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So…why are we sad?
And why are you sitting in the dark?
Don’t. It’s not like you can come back.
She’s right about that. The way I left—I’ll never be welcome back. Not without a lot of painful groveling and even more painful submission. The punishment…
The cruise ship. The glitter and glam. She show. Him…
I’d run from it all.
From the room he promised to have ready for me. From the silk ties that would bind me, helplessly, beneath him. From the blood he promised to drain from me. The vow he made to paint his flesh with the red of my life.
If I went back…
I shiver at the thought of submitting to him. To the deceiving evil that lurks under his beautiful flesh. I won’t do it.
He'd break me, with pleasure.
This has to work, Pippa. My inner voice cracks, weakness slipping into the faux courage as I pull my shoulders back, determined. This will work.
Headlights flash between the trees. My heart summersaults up into my throat. I swallow it down, nearly gagging on the lump of it, and send one last text.
He’s here. Gotta go.
Kill it, babe.
I feel like I’m going to vomit. Nerves swell inside me until they’re all I can feel. I don’t even recall what it felt like to be cool and calm, which is saying something, because I’m the master at keeping my emotions firmly, solidly, completely under a block of ice.
But not when it comes to him. Cole Taviera.
The only man who has ever made my heart flutter.
The only man with enough sway to truly make it sink.
The SUV rolls to a stop, and headlights threaten to blind me as I stare into a dark windshield.
Oh shoot. What if he has a woman with him?
Why did I think showing up here at night was a good idea?
Frick, frick, frick. I know his reputation. I’ve cyber-stalked him long enough to know he’s got a hell of a dating—that’s a kind word for what Cole does—history.
I should have known better.
Still. I’m here.
The driver’s door swings open without the headlights flicking off, and a man gets out.
The man gets out.
My throat goes instantly dry, like it’s coated in dust.
My fingertips tremble, the skin tingling like I’ve been caught in a frosty storm. Not like I’m standing outside on a warm L.A. night.
I can’t move. I can hardly breathe. The salt in the humid sea air has crystalized in my lungs, trapping air.
He’s so much more than when he left.
