I don’t know why I’m sitting in this truck, listening to her, waiting to hear what she says. I don’t know why I drove out here in the first place. It was more a reflex—if a woman calls for help, it doesn’t matter who it is, you go help. That’s the rule.

But with her, my reaction could have been different. I could’ve told her to call someone else.

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“About what?”

“Me being nice.”

“You’re not.”

“Not what?”

She slouches against her door. “You forced me to marry you so I’d give you money. You’re not nice.”

“Good.” I take a deep breath. Or try to, but it comes out ragged. This car, her and me, closed in—the windows have fogged over, blocking the outside. The walls seem to close in, the world shrinking, like she is the only thing in it . . . and the only thing I want in it.

I have to get out of this car. Or use it to my advantage, another step in my plan. “You’re not worth being nice to.”

“Excuse me?”

I lean toward her. “Your denial is a serious flaw.”

“How serious?”

I crowd her and her breathing quickens. I can’t see her face in the dark, but I can hear the air being sucked into her lungs. She doesn’t pull away. She could so easily refuse me, and yet she never does.

I grip her thigh and whisper in her ear. “As in you’ll live to regret it. The longer you resist the truth, the longer you’ll suffer.” I inch my hand up her hip, gathering the material of her skirt, palming the cool flesh of her thigh.

She gasps, “I won’t.” By the fight in her words, she should be running from the truck, but she turns toward my hand, her body begging for more.

I press my other hand across her stomach, skimming the under curve of her breast. “You say that now.”

She shivers, and her chest rises faster. Her lips part, her breath echoes in my ear. If it weren’t so dark, I’d see her pulse leaping in her neck.

I brush my thumb across her nipple through her shirt. It puckers hard under my finger, and she whimpers. Her smallness, her softness, the way she gives herself over to me, as though my touch is a command for her to yield—it’s fucking heady.

It makes me want to test her, goad her, see how far she’ll let me take her. Before I stop.

I pinch her nipple. She sucks air through her teeth.

“The horrible things you don’t know. The lies you convince yourself are true.”

“They aren’t lies.”

“Yes, they are.”

I palm her breast and squeeze. She arches into my hand, pleading for me to press harder. Her lips graze my cheek, seeking my mouth, but I deny her.

I pry her lips apart with my fingers. “Bite it.”

“Mm?”

“Bite your lip.” Her teeth graze my finger, and she sinks them into her lower lip. “Harder.” Her lip divots, and air gusts from her nose onto my cheek.

“It’s going to hurt,” I say. “Worse than that bite. The truth is going to rip you open.” I grasp her waist, and pull her across the bench seat toward me. “But it’s the only thing worth having.”

She moans, her fingers clinging to me. “But it’s not true.”

I stick my finger between her teeth. “Bite!”

She does, her little teeth sinking into my skin. It’s so pathetic and satisfying. Her protests, followed by compliance, I feed on it. I want it. My blood runs hot and thick, making me hard and heavy to take all of her. Her little fights, her excuses, her stubbornness—it will make breaking her all the more enjoyable.

I grasp her hip and rub her against me, massaging my groin with hers. Her head falls back and she bites my finger harder. “I’m going to make the truth scar you the way it’s scarred me.”

She shakes her head but doesn’t let go with her teeth.

I sneak my thumb farther in her mouth, pressing on her tongue. “I will shove it down your throat if I have to, but you will believe me before I’m done.”

She writhes against me, under me, her whole body moving with a craving that matches mine too closely. Her lips wrap my finger and begin to suck.

It’s my turn to moan, thinking of where else I’d like her mouth, where I’d like her on her knees.

My control fast bleeding away, my thoughts fading from manipulation to lust, I have to stop. Her grinding beneath me, pressing into me, she’s not listening anymore. She’s only thinking about what she wants.

I’ll give her none of it.

I plan to pull back, except I take one more moment to smell her. I let her scent fill my lungs, with the nauseating sweetness that peels away my self-control.

I push away and jump from the truck.

The rain, less strong than before, drips on my face. I let it cool my heated skin and slow my heaving heart.

That’s the second time I’ve lost it with her in my truck. My plan needs revising. Me playing her should not include me being played.

* * *

I lounge on his truck seat and catch my breath.

The rain drips on the windshield. I hadn’t noticed it slowing.

I am alive, awake, aroused. I can’t grow complacent around him, he won’t let me. He provokes me, challenges me—with his words, his hands.

I don’t like it, but I need more.

How can I want something I don’t like?

The truck’s headlights illuminate him, going to my car and filling the gas tank.

I’m just watching him stand there, his back to me. His arms flex as he lifts the can, and his back broadens beneath his shirt. He bends as he pours and gives me a spectacular shot of his ass.

He could’ve been as awful looking as his horrid lies, as ugly as his manipulations. But no. He had to be this hot piece of man sex that makes me want to jump him whether he’s touching me or not, being nasty to me or not. I am weak and susceptible to him in so many ways, I can’t possibly fight him off.

And he had to also be fascinating—the contrast of his lightness to his darkness. He’ll con me out of money, but he’ll help me with car trouble. He’s the darkest soul I’ve ever met, yet his eyes, his hair, are as light as green grass and sunshine. His endless pique to my curiosity will be my undoing.

He’s going to burn me to nothing soon. I can feel it.

I should close my eyes, quit looking. But I can’t. He’s this force that draws me yet repels me—a brutal, bitter man.

His obsession with his lies can’t continue. I can’t let him keep trashing my father. It’s got to stop.

I get out of his truck and charge toward him. “It’s impossible,” I yell at him.

He jerks back. “What?”

“My father couldn’t be guilty of what you say. He would’ve gone to jail.”

His body, his shoulders, his neck, stiffen like steel. “He was president of a major university. He could’ve committed murder and gotten away with it.”

“But he didn’t. He couldn’t.”

He empties the gas can in the tank and closes it. “You know what’s more interesting?”

“What?”

“How you said that.”

“Said what?”

He wipes his hands on his shirt. “You didn’t say, ‘he would never do something like that.’ Or ‘my father wasn’t the kind of man who could rape a woman.’”

I gulp and still. I don’t want him to be right.

He steps toward me. “Because you know he was capable of horrible things. A man like that leaves signs.”

“No!” I sputter. “He was a good and decent and—and—” I close my eyes. No. I will not think bad things of my father.

“There were things he did. Things he said. Strange things that as child you convinced yourself were normal. Growing up, you forced yourself to forget them, but it doesn’t make them go away.”

Scrambling happens in my brain, memories being prodded, old suspicions I’ve forgotten. “Nothing. There were only good things.”

“You’re lying.”

“You’re the liar!”

“I’m right and you know it.”

“You’re wrong. You spineless, worthless, fiendish—”

“Call me names all you want. It doesn’t change the truth of what you know.”

“Stay out of my head!” I push him, willing him to go away as much as my thoughts, all the things wrecking the good memories that are all I have left of my father. “He’s gone. How dare you say bad things about him.”

“My sister’s been gone for eight years. It was about damn time your waste-of-space father died.”

Anger, red hot and fiery, explodes in my chest. “Shut up!”

I charge him. Ramming into him as hard as I can. He pushes back, wins, and presses me against my car. “Easy, sweetheart. Don’t hurt yourself.”

I kick and scream with all my might, but I’m frozen in place, his body holding me immobile and his legs holding mine still. His hands caging my arms to my sides.

“Let go of me!”

“Not while you’re trying to hit me.”

“You deserve to be hit.” I breathe hard. Being trapped by him . . .

I like it—the cars passing us on the highway, his truck lights illuminating us.

Standing against me, I feel more of him than in the truck. His heat, his strength, all of it subduing me, holding me. Then he grinds his hips, and I’m gone.

He’s hard, and he makes me feel him through his jeans. I’m helpless. Feeling him robs me of protest, steals away my senses, and removes my will to fight him. I don’t want to. Like this, I want to give in to him. To everything he says.

“You like it, don’t you,” he leers.

I swallow.

The tip of his tongue rings my ear. “You like being held down.”

I shudder, but don’t answer.

“You can say ‘yes.’” The gravel scraping his voice, the devious intent dripping from his words, it’s like he’s feeding me the response.

“Yes.” I don’t want to say it, but once out, it’s a relief so strong I want to say it again.

“You like being afraid.” He runs his nose over my hairline. “You like not knowing if I’ll drag you off the road, whether I’ll fuck you or leave you there.”

A sound echoes in my throat. I clamp down the urge to beg him for it. My muted existence isn’t keeping me alive anymore. This man, with his threats and his anger, is.

He presses me harder against the car. “Is that what you want? For me to drag you into the woods?”

He nips my jaw then bites my pulse with his teeth.

My skin vibrates with the throbbing of blood in my veins. I am heart and sensation, there is nothing else.

“Please,” I breathe.

“You want to feel?”

“Yes.”

“Believe the truth and feel the pain.”

It’s like a shock to my brain. “No!” I squirm and shove at him. “Get off me.”

He stands back and lets me go. A low sound resonates in his chest. It’s the first time I’ve heard it. I think he’s laughing.

“What’s funny?” I fume, my blood still heating, my lungs still panting, and me disbelieving how far I’m willing to let him take this.

“You’d rather be scared than admit the truth.” He cackles more. “And I thought I was fucked up.”

Is it true? That I’d rather be dead than admit my father was . . . “Stop laughing at me.”

He whirls on me and fury erupts from him. “It must be nice to be so safe that you need fake fear to feel alive!”

“What?”

“Real fear, the kind where people fear for their lives, isn’t fun. You’re a pathetic little bitch for playing with it like it’s a toy. Staying alive isn’t a game.”

“Asshole! You have no idea what it’s like to be me. Stop pretending you do.”

“I know you’d rather play in your safe little baby world than step into the real one.”

“Your ‘real world’ is one of lies created to scare me.”

He stills, his shoulders collapsing. “If only that were true.” He walks back to his truck and shouts over his shoulder. “Go home.”

I get into my car and have to focus extra hard to remember how to start it. The lines between denial and truth—they’re blurring. Blurring as hard as my cravings for fear and sex. From him.