Below me on a black tiled floor was a dark-haired female. Her big brown eyes were huge as they looked up at me. Her small hands were wrapped around my wrist, pushing me to get off. I blinked, and blinked again, trying to push the fog from my mind. Images flashed across my eyes: her lying in the cage, her tied to the wall, wrapped in ropes, her on a bed, being tortured and hurt.

Zoya, she had said. My name is Zoya.

Jerking my hands free, my neck throbbing with pain, I pulled back. My legs were straddling her thighs. Zoya coughed and spluttered as she rubbed at the skin of her neck.

I slid back against the wall, still feeling the wetness over my chest. I ran my hand over the damp skin, only to see a bloodied towel lying beside me. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to clear the blur. When I opened them, the chamber came into view. I breathed hard, relieved that I wasn’t back in that hell—the Blood Pit.

Seeing movement from beside me, I rolled my head to the side, wincing at the pain in my neck.

Zoya. Zoya shuffling away from me.

“No,” I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. My throat feeling like razor blades as I tried to push out the word.

Zoya stilled and deliberately met my eyes. Swallowing, she asked, “Valentin?”

My heart beat fast as she spoke my name. Unable to talk, I put my hand over my chest and briefly closed my eyes to tell her yes.

Relief washed over her face and she came closer. The closer she got, the more I noticed that her long black hair was wet and her skin had been cleaned. She was still naked. As I looked down her lean body, my nostrils flared as I saw red teeth marks covering her chest and rope burns over her wrists and ankles.

I swallowed as images of me doing these things sailed through my brain. I saw myself tying her up, biting her, about to force my cock into her mouth.

Regret and shame burned like fire in my heart.

Needing to get the fuck away from what I’d done, I tried to move. As I fought to get to my feet, a hand landed on my bare chest. I froze, and when I looked up Zoya was peering down at me. She sucked in a breath and said, “It was the monster, not you. And you stopped him before you…”

I frowned, not understanding her meaning. Zoya sat back on her ankles, then pointed to the broken metal collar on the floor. My stomach flipped. I instinctively reached up to my neck, hissing when my hands landed on bare neck.

My bare neck. I hadn’t had a bare neck since I was twelve.

I turned to Zoya for answers. Anticipating my question, she explained, “You fought its control over you. You saw what you had done, were about to do, under its influence, and you forced it from your neck.” Zoya shuffled forward and ran her finger under my neck. “It made you bleed and pass out. You have been asleep, I think, for many hours.” She pointed at the wet rag. “I was cleaning you when you awoke. I think you were having a nightmare; you were restless, and tried to call out.”

I stared at her as she spoke. As she was about to withdraw her hand, I gripped her wrist and kept her finger on my chest.

A flush crept up her skin. As I watched her olive skin blush with red, I remembered my lips pressing against hers. I remembered her touch on my face. I remembered her smiling at me when I told her my name.

“Are you tired?” she asked softly.

I closed my eyes again to say yes. Zoya looked over to the bed and said, “Can you get up to sleep on the bed?”

Wanting to get on the bed with her, I forced myself to get off this floor. Planting my palms on the hard tile, I pushed off the floor, my feet staggering when I stood up.

Zoya stayed at my side. Her face was down, as though she was concentrating. Accompanied with a deep breath, she wrapped her arm around my waist, then guided me to the bed. With every step, my heart swelled at the sweet feeling of Zoya’s arms around my waist.

“Lie down,” Zoya instructed when we reached the edge of the bed.

Doing as she said, I lay down on the mattress, until I was on my back. Zoya stood at the side, rocking on her feet. I patted the mattress beside me. Zoya looked at me through long lashes. Doing as indicated, she crawled onto the bed. She curled beside me, lying on her side. Her hand was tucked under her face. She looked so beautiful. So beautiful that I pushed out my hand and ran the back of it down her cheek.

“Beautiful,” I murmured, watching the shock ripple over her face. My raw throat burned in pain, but I pressed my free hand against my throat to numb it and finished, “I have hated … all … Georgian bitch females … my whole life.” I swallowed to wet my throat, then scratched out, “But I … cannot hate … you.”

Zoya’s eyes dipped; then, without looking at me again, she slid from the bed. My heart sank as she disappeared into the small bathroom, but she appeared again with a bottle of water. Nervously she moved to my side. Kneeling on the bed, she brought the bottle of water to my lips and poured some of the cold liquid down my throat. She repeated the action until the bottle was drained; then, as before, she lay down on the bed beside me.

I cleared my throat, the burning sensation already dulled.

My hand was lying on the mattress between us. Zoya’s fingers went rigid, and with a sigh her small hand covered mine. My eyes snapped to hers. Soon her warmth seeped into mine, and she licked along her lips.

“Valentin,” she said in the thick Georgian accent I used to despise but now had learned to adore. “You are not a bad man.”

My eyebrows pulled down. Those images of what I was about to do to her raced through my head. As if sensing what was happening, Zoya squeezed my hand. “I know what you are thinking,” she said softly. I focused on the rope burns on her body.

“Look at me!” Zoya said. My nostrils flared on hearing a command from her mouth. Zoya’s face softened and she added, “Please.”

Forcing my body to not respond to a strict female voice, I sank farther into the mattress and met Zoya’s eyes, as requested, not commanded.

Her fingers began stroking across my own. “When you first touched me, you terrified me.” I stayed still, just listening. Zoya’s face paled and she said, “The things you did to me when you first brought me to this chamber”—she shook her head—“I could not have even dreamed of in my worst nightmare. The electric shocks, the hot and cold, then the way you used my body and its centers of pleasure against me. It was barbaric, cruelty at its very worst.” My jaw clenched at the hurt lacing her voice, but I didn’t react. I had committed these acts. I’d done what I’d been commanded by Mistress.

Zoya smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “At first, I thought you were coldhearted, a monster. But then I realized what the collar around your neck was doing to your body. I knew when it took you in its hold. Your blue eyes would turn black, fully dilated. It still didn’t explain the hours when your eyes were blue, yet you still caused me pain. But you began to slip, and I glimpsed fleeting moments of compassion sneaking through.” Zoya’s head tipped to the side. “And even though you had me held captive, even though you had hurt me, had brought me to a torturous level of pleasure, I worked out that you were doing all of this because you had to, not because you wanted to.”

I rolled my lips together; that feeling again burst within me. I stared at this female. I questioned how she could be speaking to me this way. How could she care for me, after all that I had done to her?

“As I said before, Valentin, we are not dissimilar. And believe it or not”—she tipped her head forward—“you and your chamber are not the most horrific of things that have happened in my life. You see, I think in that respect we are alike.” Her hand squeezed mine and she added, “Except the people who found me and took me in were good and honest people. They protected me and kept me safe.” Zoya lifted our joined hands and brought them to her lips. As her lips brushed the back of my hand, a blanket of heat covered my body.

“Where I believe the people that found you caused you nothing but pain and sorrow. I believe that had you not been forced to have this life, you would have been a very different man. Do you agree?” she asked, her question hanging thick and heavy in the air.

I shrugged and whispered, “I do not know. I have caused others pain. I have killed and tortured since I was a child.”