He burst out laughing, which did nothing for her temper. She strained mightily and managed to roll him off her. “I’m sorry, love, it’s rude to laugh. But most women in your position would be fetal with shock, sobbing into the bedspread. All you can think about is how to get your teeth into me.”

“And how you might taste,” she added silkily.

“Umm…well, there are ways to answer that question…”

“Anything you put in my mouth, you’re gonna lose.”

He sighed. “I suppose it was too good to last. Pity we’re only compatible in bed.”

“Compatible in—you raped me, asswipe! Do you have any idea what my family is going to do to you? What I’m going to do to you?”

“I did rape you.” He tweaked one of her nipples. “At first.”

She blushed with shame. He saw it, and it moved him whereas her death threats did not. “No, you’re right—I forced you. None of this was your idea. You’re still tied up, for heaven’s sake. You don’t have anything to feel guilty about.”

She was, absurdly, grateful for the lie. Not that she had any intention of showing it. “I feel very guilty that I didn’t break your neck in that alley when I had the chance. Now let me go!”

“Sorry, Jane. You had your chance to be free, and you chose to stay.”

“I did not—”

“So stay you will, and just like this, until…”

“Oh, what, what? Christ, you’re driving me crazy!”

“…until you agree to be my wife.”

Long silence, broken by, “You’re on drugs.”

“Only if you are. Is that why your blood is so rich? God, it was like wine. I don’t think I’ve ever felt better,” he said giddily. “I had planned to fuck you and eat you and turn you out into the street in the wee hours of the morning without so much as an ‘I’ll call you,’ but now I’ll never, never let you go. You’re a rare jewel, Jane. An emerald, a ruby.”

“I’m tied to the bed next to a crazy person,” she mused aloud. Thinking, Never drank from a werewolf before, eh, buddy? Interesting. If you become addicted to me, that could be useful. “And as far as being your wife—you’ve probably heard this from all your other rape victims, but I’d rather be dead.”

“Undead,” he said brightly. “Well, we’ve got time for that. You’re still in your prime. Although I have no intention of becoming a widower in forty or fifty years.”

“What?”

“Oh, I won’t insist upon it right away, but probably within the next ten years or so, I’ll definitely have to turn you into a vampire.”

An undead werewolf? What’s next, Frankenstein’s Monster coming over for dinner? “You’re out of your fucking mind.”