...Confused disorientation had her head spinning. Then she began to remember the events leading to being here. When she’d dozed off, she was pretty sure Roy was sitting in the chair again and the other guy was nowhere around. Was this the only bed in the apartment? If they were living together did that mean they shared it?

Good God, I’m getting more confused by the minute. Maybe they’re gay, although they haven’t said so or really indicated it.

She started to lift one arm to brush the hair back from her face. She couldn’t. Her wrist was linked to the arm of the body on her left with what felt like handcuffs. Her right arm was similarly trapped. The lamp on the chest was off now and light leaking through the vertical blind from somewhere outside barely lit the room.

Damn it, what are these weirdos up to? I want out of here! She’d never been comfortable being restrained. Suffering it in the dark made everything worse. A shadowy memory of being stuffed into a closet while her mother entertained male friends niggled at her mind. She’d kept that particular nightmare locked away for a long time, but all at once it was back, like a bogeyman emerging from under the bed.

She sank her teeth firmly into her lower lip to bite back the frantic whimpers wanting to squeak out from deep within. It’s okay. You haven’t been hurt or raped. It’s going to be okay. Come on, girl, be cool. You can do this.

The body on her right rolled toward her. Then an arm settled across her midsection. Their linked wrists were now trapped between them. He mumbled something. The voice sounded like that of the man she’d met and made the mistake of riding with. None of this was making any sense. Am I in serious trouble here or not?

Frank. Roy had referred to his roommate as Frank. Why did that name ring a distant bell? What Frank would linger in her dimmest memories? Frank Steadman. He was the tall, skinny kid who’d become her champion her first two years of high school. Shutting her eyes, she tried to dredge up a mental image of the youth and then do an age progression on that face, that body. It could be. It really could be.

As the thought took shape, she wanted to wake him up right then and ask, but she stopped herself. Time enough when morning comes. At least this tangent served to take her mind off the conditions that had her edging into panic. So she was lying in bed between two men and handcuffed to them both. It wasn’t like being shut into a closet at all.

She went back to the puzzle. If it was the same Frank, did he recognize her? Did that long-severed connection have anything to do with this other issue?

The slow slide of a male hand from her waist to her neck jolted Kerry sharply back to the present. Hold on. Was that conscious and deliberate or simply a reaction to a dream and have nothing to do with me?

Fingers twined into a curl of her hair that had slipped free of the elastic band with which she’d fastened it off her face, the strands she’d wanted to brush away. Then the same hand explored her face with the lightest of touches. She could not move, mesmerized by the sensuality of the feather-soft touch. Why did it have to feel so good?

That gentle touch reverberated through every atom of her body. A shocking sizzle of sexual awareness started in her depths and spread like wildfire. How could she respond this way to a man who had kidnapped her and even now held her prisoner? It was far too soon to develop the twisted bond of a captive for the jailer. Was she so hard up for a man’s touch the first one in months set her aflame?

Her breath quickened, puffing out in sharp, short bursts. Her skin tingled as if it were all shifting to meet that questing hand. Her heart hammered urgently in her chest. Sticky moisture dampened her panties as her breasts beaded and swelled, straining against the silky fabric of her bra. The worst of it was she could not respond in any meaningful way with both wrists locked in place.

A passive reaction was not her usual response. Normally, her inclination was to give as good as she got. She rolled her head restlessly on the pillow, her body starting to shudder and shift as the wandering hand finally left her face and drifted back down her torso. It paused at the swell of her breast, one finger tracing the upper edge of her bra beneath the thin fabric of her T-shirt.