He clasps my face between both hands, those blue eyes intense. “A subject has never made me feel so weak.”

“That’s because I’m not a subject. I’m a woman.”

He releases me with a forced breath. “You’re a parasite.”

I lift my chin, defiant. “And yet that doesn’t change how badly you want me.” I lick my lips to wet them. “You’re the one with the illness, Alex. Why don’t you just give in? Accept that you can’t cure me, that there’s nothing to cure.”

He steps backward, moving down the stairs. His face is level with mine. “It damn near breaks me…I’ve never wanted a woman more.” He takes another step down. “But not like this. Not without you able to reciprocate what I feel. It can’t happen any other way—that would make me more vile than the fiend who put my sister in the ground.”

He starts down the stairs, letting his words hang in the dark between us. Before he’s gone, I make sure he hears me. “If you actually succeed…the feelings I’ll have for you won’t be what you want, Alex.”

“I’m willing to risk that,” he says.

A chill touches my skin and I cross my arms. I look at the cabin door. If there’s any chance of escape, it’s not through here. No, hiding that door, keeping me in the basement, isn’t a means of security. That cabin belongs to him.

His own personal ninth circle of hell.

When I enter the basement, Alex is waiting for me with the leather cuffs in his hands. For now, I accept my temporary fate. I won’t find a way out of here by physically overpowering him, or seducing him.

Alex plays on a psychological playing field, and I need access to that chamber locked away in his mind, the one with all the ticking clocks.

That’s my way out.

I hold out my wrists to him, and he locks a cuff into place. He won’t meet my eyes, his gaze distant and evasive. I’ve pushed him too far tonight, but not far enough to snap.

He leaves the room, and I sit on the cot and pull my knees to my chest. He returns with the jogging pants I left in the shower room.

“I would appreciate it if you stayed clothed,” he says.

I huff a soundless laugh. “Sure. Anything for my captor’s comfort.”

Alex appears to temper a retort, and instead leaves the room again. He’s not gone long when he returns with a hammer and nail. I watch curiously as he drives the nail into the wall opposite me.

He removes the keyring from his pocket and hooks it on the nail. So I can stare at it. Knowing it’s just out of reach. A cruel taunt.