Born of Fire by Sherrilyn Kenyon

her gaze in the mirror.
    The hatred in the dark stare chilled her all the way to her soul. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’ve never had anyone stupid enough to break into my house.”
    The insult brought her temper to boil. “I’m not stupid.”
    His disbelieving snort made her want to carve his heart out. “Breaking into my house wasn’t exactly an award-winning act of intelligence. In case you haven’tnoticed, I don’t have a landline or computer here, or any other way for you to contact anyone on the outside. You can’t get through the scanner that runs over the doors and windows unless I disarm it. So where does that leave you?”
    Shahara’s stomach churned. It left her at his mercy and they both knew it. “I won’t be your plaything.”
    His scathing glare raked her body as if she were the most disgusting thing alive. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
    He rinsed out the washcloth and hung it on the towel rack to dry, then pulled out a tube of medicine and began applying it to the scratches. “I’ll be gone until morning. You have the freedom of the place until then.”
    He turned around and faced her, his eyes piercing her with lethal coldness. “But I warn you now, there’s only one thing in this life that I treasure and that’s my home. If you so much as put a scuff mark on my floors, I
will
take it out of your hide.”
    In spite of the threat and the fact that she knew he would carry it out, Shahara narrowed her gaze. Show them no fear. That was the first lesson she’d learned as a young teen. “I don’t take orders from convicts.”
    Faster than she could blink, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him with a steely grasp. His eyes snapped vivid black fire, provoking a potent fear inside her that she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time.
    In that instant, she knew this man was capable of anything.
    His grip tightened. “Mess up anything, and I’ll throw you to a rape gang so fast you won’t even have time to protest before they cut out your tongue.”
    Shahara swallowed at the threat that reached the center of her panic in a way nothing else did. It was her very worst fear. Her heart pounding, she stared at him,unwilling to let him know how much his threat frightened her.
    Despite her effort, she had the distinct feeling he knew anyway.
    She pulled her wrist free of his tight grasp. Why was he willing to leave her in his home? It didn’t make sense. “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?”
    “Think up ways to kill me while I sleep.”
    The blasè tone didn’t comfort her in the least. “I’ve already got a large number of them in mind.”
    He shrugged. “I should warn you that if you succeed in killing me, you’ll never get out of here alive. You’ll starve to death long before anyone misses me and thinks to come here to see if I’m all right.”
    Now that was something she hadn’t thought of.
    “Like I won’t starve to death anyway if you keep me here without food,” she said sarcastically, thinking about the empty cupboards in his kitchen.
    Without a word, he snatched his gloves off the counter, walked past her and pressed the controls to open his closet. He pulled out a black leather jacket and shrugged it on his massive shoulders. “You can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch. If it’ll make you feel any better, lock the bedroom door.”
    That said, he left the room.
    Shahara stood in shock at his words. One minute he threatened her, then in the next he offered her a relative amount of safety.
    What kind of convict was he?
    Before she could regain her thoughts, she heard the front door close behind him.
     
    Syn leaned his head back against the closed door and took a deep breath to center his raging emotions andhormones. It’d been years since anyone had knocked him so off-kilter. A cynical stoic by birth, he’d always been able to control himself, control his emotions.
    But something about Shahara made a mockery of his iron will.
    He