Born of Fire

His oath matched her own as she raked his flesh. At this point, she didn’t care if he killed her. She refused to ever lie with a man wanted for rape and murder. Men were cruel and abusive by nature and she’d die before she ever submitted to one.

Syn grabbed her hands again and held them by her face. His breathing labored, he curled his lips into a fierce snarl.

Bravely, Shahara glared her hatred at him. “If you rape me, convict, I’ll tear your heart from your chest and feed it to you!”

The anger fled his features. His eyes went strangely dull as if something from his past shredded him. It was as if she stared into the face of a statue without any emotions or life at all.

“I’ve never raped a woman, and I have no intention of starting now.”

A drop of blood fell from his neck where she’d scratched him and landed on her cheek. He stared at it for a moment before looking back at her eyes. “I’m going to release you. If you attack me again, it’ll be the last time you ever make such a mistake.”

The icy dare in his voice quelled her more than his words. She had no doubt he would make her long regret any more moves against him. And like Gaelin, he would relish her torture. Laugh at her while he did it.

But there would come a time when his guard would lax. Then he would be hers and she’d make him pay dearly.

He released her hands and rose.

Shahara lay there for a moment, warily watching him.

Without taking his gaze from her, he retrieved the bottle from the floor. He gripped it so tightly, his knuckles protruded sharply against the leather of his glove.

“Go ahead, throw it at me.”

A glimmer of shock passed across his features before he recovered his impassiveness. “I should. Hell, if I had any sense at all, I’d kill you and dump your body in the nearest slime hole.”

Shahara lifted her chin defiantly. Far better opponents than he had tried and failed. “Then why don’t you?”

“I have an appointment to keep.”

The unexpected response was far from comforting. But it served to weaken her cockiness.

He slid his hand under his chin and cursed when he withdrew it and saw the blood on his glove. He gave her a look of such loathing that she thought he might kill her after all.

Instead, he turned around and headed into the bathroom.

She wiped his blood from her own cheek and listened to water splash against the basin. Rising from the floor, she stood in the bedroom uncertain about what to do next.

How was she going to get out of this mess?

Was he going to kill her? And just what would he do to her before he took her life? Various terrifying possibilities flashed through her mind, making her shiver.

Hesitantly, she walked to the bathroom door that he’d left partially open. He stood in front of the sink, wiping the blood away with a washcloth.

“What are you going to do with me?”

His hand paused under his chin and he met her gaze in the mirror.

The hatred in the dark stare chilled her all the way to her soul. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’ve never had anyone stupid enough to break into my house.”

The insult brought her temper to boil. “I’m not stupid.”

His disbelieving snort made her want to carve his heart out. “Breaking into my house wasn’t exactly an award-winning act of intelligence. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have a landline or computer here, or any other way for you to contact anyone on the outside. You can’t get through the scanner that runs over the doors and windows unless I disarm it. So where does that leave you?”

Shahara’s stomach churned. It left her at his mercy and they both knew it. “I won’t be your plaything.”

His scathing glare raked her body as if she were the most disgusting thing alive. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He rinsed out the washcloth and hung it on the towel rack to dry, then pulled out a tube of medicine and began applying it to the scratches. “I’ll be gone until morning. You have the freedom of the place until then.”

He turned around and faced her, his eyes piercing her with lethal coldness. “But I warn you now, there’s only one thing in this life that I treasure and that’s my home. If you so much as put a scuff mark on my floors, I will take it out of your hide.”

In spite of the threat and the fact that she knew he would carry it out, Shahara narrowed her gaze. Show them no fear. That was the first lesson she’d learned as a young teen. “I don’t take orders from convicts.”

Faster than she could blink, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him with a steely grasp. His eyes snapped vivid black fire, provoking a potent fear inside her that she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time.

In that instant, she knew this man was capable of anything.

His grip tightened. “Mess up anything, and I’ll throw you to a rape gang so fast you won’t even have time to protest before they cut out your tongue.”

Shahara swallowed at the threat that reached the center of her panic in a way nothing else did. It was her very worst fear. Her heart pounding, she stared at him, unwilling to let him know how much his threat frightened her.