“What the hell is that?”

“That’s where you kept Alex after we kidnapped her.”

“We what?”

“Dude, she ruined your career and your reputation. One little lie from a De Luca and your life went up in smoke. Losing your dad was the final hit. I don’t blame you for wanting revenge.”

He continued speaking, but I couldn’t hear the words through the blaring noise in my ears, the throbbing pain at my temples. My attention cut to the cage again. Had I built it? It was sturdy, the sort of prison that wouldn’t be easy to escape from, and I didn’t miss the hook in the ceiling or the cuffs dangling from it. What the fuck had I done? Who had I become?

A feeling I couldn’t pin down fell upon my chest, making it difficult to breathe, and the fantasies I’d ignored since early adolescence surfaced. Those cuffs, the ability to lock away another human being…a sexy, vulnerable woman…I squeezed my free hand into a fist as my dick hardened. Fuck me and my deviant thoughts.

Just fantasies.

They didn’t mean anything, and they sure as fuck didn’t mean I’d lost my damn mind by acting on them. I stumbled back, gripped my head, and told myself to breathe. “I wouldn’t have done this.” My voice sounded far away, as if filtering through the hollow of a tunnel. Someone else’s voice. Someone else’s life.

Someone else did this.

“I’m sorry, man. This was what I was afraid of. I shouldn’t have brought you down here.”

With morbid curiosity, my eyes veered to the cage again, and one glaring detail finally punched me in the face. A locked up prison cell, but no prisoner cowering inside. If I’d kidnapped her…then where the fuck was she?

7. Depleted - Alex

7. DEPLETED - ALEX

The fall from euphoria was like hurtling through the air without a parachute. Hitting bottom hurt worse than anything. I remembered everything. How deliriously I’d wanted him, how strong our connection was during those hours when only an infinite amount of pleasure existed. Sorrow, grief, guilt…none of it had burdened me.

I didn’t have to open my eyes to know the warm body against mine, clutching me possessively, was Zach’s and not Rafe’s. His hangover stench attacked my sense of smell. With a deep groan, I leaned over the side of the bed and vomited every last memory onto the hardwood, purged it all from my system. But my system refused to stop spiraling into the depths of horror.

I’d sucked his cock. Willingly, wantonly. Like the whore he always accused me of being. Somehow, in the confusion of my fucked up mind, I’d thought he was Rafe. How was that even possible?