The front door had barely clicked shut behind Mom—her voice trailing off with, “I’ll be back in twenty, maybe thirty if the line’s long!”—when Paul’s hand clamped around my wrist like a steel manacle.

He didn’t speak.

He just dragged me down the hallway, past the living room, and straight into his home office. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind us, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the suddenly suffocating quiet of the house.

He reached out and twisted the brass lock with a sharp, definitive click. We were sealed in.

Paul spun me to face him, his dark eyes ablaze with something entirely feral.

“Strip,” he ordered,...