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Although, really, their identity doesn’t matter.

What matters is, “Wait, so, you were acting back there? How you threw me into the cell? You’re not going to kill me?”

“No.”

He isn’t a rapist, then, either. He didn’t kill Topher’s mom.

But he put a girl up for auction. Then again, if his father was anything like him—strong, powerful, commanding—I can’t see how he had a choice in the matter.

He never wanted anything with any of this.

Yet here I am. Alive and his.

It’s obvious that I wasn’t supposed to happen. My being here was not planned.

He might regret his decision. Might not let me stay. He might dispose of me somehow.

No. No. I’m his. He can’t do that to me. I belong here by his side.

I open my mouth to speak. To scream at him.

His thundering stare and the pressure on my throat silence me.

“There’s only one way to stop what our families had started.” This sick tradition. These men. Of course there is. It’s him. James is more powerful than the three of them combined. “I was supposed to let someone kidnap you. A man who’d set you free, like I rescued the other ones. He’d make you disappear, give you enough money to live your happily ever after away from here. But, I couldn’t go through with it. I don’t even know what I’m doing. What I do know is this: no one will kill you. I’ll hang their heads in my backyard before I let that happen.”

For Topher, I was disposable, despite his sick torture fantasies. He let me go. Never put up a fight.

James, on the other hand, has been obsessed with me since the first dinner.

But he’s still hiding something. By the look in his eyes, I can tell it’s possessive. Dark. Unhinged.

I want it.

“Say it.” I glare at him. “Fucking say it.”

The grip on my throat tightens. He pins my body to the bed, his cock throbbing against my pussy.

“If anyone kills you, it’s me who’ll do it. And I won’t. Ever.”

That’s the last warning I get before he draws back, flipping me onto my stomach. I have a split second to consider the meaning behind what he said. I’m sickened by how I find comfort in it. How my pussy aches to be filled by him.

Being murdered by a man who’s that obsessed with me shouldn’t be better than having him send me out of his home indefinitely. But it is better.

What’s even better is he won’t do either.

“Come here,” he grunts, pulling my hips up. Forcing my legs apart.

When he’s between them, his comforting weight presses to my back.

His hand is firm as it angles my head to the side. Softer when he tucks my hair behind my ear.

James holds me there, making me look at the wrath, determination, and lust on his face.

My stomach flutters; my lips part for him. I need him to kiss me. I need every part of him, the good, the bad, the psychotic. I need it on such a visceral level I could scream.

“James.”

“Not now, Ophelia.” Yes, yes now, because he can’t help himself. Briefly, his lips are on mine. His mouth is sucking the air out of me. “Not when I’m this close to snapping.”