Sebastian practically throws my clothes at me, then stomps out through the front door. Panic burns like fire in my veins for a minute, until I hear his footsteps stop just feet from the building. A minute later, they march back toward me, but the door doesn’t open.

A couple of minutes after that, as I’m pulling my borrowed shirt over my head, I hear him grunt through the open window, and a flush steals over me.

He’s masturbating.

Is he thinking about me?

I want to go out there and demand that he put his cock to better use. But I can’t say that word aloud. And even if I could—even if my feet were ready for walking outside—I can’t sleep with a convict.

Oral counts. My own words haunt me. And they’re still true. Yet somehow, what we’ve just done doesn’t seem quite as bad as if I’d let him inside me. As if his tongue and finger are just slightly less illegal for me to indulge in than the rest of him would be.

And wow, he was good.

I want to hate him for keeping me here, but I can’t. I understand why he’s doing this, even if it isn’t fair. He’s a good man willing to do bad things for the people he loves.

Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

Tears pool in my eyes, but I wipe them away. I tug his tee-shirt over my thighs, then I curl up on the towel. I’m exhausted, but before my eyes can even close, I sit straight up, my pulse racing with a sudden realization.

My com device is on the counter, where he left it when he pulled it from his pants. I probably don’t have time to—

The door slides open, and my gaze snaps toward it. I don’t want Sebastian to know what I was thinking. But…the man at the door isn’t Sebastian. It’s the light-haired man from this afternoon.

My pulse spikes as he slowly approaches. “Hey, beautiful, what’s your name?” His gaze flicks to my legs, and when he sees that they’re bare, he reaches down to shift a growing erection. “We don’t want to hurt you honey. We just want a little company.”

We?

“So just play nice, and we’ll let you go when we’re done with you. No harm, no foul.”

“Where’s Sebastian?” I scoot backward across the narrow mattress, dragging the towels beneath me.

“You mean Havoc? Terry’s taking care of him. Fucker’s big, but he was…distracted.”

They never left. They’ve probably been hiding and watching for an opportunity this whole time.

“Come here, beautiful. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

I scoot off the mattress and onto the floor, and I keep going until my back hits the wall, and there’s nowhere left to go. “I can’t walk,” I tell him. “That’s why we stopped here. My feet are torn up.”

“I’ll carry you.” The blond man isn’t as big as Sebastian, but he can probably manage my weight with no problem. He reaches for me, and I smack his hand aside with my right forearm, as hard as I can.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

His eyes flash with rage in the moonlight, and suddenly he’s a different person. “Okay, bitch, you had a chance to play nice.” He grabs my left arm and hauls me to my feet, and I flinch when my soles land on rough concrete. Then he hauls me forward, and the floor scrapes against my feet.

Tears form in my eyes, and I curl my right hand into a fist. I’ve never hit anyone in my life, but this seems like good time to start.

I hurl my fist at the back of his skull, and though it’s a glancing blow, the force of it reverberates through my arm and leaves my knuckles throbbing. I’ve always assumed that receiving a punch hurts, but I’d had no idea that throwing one does too!

The blond man spins on me, and his fist flies into the side of my head. I stumble backward, the pain in my feet forgotten as agony echoes through my skull. The world tilts around me, and I grasp for something—anything—to hold onto for balance. My hand smacks the wall as I fall.

I land on bare concrete with a bruising thud, and before I can truly process the fact that landing on my hip probably saved me from a broken tailbone, the blond man pounces, shoving me backward.

The back of my head hits the floor an instant after my shoulders, and for a second, the world goes dark. My entire existence is pain, from the fire in my feet to the dull ache in my right hand, to the fierce throbbing in my head.

Sight and sound zoom back into focus like the roar of an oncoming train, and for a second, everything is too loud. Too bright, despite the fact that the only source of illumination is moonlight shining through the broken window. Something tugs at my hip, then I hear the rip of fabric, and suddenly the blond man is shoving my torn underwear out of the way.

I close my eyes. This isn’t happening.

Then the blond man’s weight drops on top of me, and reality hits me. He’s decided not to wait. Not to drag me someplace else. He’s going to teach me a lesson right here.

He paws at my shirt, trying to shove it up, and my hands slap at him with no instructions from my brain. “No!” I scream. “Stop!” He doesn’t bother covering my mouth, because he knows there’s no need. Because Terry is ‘taking care of’ Sebastian. Which probably means he’s dead. That I’m at the mercy of these two psychopaths. “Please…” I beg, when nothing else works.

Then his weight disappears. A cold draft washes over my lower regions, and I scoot along the wall, trying to get away before he comes back.

I hear a thunk, then a grunt of pain, but I don’t look up. I hope he’s run into the counter. I hope he’s bruised and bleeding. Because I am.

“Kaya…” Hands land on my arms, and I scream, slapping at the threat with my eyes closed. “Kaya, it’s me!”

Sebastian. I open my eyes to see him kneeling over me, moonlight highlighting one side of his face. Then I burst into tears.

Sebastian lifts me, cradling me in his arms in a position so familiar now that it brings a comfort all its own. “Are you okay?” he sets me on the mattress and angles me so that moonlight falls over the majority of my body. “Oh, god, your head. I wish I had some ice.” He tilts my face up, and I squint as a bright beam of moonlight spears through my eyes into my brain. “I think you have a concussion.” His fingers brush over a tender spot on the side of my head and I flinch as more tears roll from my eyes. “Sorry. Does anything else hurt?”

I wipe tears from my face, and from the abrasive feeling of my own fingers, I realize I’ve smeared grime across my cheeks. “Sebastian, get me out of here.”

“Okay. Let’s get you cleaned up, and we’ll find someplace else to stay for the night. Surely there’s—”

“No. Get me off this planet.” I’m really trying not to cry any more, but my voice sounds hoarse from swallowing tears. “I don’t belong here. You can’t protect me, and I sure as hell can’t protect myself.”

He looks at me like I just shoved a knife into his chest. “I’m so sorry. That other bastard came up behind me and hit me over the head. He’s dead now. They’re both dead. I should have killed them in the first place. But they’re gone now. You’re safe.”

But I am not safe.

I shiver as Sebastian carries me into the bathroom and sets me on the counter. He puts my feet in the sink, where he washes them off again. Then he blots blood from the corner of my mouth. I don’t even remember being hit there.

The left side of my panties is torn, and they’re dangling from my right thigh. Sebastian takes the ripped lace and knots it together, so the material will stay on. His movements are efficient and his fingers don’t stray from the job. He seems to understand that beneath the fragile material in his hands, I am completely exposed and vulnerable. “That bastard’s pants were still up when I got to him. He didn’t…?”

I shake my head.

“Okay. Your lip will be much better tomorrow, but it’ll take a while for your head to stop hurting. Let me get the pain killers. And this time you’re taking some.” Sebastian starts to leave me in the bathroom to go get the pills, but my hand shoots out and clamps around his wrist. “Don’t leave me.” I hate the terrified tremble in my voice. I hate how weak I sound. But when I close my eyes, I see the blond man standing over me. I feel him tearing my clothing. And I can’t…

I can’t…

“I’m so sorry, Kaya. This was the last thing that should ever have happened to you.” He lifts me from the counter and carries me back to the front room. I’m so mad at him, but I can’t stop clinging to his neck. Somehow my brain has begun to associate his scent with the very concept of safety, despite the fact that he’s the cause of all the danger he keeps saving me from.

He sets me down on one of the rumpled towels, then he reaches for his backpack and digs out the small bottle of pills. “Here. Take two.” He hands me the bottle, and I wrestle it open while he pulls another bottle of water from the bag.

The pills are bitter, and only after I’ve taken them does it occur to me to check the label. They’re just over-the-counter painkillers, thank goodness. Anything stronger might have knocked me out, and I can’t afford to be groggy if those guys come back.

No, those guys are dead. The blond one is still lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, from a large, neat gash in his throat.

But there are more men out there. They could be everywhere, for all I know.

“Kaya, I have to drag the body out. But I’m just going to drop him right outside the front door. I’ll be back in seconds, I promise. Okay?”

I almost say no. I almost embarrass myself further by begging him to stay with me and leave a corpse on the floor, just feet away. But a dead body will start to smell at some point. And it might draw animals.

Are there predators out here? Of the non-human variety?

“It’s fine,” I tell him. I tuck my knees up to my chest and rest my chin on them while he drags the body through the front door and to the right. It thumps against the ground, then Sebastian reappears, pulling the door closed.

“How do you feel?” He kneels next to the mattress and spreads the other two towels out, then sits next to me.

“Everything hurts.” Now that I’m calmer—now that my wounds are clean and the immediate danger is over—there’s nothing to distract me from the agony that is my head and the lesser sting of my cut lip. My feet, of course, still burn from a hundred tiny puncture wounds. “How do you do this?” I ask him. “How do you take hits like this every week? Sometimes every day?” Sebastian only appears in the arena once a week, at most, but last season, he fought nearly daily in the bullpen to defend his sister and their belongings. I’d seen the footage, often live.

“Fighters have to learn how to take a punch, as well as how to throw one.”

“Well, I suck at both.”

“We can fix that.” He chuckles at my horrified expression. “I’m not going to hit you, Kaya. I’m saying I can teach you how to fight.”

“Do you really think we’re going to be here that long?”

“I hope not. I hope we find Sylvie tomorrow, so I can call in our demands and get us all out of here. But we’ve only been here for a day, and we’re both already sporting head wounds.”

Oh. He’s hurt too. He hasn’t complained, so I’d almost forgotten that the dark-haired man—Terry—attacked him from behind. “Are you okay?” I motion for him to turn around, and when he complies, I feel around on his head. There’s a massive bump high up at the back, and when my fingers find it—as well as the blood crusted at the wound—Sebastian hisses.

“I’ve had worse,” he insists. “But around here, it’s never too soon for you to learn to defend yourself. Hopefully you’ll actually be able to put weight on your feet in the morning.”

My gaze falls to the puddle of blood on the floor, and several seconds later, I realize he’s still talking.

“Kaya?”

“Yeah. Sorry. What?”

“Do you want to go? Say the word, and I’ll get us out of here, if the blood creeps you out.”

“It does, but leaving in the middle of the night isn’t practical. I can’t imagine we’d find shelter without having to fight for it.”

“Let’s get some sleep, then. We only have a few hours of darkness left, and I want to get moving pretty early in the morning.”

To find Sylvie. Because he cares more about his sister, the badass gladiator, than about me.

Of course he does. She’s his sister. The only one he has left. I have no right to expect him to put me above Sylvie. But he has no right to keep me here.

“It gets really cold here, at night,” Sebastian says. As if I haven’t noticed. As if I haven’t been shivering for the past hour. “I don’t have a blanket, but maybe this will help. Lie down.”

I lie on my left side with my hands folded beneath my head, and Sebastian digs in his bag again. Then he drapes something over my bare legs. It’s another spare shirt.

It smells like him.

“Do you mind if we spoon? For warmth? If not—”

“Yes. That’s fine.” But not for warmth. For security. If anyone comes at us in the night, I want Sebastian as close to me as possible. “Sebastian? Can I sleep with one of the knives?”

“Yeah. Just a second.” I hear him rifle through his pack, then he drops something on the mattress in front of me. It’s the multi-tool, with the small knife extended from the hollow handle.

“Thanks.” I grip the handle, where all the other little tools are hidden, while he curls up behind me. His body touches me from the middle of my spine all the way to my feet, his position echoing mine.

Sebastian falls asleep in minutes, his breath stirring the hair at the back of my neck, and I’m not surprised. He’s been up for nearly two days, and yesterday he fought in the arena. I’m not sure how he stayed awake this long.

But I can’t sleep. I’m not even a little tired, despite my own lack of sleep and the exertion of walking across zone three all day. All I can think about is the possibility that more men will wander in here and kill us in our sleep. Or that they’ll kill Sebastian and make me wish they’d killed me.

Tonight has proven that he can’t protect me every second of the day. No one could, and I’m not like Sylvie. God, I wish I were. But I don’t know where to stab a man to make him bleed out in seconds. I don’t know how to throw a punch without injuring my own hand. And Sebastian might have a concussion. Which means he’s not at his best.

His concussion also means I should stay awake, to make sure he keeps breathing. Right? You’re not supposed to sleep while you have a concussion. Or is that just something my grandmother believed, like her insistence that my com device would give me cancer and that wearing flat-soled shoes would make my arches fall.

For what feels like forever, I listen to Sebastian breathing. I press back against the warmth of his chest while I stare at the door. And I imagine the worst.

Then I realize my com device is still sitting on the counter, where Sebastian set it when we were…kissing. The blond man was too intent on taking me to even notice it was there. Not that he’d be able to operate it.

I shift on the mattress, holding my breath to see if Sebastian wakes up. He doesn’t even move, so I carefully scoot away from him, and his soft, rhythmic breathing continues.

At the edge of the narrow mattress, I hold my breath. Then I sit up and freeze, in case he wakes up. In which case I’ll tell him I need the restroom.

He’s still sleeping soundly, so I stand, wincing at the pain in my feet. I go up onto the balls of my feet to spare the rest of my soles from the floor as I walk awkwardly to the counter. My com device is powered down, but one swipe of my thumb across the surface wakes it up. The screen flares to life, illuminating the room with a soft, bluish glow, and I freeze again, waiting for Sebastian to wake up. To get angry.

Then I realize I shouldn’t care if he gets mad. Cleaning my feet and licking my...um…

Cleaning my feet and giving me an orgasm don’t make up for crashing the yacht and kidnapping me. For exposing me to this hell on earth, where one careless move will put me at the mercy of countless violent criminals. Men who make David look like a little boy playing at misogyny.

This is my com device. I have every right to use it. To save myself. This is what Sylvie would do. So I swipe open the message app and tap out a plea to Charles, the producer I’ve worked with for five years now.

I don’t mention Sebastian because despite what he’s done to me, I don’t want to put him in danger. He’s much safer if they think he died in the wreck.

I send the message, and my com device beeps to confirm that it went through. Crap!

Sebastian rolls over, and I tap the screen frantically, trying to make it go dark. I can’t turn it off, or there will be no signal for the rescue workers to follow. Yet in my panic, as my pulse pounds in my ears, I can’t seem to remember how to put the screen to sleep.

“Kaya?” Sebastian sits up, squinting at me, and I can see him perfectly well, because my screen seems brighter than the sun in this dark room. He blinks. Then his brows dip. “What did you do?”

He stands, and he’s in my face in an instant. I backpedal, wincing over the pain in my feet, and he snatches the com device from me. “Kaya! What did you do?”

“I sent Charles a message. They’re going to come for me. You should go. I don’t want them to find you here.”

“How could you do that?” He looks almost as hurt as he looks…furious.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here. I’ll tell them you died in the crash. You’ll be free. Just go.”

“This isn’t freedom! This is a fucking prison planet! I don’t belong here, and neither does Sylvie. She killed a killer. I’ve only killed rapists and murderers. If I had a badge, they’d give me the key to some fucking city, but because I don’t, I’m supposed to rot here? I’m supposed to fight for every scrap of food and watch my sister fend off attacks at every turn?”

“I don’t belong here either, Sebastian.” I can hardly see him through the tears blurring my vision. “Just go. They’re probably already on their way.”

“Turn it off,” he demands, shoving the device at me.

“No.”

“Kaya, turn it off!”

“No.” I cross my hands over my chest and stand my ground.

“Turn the fucking thing off, or I’ll smash it into pieces, and neither of us will ever get off this planet!”

“You wouldn’t.” But he would. He’s so mad—so scared—right now that he’s not thinking clearly.

I take the device from him, and tears spill down my cheeks while I turn it off. Killing the signal. But they’re already on their way.

Please, god, let them already be on their way.

Sebastian storms away from me and sets the device on one of the towels, then rolls it up into a cotton-padded bundle. He shoves the roll into his pack, then rolls the other two towels up and shoves them in after it.

He’s packing.

No.

“I’m not going with you, Sebastian.”

He shoves the water bottles into the bag, zips it closed, then throws it over his shoulder. Then he stalks toward me. I back away, and my right foot sinks into something cold and wet.

Blood. Crap. I try to scuttle away, only to slip and land inches from the sticky puddle.

Sebastian pulls me to my feet, then he tries to pick me up, but I swat at his arms. “No! I’m not going! They’re coming for me!”

“Kaya!” He tries again, and this time I swing closed fists at him. One glances off his chin, and he goes eerily still.

“Stop. That.” He grabs me around my waist and throws me over his shoulder, with my butt in the air.

“No! Put me down!” I try to knee him, but he clamps one arm across the backs of my thighs, pinning them to his chest. I pound on his back as he carries me out the door, and sobs tear from my throat. Snot drips from my nose.

I can’t leave this building. This is where the signal came from. This is where they’ll look for me.

“Shh!” he orders as he takes off across the field, headed for the nearest patch of trees.

“No! Put me down!” I bounce as he runs, and each step shoves my esophagus into his shoulder. It’s hard to catch my breath, but I use every breath I can draw to make my case. “I can’t stay on this planet. Those men…” They were going to rape me. Not like David. Not a quiet, almost dignified aggression. Not a closed-door assertion of control. They were going to hurt me.

The next men might succeed. Sebastian might not be able to stop them. He might get himself killed trying. I know how women are treated here. And without shoes, I can’t even run away.

“Kaya, shut up! If you keep yelling, any man within earshot will head right toward us.”

I bite my lip. In my terror, I hadn’t considered that. I press my palms against his back, lifting myself, and blink tears from my eyes while I scan the landscape. The moonlight isn’t as bright now as it was earlier, but I don’t see anything moving.

“If you promise to be still, I’ll carry you the other way,” Sebastian whispers. Then he shifts me into a cradle hold without waiting for my answer.

“I hate you,” I tell him as he begins jogging across the field with me bouncing in his arms. Carrying me farther and farther from where the rescue workers will come looking for me.

“I really hope you don’t mean that,” he says. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you do.”