He’s close now. Too close. The air between us is charged with electricity, but I won’t flinch. I won’t shrink back. That’s what he wants—to gain the upper hand, to punish me for escaping him the first time.
But the way he looks at me—his eyes fiery, his grip firm, his nearness making me shiver. Hatred coils between us. But there’s something else, too, something I can’t put my finger on.
Something darker.
He leans in, his fingers brushing my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered,solnyshka.”
Sunshine. He calls me sunshine.
Awww.
I smile. “It’s because I ran, isn’t it? Youarea kinky motherfucker.” I lower my voice and eyelids. “Got a primal kink, big guy?”
He steps closer, the wicked smirk confirmation.
Well, damn.
Hedoes.
I can’t move. There’s nowhere to go when the walls are closing in.
No.He’sclosing in, his presence suffocating. And as the silence stretches between us, it’s like he savors it.
“Finders keepers,” he croons. “There are no cages to shove me in this time.”
“Shame,” I say with a shake of my head. “A face like yours really does belong behind bars.”
The door slams shut, the heavy lock clicking into place. My stomach twists. The bar’s empty—no backup, no witnesses. Just me and my hot, furious, wicked stalker. Matvei.
“Matvei Kopolov,” I say by way of greeting, but I quickly stutter to silence when his hands find his belt buckle.
Uh-oh.
It clinks as he leans back against the bar, lazy and predatory, like he has all the time in the world to decide what to do with me—even as his fingers unfasten the buckle and tug the leather through the loops.
My pulse beats too fast in my throat. I’ve faced killers, survived interrogations, and outwitted men smarter than him—but none of them ever looked at me like this. Like they wanted to ruin me, own me, and devour me all in the same breath.
“I’ll give you ten seconds to run,” he says softly, eyes glinting.
I shake my head. “I don’t want to.”
“Nowyou decide to stay? Ha.Go.It wasn’t a request,” he says. “Ten. Nine.”
His voice drops deeper. So he wants to chase me first. Chasing me through the streets of Paris wasn’t enough? No. I’m not going to play that game. Plus, I know there’s nowhere to run in here. It’s a stupid fucking bar in Paris—you have to pull down a rope just to get to the basement, and they stock the damn liquor bottles outside in an alley so narrow he couldn’t even fit his left arm in it.
“Eight, seven?—”
When he gets to three, I decide—what the hell.
Too little, too late. I know I won’t get far because—fuck me—I don’t want to.
I turn around, and the second my feet move, he says, in a rush of words, all in one breath, “Three, two, one.”
Holy shit.
He grabs me by the hair, yanking me forward and tossing me across the bar. My hands go flat on the glossy top, scrabbling for purchase where there is none.
“What’s your plan,solnyshka?” I taunt, the word twisting my mouth, mocking his affectionate term. “You gonna beat me into submission?”
