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“What are you running from, malishka?”
I glance up from his hand on my thigh, but his steely gaze remains on the road. It gives me a view of his profile, which appears to be carved from marble by the Ancient Greeks. I trace the line of his straight nose down to his alluring lips, admiring the thick, wavy hair hanging over his forehead.
How can I not stare at him? He’s perfection personified.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“What are you running from that made you come to Andarusia? I imagine this was not your first choice of a destination.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I admit. “But my dad is the ambassador here, so I had no say.”
“Why did you have to leave in the first place?”
I fold my arms. “Didn’t that come up in my background check?”
His lips curl into a shadow of a smirk. “What background check?”
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”
He squeezes my leg. “I want to hear it from you.”
With a sigh, I tear my eyes away and look out the window. The nineteenth-century German townhomes are picturesque beneath the rare blue sky, and the cheery flower pots complete the joyful scene.
The setting is a strange backdrop for the darkness I can’t escape. The darkness Alek wants to share with me.
“My mom died,” I say. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
He remains silent, and I take that as my cue to elaborate. “Since I’m still seventeen, custody went to my dad. But my birthday is only a couple months away, and as soon as I turn eighteen, I’m getting out of this hellhole. No offense to your country.”
“None taken. But where will you go?”
I pause. “I don’t know. Whenever I imagine my future, there’s nothing there. It’s just a black void of nothing.”
I lean my forehead against the window. I debate whether I should say what’s really on my mind, but Alek might be the one person who won’t recoil at the truth. “I realized something today. I don’t think I’m supposed to live past June.”
The weight of that hangs heavy in the small space between us, but I’m not sad about it. I’m just stating a fact.
We pass the rest of the ride in silence until Alek parks the car in front of my house. I stare at the door, both relieved to be home and dreading going inside.
“Give me until June 11th,” Alek says, turning in his seat to face me. “Give me until then to change your mind.”
“That’s my birthday, which means you totally did a background check on me.”
I throw him a half-hearted grin, but his expression remains dead serious. “That’s also graduation day. If the day comes and you still want to throw yourself over that cliff, I’ll jump in after you and we can meet our end together.”
His declaration steals the breath from my lungs, making my next words come out as a choked whisper. “Why would you do that?”
His hand palms the back of my head to pull me against him, and when his mouth captures mine, the world stops. My head spins, and I don’t know which way is up or down. I wrap my arms around his neck to steady myself, but when his tongue slips past my lips, desire explodes in my lower belly.
I let out an involuntary moan against his mouth as his tongue dominates mine. He’s devouring me, and all I want is to submit to it, to lose myself in him. To let him fill the empty spaces of my soul where only misery exists.
Leaning back, I open my eyes to look at him. His beauty is overwhelming, and I struggle to breathe in his dark presence. It overpowers every sense—the smell of him, the taste of him, the sound of his breath so close to my ear. The way the muscles of his shoulders feel beneath my hands.
“I want you,” I whisper. “All of you.”
The devilish grin that appears on his face makes the arousal drip between my legs. “When I claim your pussy, malishka, it won’t be in the front seat of a car.”
It takes a moment for his rejection to register, and once again, I’ve thrown myself at Alek only to be left wanting.
