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“I’m not doing this with you.” He shakes his head. “I’ll say this one more time: Take. It. Off.”

I don’t move.

“Make me.”

I cannot believe I just said that. More to the point, I can’t believe I just said that and then didn’t immediately flee for my life. I’m still standing here, chin lifted, heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my temples.

This is it for real. The cellar was just the prelude—we’ve now finally reached thetruemurder moment of this impromptu little French vacation.

Lukas sets down his wine glass on the stone railing. He doesn’t look at me as he straightens to his full height.

Then he starts walking toward me.

The first step is unhurried. But the second is a little faster. The third, faster still. By the fourth, he’s charging, steam practically unfurling out of his ears, red and flushed in a way I’ve never seen him before.

I back up, but it’s too little, too late. There’s nowhere to go. He corners me against a wall as darkness gathers in his face.

His hand shoots past my shoulder. I flinch, bracing for… I don’t know what. Impact. Pain.Something.

Instead, his fingers find the zipper at my back.

He only pulls it down an inch or two, though. Just enough to loosen the fabric across my shoulder blades.

“Don’t play games you can’t win, little girl.”

Then he rips away, retreats across the veranda, and disappears through a door on the far side, isolating himself far away from me with as many walls between us as he can get.

Only when I’m one hundred percent sure he’s gone do I look over and finally see the meal he prepared, waiting for us under a pair of silver cloches.

I sink into one of the chairs and pull off the cloche. Underneath, I find duck confit with crispy skin, roasted potatoes glistening with herbs, and haricots verts so perfectly blanched they could be in a magazine.

It looks too good to let it go to waste.

I drink the whole bottle of wine he decanted and devour my plate. Just like I promised him last night, I eat every morsel and then lick the plate clean. It’sthatgood.

I wish it wasn’t, though. I want it to be terrible so I can add “mediocre chef” to the list of reasons I should stop wanting Lukas, but no. Of course not. The man tortures me with his words, his presence, his inexplicable hot-and-cold bullshit, and then has the audacity to also be a phenomenal cook.

By the time the bottle is empty, the stars have emerged overhead and I’m no closer to understanding any of this. I’m just wine-drunk, alone, and more confused than ever.

How can this possibly end? There’s no happily-ever-after in the works, that’s for sure. No Prince Charming has ever said things as dirty or as cruel as Lukas Lazarev has said to me.

Virgin. Untouched. Half my age.Like crocodiles in the moat around a princess’s castle, all those obstacles circle and circle, getting hungrier with every passing day.

But the thing about moats is that they bar passagebothways. No knight in shining armor can get in, and the princess can’t get out.

Sometimes, though, princesses get impatient. Sometimes, princesses look at all those crocodiles and think,You know what? Fuck it. Bite me if you dare. But I’m making a break for it.

Because what’s the alternative? Go back to New York with my tail between my legs? Return to my sad little apartment, my mountain of never-ending bills, my parade of mediocre Hinge matches? Spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I’d just been brave enough to jump?

No.

I didn’t fly across an ocean to eat duck confit alone on a veranda while the man who made it hides from me like I’m radioactive.

I pour myself the last dregs of wine and stare up at the stars. They’re unbelievably bright out here, away from the light pollution of the city. A whole universe of burning things, millions of years old, and down here is just sad little me with my sad little drama.

Lukas thinks he’s protecting me by pushing me away.

He’s wrong.