Well, no. I can answer that. Because the truth is? I totally wasn’t thinking, was I?
I just took off, and as I hear leaves crunching behind me… slow and steady footfalls… the sound of someone stalking my loud steps… I know that Sebastiendidcome after me. He’s not even trying to hide. It’s like he wants me to hear how easily he’s been able to catch up to me, and just in case I start freaking out that it’s a stranger on his family’s mountain land, he calls out for me.
“Annaliese.”
It’s my name, deep and rough and too, too close.
Where is he? I spare a few precious seconds to look behind me. I don’t see him, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t there.
“I know you can hear me, love. That’s fine. Keep running if that’s what you need.”
I nearly trip over my sneakers. Because that? That wasn’t permission from my husband.
That was achallenge.
He must be closer than I first guessed. I choke on my gasping breath, tripping again because my brain wants me to go faster than my feet. Shaking it off, I duck around another tree before cursing to see that I’ve reached the edge of the damn mountain.
There are still woods all around me, but right ahead? That’s a cliff, and if I keep running, I’ll take the same sort of swan dive that his Julie did.
What now? There’s nowhere left to run. I’m not even surewhyI bolted in the first place. It’s not like I really can outrun my sinsormy husband. I gave it a good try, though, my mistakes and my insecurities and my goddamn fantasies for what could’ve been dogging my every step.
All of that, plus Sebastien because all I hear is the drumbeat of his boots against the dirt before, suddenly, he’sthere.
A hand closes around my wrist.
It’s not rough. Not punishing. It’s a gentle grab with a more forceful tug, snagging me, pulling me back. I take a half-turn, not sure how to react, before he decides for me. My captor spins me fully, my free hand going up in time to slam my palm against Sebastien’s slightly heaving chest.
He reaches around me, laying his hand on the small of my back. I’m trapped, and I have nowhere to look but up at him.
His hair is slightly mussed from the run. Beneath the moonlight, his eyes are bright with excitement and something hungry.
“Got you,” he murmurs, a hint of a smile ghosting his lips.
Like he’s happy he caught me. Like he’s thrilled I ran in the first place.
Like he’d do this again and again, and no matter what, he’ll always be there to catch me…
And he does. Have me, I mean. And maybe I didn’t really mean to run. With everything happening… with this thing between us getting way too real… I bolted, believing that I would only piss my fake husband off by fleeing. But that expression is the farthest thing from ‘pissed’, and all I can think about is how he chased me. I ran, he followed, and now I’m caught.
Literally.
Never losing that grin, his face shadowing over, Sebastien moves. His hold on my wrist tightens, his body pushing against mine, and I’m helpless to do anything other than trip over my feet as he backs me up until my spine hits the solid bark of one of these too many trees.
The shock of contact snaps another breath out of me, then his name. “Sebastien?—”
“No.”
His tone is light, almost playful, as he edges impossibly closer, crowding my space until there’s nowhere for either of us to go except into each other.
His cologne goes to my head. I was already dizzy, from panic and fear and the anxiousness I hid for too long, but the essence of Sebastien overwhelms all my other senses. I see him, breathehim,needhim… but I can’t have him. He’s not mine. Not really.
And I’ve been fooling myself that I can keep this thing we have strictly professional. I’d break every damn clause in the contract if I could. I wish I was stronger. I wish I’d met Sebastien before another man ruined me. I wish?—
“Annaliese.Love. Look at me. Look at your husband.”
My hands fall to my sides. My eyes snap back to his face.
And, knowing that he has my complete, undivided attention, his grin widens into a small delicious smirk.
