed under the weight of his muscular body. I struggled and writhed, trying to get a knee between his legs. But he was too damned heavy.

I reared up to bash my head into his face, but he pulled away quickly, dodging my blow. His thick legs straddled me, his hands pinning my shoulders down as he leaned forward with a snarl.

“Calm down, you wildcat!”

My breath hitched as his dark brown eyes blazed down at me.

That face. Those eyes.

I had seen this man before.

More than once.