“I made her pretty for you,” Coral says. She stands on my porch with her umbrella and car keys. Thunder rumbles overhead.

“I don’t care if she’s pretty or not,” I say.

I sound irritable as hell because I am. Thanks to Grace, I had to call in sick this morning for the first time ever.

I haven’t slept since Vernon ditched her in my yard last night. I brought her up to bed with me around three a.m., but sleep was impossible. I was too busy making sure she wasn’t dying. All night and half the morning, I watched every breath she took and held her wrist so I could feel her pulse. I had to make sure she was safe.

It was so fucking hard not to mount her drowsy body and fuck her into oblivion. I had to make do by jerking off next to her. Twice.

But now it’s eighteen hours later and reality is hitting hard.

It’s looking and feeling more kidnapping every second. Like a fucking pain in my ass with no clear end game.

From what Coral told me, I’ve got trouble upstairs. A hard-drinking, suicidal girl on the run from her parents and some guy they want to pass her off to. She’s feisty, she’s fucked up from the drugs, and she wants out.

“She says she’s not hungry,” Coral says.

“Good,” I grumble. “I don’t feel like cooking.”

“I would have cooked for both of you if you’d asked. Too late now.”

Coral smiles. Sometimes I can’t believe how much she’s changed. I remember what she was like when Fritz and I first met her. Melancholy, no ambition, four arrests including one for stealing a car in London. She’d given up an out-of-wedlock kid for adoption and tried every drug she could lay her hands on. She was doomed to a shitty future until Fritz trained her and turned her life around.

Eight years later, she’s the most confident and independent woman I know. Nothing fazes her, not even a request from her husband’s best friend to help with an unexpected situation.

I asked her to come for one reason. I didn’t want mine to be the first face Grace saw. I wanted her to have the dignity of a bath and something to wear before she saw me. The man she hates so much.

It was hard listening to her pound the door and scream, but Coral had to wait until Fritz relieved her at the bar. The isolation was probably good for Grace, anyway. It set the tone for what’s to come.

“One more thing,” Coral says.

Sighing, I raise my eyebrows. “What?”

“You wanted this to happen. Remember that.”

I snort. “Is that what Fritz says?”

Peering out at the dark sky, she pops open her umbrella. “That’s what I say. You know where to find me.”

I go back inside and head upstairs. Grace has been awake for three hours. It’s time.

Her room was meant to be a saferoom, back when I was renovating the Bristol Mansion. For years I’ve been meaning to stock and furnish it, and turn it into the perfect place to spend the apocalypse. But work distracted me from the end of the world, and the saferoom became the one part of my house with no purpose. Until last night.

By now, she can hear my boots on the stairs.

It gives me a corrupt pleasure to imagine how she feels as I approach. Her ear turned toward the awful sound. Her heart throbbing in time with my steps. My heavy stride coming closer until it stops right outside her door.

I’m enjoying my power way too much already, and I’ve barely begun to use it.

I stand in the hallway. She’s just a few feet away. Mere inches. She has no idea what I’ve already done to her. How hard I came while she lay like a stunned bird in bed next to me.

Eyes pinned to her face, I pressed her tiny hand to my chest. I talked to her while I pumped my fist, hoping somewhere in her senseless mind, she could hear me.

“You know what this big cock could do to you, baby girl? See how much come I have for you?”

I raise my thumb to the sensor by the door and press it. I can feel her fear through the wall. Energy surges through me, a second wind so strong it makes me sweat. My exhaustion is gone. I’m high on what’s about to happen. I’ll be all that matters in her world in three…two…one.

The door swings open slowly. I’m wired. My body feels tight and ready to spring.

Light from the hall spills into the dark room. She’s standing under the window with her forearms clutched to her chest. I can see her pale, slim legs and long neck. The white wisp of a robe barely covers her.

Her breathing is quick but soft. In a moment, that will change.

I press another sensor and the light springs on overhead. I’ve been waiting hours for this moment. Fucking years.

I have just enough time to appreciate the captive specimen of femininity in front of me before her pupils dilate and the blood drains from her face. Clutching the lapels of the robe, she shrinks away.

“What the fuck,” she hisses.

She backs up until the wall jolts her shoulder blades. Silky auburn strands fall over one eye.

“Hello, Grace.”

I step inside and shut the door. The lock clicks.

“You fucking criminal,” she spits out. “You kidnapped me.” Her voice is scratchy but still soft and high. As if it never caught up when her body developed.

“I’m sure that’s how it looks,” I say.

Her hands clench into trembling fists. “Stay away from me.”

Fear suffuses her skin, turning her chest and neck a deep red. Her bright, aqua eyes never leave my face. Her whole body is vibrating.

Suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, she starts to scream.

The sound pierces my brain like a baby’s cry. Her pretty pink tongue quivers and her white, straight teeth open and clench.

Poor wretched thing. She’s so beautiful, bathed, and dolled up for me. A wretch gone astray. A fatherless filly who’s wandered into a lion’s den.

Her screams bounce off the walls, making my ears ring. My muscles are hard and my blood is pumping.

Coral made her as pretty as possible, but makeup can’t disguise her jutting hips and collarbone, her sunken cheeks or glassy eyes. One hot bath won’t restore her strength. It will take care and discipline. A strict sleep schedule. Maybe even force-feeding.

When she pauses between shrieks for breath, I say, “Your ankle is swollen. You need ice.”

She screams again, more hoarsely this time. After another minute, her voice cracks and gives out. The only thing left is whispery breath.

She’s voiceless, and it terrifies her. Panic fills her eyes. She rushes to the door and runs her hands over it.

“There’s no way out, Grace,” I say. “The sooner you accept that, the better you’ll feel.”

She searches the wall for a button, some magic device that will set her free. “No,” she whispers. Her back slumps as she realizes she’s trapped.

I don’t expect her to give up, and she doesn’t. She turns around, her face wild.

She charges at me and pounds her hands against my chest. Her fists flail uselessly, like a child beating a tree trunk. I barely feel them, and what I do feel makes me hard. My cock lays throbbing against my leg as she tears me apart with her words.

“Monster! Bastard! Murderer!”

“I know. It’s all right. Let it out.”

I stand with my arms at my sides and take her blows. She shrieks with frustration that she can’t reach my face. When she’s exhausted and her hands are bruised, she sinks to the floor in the corner and cries.

My boots make a hollow knocking sound as I walk up to sit beside her. When her sobs turn to hiccups and she raises her mascara-streaked face to look at me, I smile.

“You’re just a mess, aren’t you?” I mutter, smoothing the hair back from her huge, horrified eyes. Her breasts are white half-moons, her nipples barely covered by the robe.

“Where am I?” she asks. Her lips shiver.

“My house. The old Bristol Mansion.”

Her eyes are tormented. “Where James died.”

“Yes. And where I live.”

Torment is replaced by pure, crystalline fear. I’ve seen terror on a woman’s face before, but never like this. Her breaths are quick and shallow. Her dilated eyes are like a trapped animal’s.

“How did I get here?” she asks. Her teeth are chattering.

“Someone dropped you off. You were unconscious.”

She swallows hard. “This is for coming to your office, isn’t it? For writing that letter.”

“No,” I say.

“Then why am I here? Who was that Coral woman?”

“She’s a friend I’ve known a long time.”

“It was weird, like…she’s done this before. Like you both have.” Her frantic gaze scours my face. “What are you going to do to me?”

“What’s best for you, Grace.”

She draws up her shoulders as if that will make her look bigger. “You can’t hold me against my will.”

I smile. “Against your will? Think of it as protective custody.”

She may be terrified, but she can still manage a scornful smirk. “What’s protective about kidnapping?”

I pull a tiny lock of hair from the corner of her mouth. “Do you remember last night?”

She blinks, and a tear falls to her chest. “What about it?”

There’s no way to soft-pedal it, so I say it straight out. “You tried to kill yourself.”

The scar on her bottom lip quivers. “No, I didn’t.”

“What were you doing on the Chapman Bridge at midnight?”

“The Chapman Bridge?” Her eyes shift blankly across my face. She doesn’t remember.

“You were on the railing about to jump.”

“You’re lying,” she says, but her eyes are dark with doubt.

“You were up there in the rain with no shoes on.”

She squints. “How do you know? You saw me?”

“No. But the man who saved your life did.”

Her mouth hardens. “My kidnapper?”

“No, Grace. Your savior.”

Her shivering terror turns back to fury. “You paid somebody to kidnap me.”

“That’s not what happened.” What I mean is, pretty damn close to it. I paid him with a car a year ago, even though I had no fucking idea.

Using my thumb, I wipe the track of a heavy tear. She whips her face away and scowls. “Don’t touch me.”

God, what a gift. I haven’t seen a girl so intensely real…ever. I knew she would be.

At this moment, I’d give her anything. I’d sacrifice the world for her. I can be that fucking tender inside. But tenderness doesn’t enter into it. With Grace, it can’t.

“You don’t remember being on the bridge, do you?” I ask.

“I want a phone,” she snaps. “I want to call my parents. I want to call the police and have you locked up for good.”

“You jumped from your parents’ window last night. Now you want to call them?”

Her huge eyes fill with confusion. She’s trapped by my logic and her shitty options. Everywhere she looks there’s a brick wall.

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” she says through gritted teeth.

“All right,” I say. “We’ll try again later.”

She shoots me a surprised look as I get to my feet. A hundred questions haunt her face. I leave them all unanswered and walk away.

Switching off the light, I leave and shut the door. I can’t afford to be soft, not this early on. Pity her and I’ll lose her. I learned that lesson years ago.

I hear a thud as she flies at the door and pounds on it.

“Please!” she shouts. Then, in a voice so quiet my heart almost breaks, she says, “Don’t go.”

She doesn’t hear my footsteps yet. She thinks she still has a chance. A little bit of power in that soft, pleading voice.

She has none. That’s her first lesson.

“Don’t go!” she screams.

If I didn’t care, I’d go back inside. I’d set her free to self-destruct again.

That’s what a true monster would do. He’d give her her power back, and watch her ruin herself with it.

As she beats her fists against the door, I walk away. Every echoing step sounds like a message meant just for her.

You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine.