Passion by Marilyn Pappano

sign at all of the shame that accompanied
     the satisfaction.
    “It’ll stop.” He sounded just as flat, just as unfeeling, but his fingers tightened briefly around her arm. Then he raised
     his head and looked at her, his blue gaze locking with hers. “Don’t make me hurt you, Teryl.” His words were simple, his voice
     quiet, but it was a plea as surely as her own earlier request—
Please don’t
—had been.
    “Let me go,” she whispered.
    “I can’t. I need you.”
    “Please… I’m not worth anything to you. I don’t have any money. My family doesn’t have any money.”
    “I don’t want money.”
    That wasn’t a reassuring response. If he was telling the truth, if he had no interest in making a trade of her freedom for
     someone’s cash, then what did that leave for a motive? Sex? Murder?
    Or both?
    Choking back another pitiful plea, she forced herself to ask quietly, calmly, “Then what do you want?” It was better to know
     what she was up against. Better to find out what he intended to do to her than to wait, unknowing and afraid, for him to do
     it.
    On the highway an eighteen-wheeler rushed past, buffeting them, rocking the Blazer from side to side. He glanced in the rearview
     mirror, then, still holding her arm, awkwardly shifted into first gear and eased the truck farther onto the shoulder. There
     he shut off the key and turned in his seat to face her. “You never asked my last name.”
    Teryl felt a twinge of discomfort, tinged again with a sense of the ludicrous. There was an accusation in the cool, weary
     tones of his voice, a rebuke that said she should have been more careful, should have shown some caution, some morals, some
     simple common sense. It made her own voice defensive when she replied, “I didn’t think it was necessary. I didn’t think, after
     last night, that I would ever see you again.”
    But when she had, when she had turned around in the hotel lobby and he’d been standing there, she had been pleased. She had
     been
so
pleased. Now she wished he
had
just walked out of her life. Now she wished he had never walked into it. And the words he said next merely doubled her wishes.
    “My name is John Smith… but you probably know me better as Simon Tremont.”
    Teryl stared at him—simply stared. Of all the things in the world he could have said, that was the one she wasn’t prepared
     for, the one she never would have expected. He thought—he believed—he was Simon Tremont.
    Oh, God, he was crazy. She had been kidnapped by a crazy man. She had gone to bed last night with a man who was absolutely,
     one hundred percent, certifiably insane, and now he’d taken her hostage. Now he intended to—To do what? To play out his fantasy?
     Was she meant to be the adoring fan to his Tremont? Was that why he’d chosen her—because she hadn’t bothered to disguise her
     admiration for the author? Or was it simply because she’d been so damned easy?
    “If I let go of you,” he began haltingly, “will you promise not to try to get away?”
    The crazy man was asking for a promise, and she gave it readily, unable to speak over the lump of fear in her throat but nodding
     instead. He didn’t immediately release her, and when he did, it seemed an effort. She could actually see him forcing his fingers
     to loosen, to uncurl from around her arm. The instant she was free, she drew back as far as possible, and she cradled her
     arm to her chest, using her free hand to gingerly rub the place where he’d held her. Already her skin had turned red and dark
     purple. Already there was swelling around the damaged tissue that would soon form ugly bruises encircling her forearm in roughly
     the same shape as his hand.
    And he expected her to believe that he didn’t want to hurt her, she thought bitterly.
    Staring out the bug-splattered windshield, he drew a deep breath, then spoke in a flat, unemotional voice. “Tell me what you
     know about Simon Tremont.”
    Yesterday he had asked