A man I’d never seen before.

Not Sully.

Not the guest Grammer from the beach.

No one I had ever met.

Who…

He was tall. Exceedingly so. He was built like the predators of this prehistoric time with big arms, a flat, ripped stomach, and hugely muscular legs. Nothing about him said softness. He carried a spear, sharpened by fire and stained with blood. His naked chest held the meltings of snowflakes as he stepped fully into the cave and closed the fur behind him.

He shook like a dog, his long hair tangled and knotted with debris from living a rough and rustic life. His skin was weathered. His flesh scarred and well-used.

He looked as if he’d stepped from the history books and somehow stumbled into my world.

My coma.

My strange, erotic death.

He noticed me, standing crazed and cuffed to the floor.

Instantly, the aura in the cave changed.

Gone was the sensation of shock and pity. I no longer worried how I’d gotten here and what this all meant. I no longer pined for a man who was the devil incarnate. I no longer fought the treachery and betrayal of the elixir.

I’d reached my limit.

If I fought the basic instinct to mate another moment, my heart would explode.

All I wanted…all I needed—the only thing that would keep me alive was him.

I didn’t care who he was.

I didn’t feel shame that I wanted him or horror that I would willingly fuck a complete stranger.

I was done.

The moment I accepted my nightmare, my pulse calmed a little. It knew it would be rewarded soon. That the tingling, tangling, twisting coils in my belly would soon shatter outward in shards of light and lewd delight.

The man’s nostrils flared, smelling my need, reacting like a hunter who’d scented blood.

His chest rose and fell as he licked his lips.

I tried to look away.

I tried a final time to wake up.

But I had nothing left, and the same terrible, troubling pull inside me affected him. The same instinctual magnet to fuck and fuck and die in each other’s arms.

His large hands fell to the loincloth around his hips. A scraped and cured hide fell from his huge body, revealing an equally, terrifyingly large cock.

Flaccid but rapidly filling with blood, rising as if from a bow, standing to attention to please me.

My stomach melted.

I was a slave to the primitive urge to join.

I wedged a fist in my lower belly, biting down on a moan.

I didn’t want this.

But I did.

I didn’t want this man.

But I did.

I wanted to stop all of this.

But I also couldn’t deny if I didn’t have him touch me, fuck me, help me release this debilitating need, I wouldn’t exist.

It wasn’t a dramatic stupid promise.

It was the truth.

I would die.

Surely, surely die.

My heart raced, ricocheting more desire around my veins. My skin prickled to be touched. My hand raised in invitation, shaking and sweaty.

And the man nodded and came toward me.

He took my hand. Cold power. Calloused touch. Possessive control.

Even if I didn’t want this, I wouldn’t have had a choice.

In one touch, he showed me the truth—the truth that he might’ve just stumbled upon me. That he might have nothing to do with this strange fantastical world I was trapped in. But regardless of how he’d found me…he’d take me.

He’d take me even if I belonged to another. He’d fuck me even if I said no.

Blistering panic broke through my heady haze. Somehow, I shook my head, backing up a step. “No…”

His jaw gritted, and heavy eyebrows knitted over raging eyes. Jerking my hand, he wrapped it firmly around his now steely hard cock.

I flinched.

I shuddered.

I gushed more wetness.

Keeping my fingers around him, he yanked me forward by my wrist. He drank me in, sniffing my throat, licking my skin, pushing my hair away and sending a wash of electricity over my cheek with his scarred knuckles. He threaded his fingers to my nape, bringing our foreheads together.

“Mine.” His voice was guttural and achingly low, as if he’d only just learned how to speak. As if vocabulary was as foreign as walking on two legs. As if he’d transformed from a beast and shed his animal skin purely to come and ravage me.

I shuddered at the mental image.

Another trickle of wetness oozed down my thigh.

My inner muscles clenched around nothing, and I finally broke.

Sully hadn’t given me what I needed.

But this man…this overly endowed caveman would.

A wave of gratitude filled me. Displaced and manic, but it was gratitude just the same. Immense relief that someone cared enough to save me. To help me through this crippling pain.

His dark eyes sparked with a hunger that matched mine, and his hold on my hair became a fist around a rope. Without asking for permission or telling me his plans, he jerked me around until I faced away from him.

I suffered a full-body convulsion.

He wrapped my long strands around his wrist.

I cried out.

He pushed me down and down until I kneeled on the dirt floor.

I landed on all fours, digging fingernails into the dirt like an animal, arching my back, mewling in need.

He crashed behind me.

He bent and bit my hip.

His teeth sank painfully into my flesh.

I squirmed to get away only for his powerful hands to clamp around my hips and yank me backward.

He soared up behind me.

He positioned.

He mounted.