When I come to, my head is throbbing.

Beyond the skull-pounding headache, I notice I’m also very cold. I blink against the buzzing fluorescent light and I can see they’ve moved me to a different room. I’m lying on a cheap sofa in some kind of blank office. Judging by the institutional green cinder block walls, I’m in the same building as before.

I look down and I see the clothes I was wearing before are gone. Instead of a Wonder Woman tee-shirt, faded ripped up jeans and green Chucks, I’m barefoot. I’m wearing a lacy white bra and skimpy white panties that do not belong to me. I feel like I want to vomit. What did they do to me while I was drugged and passed out?

Shakily, my hand goes to my crotch. Nothing feels hurt or…different. Thank god.

A strange, random thought enters my mind that I’m thankful nobody has touched me there yet. Because of Lars.

Lars? Really? For all I know he could be the boss of Suit Guy.

My face feels a little strange. I touch my cheeks and I feel pancake makeup and false eyelashes. What in the hell are they planning on doing with me?

Well, I’m not going to be here long enough to find out. I’m finding a way to bust out of this hell hole.

And then another thought waltzes in: Lars probably doesn’t like makeup.

Geez, Wendy. Pull it together.

Still groggy, I make my way over to the window. It’s too tall for me to jump out of, of course. I grab the ugly brown office chair, slide it under the window and start to work cranking it open. By some miracle, it’s not painted shut like I would expect of a place like this. I’m just starting to fiddle with the window screens when the office door opens.

“Well, what do we have here, sugar?”

The voice behind me is the same from before. I don’t have to turn around to know it’s the guy in the overpriced suit. I ignore him and keep messing with the screen. I give up on the latches and try to punch my way out.

He laughs and calls for his friend Morty again.

“If you think I’m gonna be one of your dancers, you got another think coming,” I say when he wrestles me down off the chair.

“Nah. You’re too special for that. We got bigger plans for you,” Suit Guy says, his arms around my waist, pinning my arms, holding my back against his chest.

“I’m not gonna go to work for you on the corner if that’s what you think,” I spit out.

“Thanks for spinning the wheel, darling, but you’re wrong again. See, I’m getting out of the working girl business. It’s a lot of hassle, you know? Having to keep a female housed and fed and clothed, collect from her every week, plus all the drama of keeping her in line. It’s a lot of damn work. Plus bouncing them outta jail when they get stupid. Lawyers and shit are expensive. See, it’s a lot cleaner for me to take a lump sum for each of my girls. I get a ridiculous amount of money up front, and none of the trouble or long-term commitment.”

My mouth falls open as soon as it occurs to me what all this means. I struggle against his grip, but he’s strong.

“You’re gonna sell me on the black market. And you took my clothes, my shoes, so I can’t make a run for it, is that it?”

“Oh, she’s smart too. I just can’t decide if that will make me raise or lower your starting bid,” he says.

“You’re a disgusting piece of shit.”

He breathes into my ear and I can hear him smile. “Oh baby. You don’t know the half of it.” He sniffs my neck.

It didn’t feel gross when Lars sniffed me. But this feels beyond vile.

I recoil, but his hands that are gripping me start to snake lower down my ribcage. “Tell me, little Wendy. Are you a virgin? Cuz you sure smell like one. See, I need to know because that’ll net me another 20 Gs, at least.”

If I had anything in my stomach, I’d be getting ready to vomit right now.

“That’s none of your goddamn business, you sleazy fucknut.”

He laughs maniacally in my ear. “Morty! Did you here that? She says her virginity is none of my business.”

But there’s no Morty responding to anything this time. He sighs. “Fuckin’ Morty disappeared on me again. Guess I’ll have to get my hands dirty. Now, if you won’t talk to your Uncle Slate about your experience in the sack, I got ways of finding out.”

Fear and dread spike in my throat, and my stomach and my heart are trading places in my chest. I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. This is a nightmare. But when I feel his hand at the waistband of my panties, for some reason I think of Lars and I find my voice. This shit is not happening. Not today, Satan.

I take a deep breath and I scream louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life.

When I pause for a breath, Slate cusses and yells for both Morty and Amber. “Tell her we’re gonna need something to help this girl relax.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a hulking presence in the doorway, dressed all in black.

The next thing I hear is a thud, and Slate’s grip loosens from around my waist.

I yelp and start to fall but I don’t hit the floor, because a huge, leather-clad arm has me.

I struggle madly, but the man in black spins me around to face him. I’m eye to eye with Lars.

“Let me go!”

“No.”

“Ugh,” I grunt as I press against his granite chest.

“Stop struggling.”

I start pounding his pectorals with my fists.

“What are you doing, tiny person?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“Fighting for my life, what do you think I’m doing?”

Lars laughs, but it’s a very different sound than the way that Slate has been laughing at me. It’s gentle, and it reaches his eyes. Those husky eyes are tracking mine, and he is calm.

“Your life? Already taken care of, Tink,” he says.

I calm down and take a breath. “What are you?”

“Tell you later. Wendy, this is my friend Brian.”

I turn and see a handsome, well-to-do gentleman, but who is dressed in a less showy kind of way than Slate. I can tell right away he’s not a criminal. Looks about as straight-laced as they come.

How in the world he’s friends with the big lug named Lars is beyond me.

“Nice to meet you, Brian. Lars, you can put me down now.”

“Actually I can’t. Brian, we gotta close that door. Claudia and her sleezebag brother are about to arrive.”

”Careful,” I say. “Morty’s out there somewhere and he is as mean as he is ugly.”

Lars laughs again and somehow it feels warm, and the feeling floats downward on the air and lands like a feather, somewhere inside my panties. It causes a stir, a vibration down deep inside that I can’t deny. I want him to kiss me. Yes, for all I know, Lars could be a bigger criminal than Slate, and yet my body cannot deny this fluttering, all-over tingly sensation.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in nothing but sexy undies in December and I’m clinging to a huge, hot beast of a man.

Lars looks down at me—he’s holding me up off of the floor and yet still looking down at me—and there is such tenderness in his eyes that my invisible armor starts to fall apart. Dammit I’ve got a little tear in the corner of my eye, and he’s spotted it.

Without another word, and seeming not to care that his buddy is watching, Lars hikes me up higher in both arms so I’m forced to straddle him like a giant, tree. He lowers his head. I can’t believe I’m letting him do this, but everything in my body is screaming that this is exactly what it needs.

His lips fall to mine in a short but oh-so-sweet kiss. His lips are soft and full. My brain tells me he’s just my rescuer getting caught up in the moment. My heart, as well as my sex, is pulsating with a whole different kind of signal.

Lars’s face changes then to hard and cold when he responds to my warning about the bad guys. “Morty very kindly vacated the premises as soon as he saw me. Unlike you, he knows how to follow orders.”

He’s trying really hard to look angry, and there’s something extra exciting about it.

Sure enough, a very pretty, curvy woman named Claudia and a skinny dude who I assume to be her brother show up, just like they said.

We watch the whole scene play out, and I start to think Brian is going to kill that pretty girl’s brother. While we watch, Lars reaches over and takes a piece of my hair to his nose and sniffs it. I look up at him, and I’m finally starting to accept the fact that he’s just not going to put me down.

I’m also allowing myself to sort of enjoy this.

I’m also coming around to the fact that he had nothing to do with my capture. And in fact, he came here specifically to save me.

I look at Claudia and the man who just beat the shit out of her brother, and I see true love there.

It makes my heart hurt. There’s no way I’ll ever have a love like that. It doesn’t exist for everyone, but seeing those two together sort of gives me hope. I watch them exchange “I love yous,” and it’s more than I can take. The tears start to leak out again.

“Aw,” I say to her. “My ma always said a love like that doesn’t exist.”

I feel Lars’s hand squeeze my hip, as if he’s trying to communicate something.

After a few more exchanges, Lars tells his friend Brian he can go and he’ll stay and “take care of this.”

I don’t know what “this” is, and I’m really hoping to get out of here sooner rather than later. With some clothes on.

By the time Brian leaves with his girl, everything that has happened to me in the last couple of days—or almost happened—starts to hit home. I start to shake involuntarily. With no clothes or blankets to give me in the immediate vicinity, Lars is forced to calm my shivering body with his arms. He brings my torso in tightly against his broad, warm chest and rubs all of my bare limbs up and down with his rough hands. After a while, I don’t know if I’m shivering because of shock or if I’m now trembling because my lady bits are freaking the fuck out over these full-body caresses.

When the cops show up, Lars instructs his team to search the building top to bottom. He wants to cuff Slate himself, but he wants him conscious when he does it.

Suddenly, tears are streaming down my face out of relief and fear.

The hard expression on Lars dissipates. A softness comes over him like butter. His brows rise and his eyes are full on studying me.

“Tink,” he says, dabbing away a tear with his thumb as he cups my face, “Don’t cry, my little Tink. It’s all over.”

I really do know nothing about men. I had thought for half a moment he was responsible for my kidnapping and now I see that he’s in fact my rescuer.

I don’t understand the how, when, or where any of it.

All I know is I’m safe, and it’s all because of him.

“I’m just relieved,” I say, a sob escaping my throat because I can’t help it.

His voice rumbles against my skin, we’re joined so tightly. “Well, you won’t have to worry about any of these people ever again. You’re with me now.”

I couldn’t escape his grip even if I wanted to. He’s holding me like we’ve been welded together.

He’s the only kindness, the only tenderness I’ve felt since I moved to this town.

Lars is the only person here who has proved to be a real friend.

His body stiffens as Slate starts to sit up with a groan.

Without letting go of me, Lars puts a large boot on Slate’s neck. “Stay down, asshole.”

All at once, every cop show I’ve ever watched in my life comes flooding back, and I shift from trembling and traumatized to excited.

“Can I say ‘hands up, dirtbag’? Please? I’ve always wanted to,” I plead through my tears.

Lars sweetly holds up his sidearm and shows me how to safely handle it. “Go for it,” he says.