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“Evangeline?”
“What do you want from me?” Her voice was throaty. Raw. If she wasn’t sobbing yet, she would be soon.
That broke his heart and hardened his resolve. “I want you to look at me. I want you to see me.”
“I—”
He removed his sunglasses.
She gasped.
He knew what she saw. Golden eyes. Hints of amber rolling across his pupils.
Shifter eyes.
“I’ll be just on the other side of the door,” he reminded her. “When you’re ready to talk… when you’re ready to listen… to remember, you let me know. I’m not going anywhere, either.”
The big bastard made his escape so fast, Evangeline barely had enough time to process what she was seeing before he was gone. She had no doubt that he made good on his promise to lock her in the room. She had to check anyway.
A quick tug assured her that she was still trapped.
Golden eyes. She didn’t think a pair of peepers like that actually existed in this world.
Not the real world, at least. In her dreams, the man who haunted her—who loved her—had a pair of eyes like that. But he was a dream, a fantasy. The big shifter who kidnapped her was a monster, and not only because he was a paranormal.
Para or human, nothing gave him the right to do what he did.
He… he stole her. At least, now that she knew he was a Para, it made the tiniest bit more sense. Everyone heard stories about a friend of a friend who got involved with the paranormal races. Picking a woman off of the street—or out of a bustling coffee shop— just because they had the urge to seemed like something a shifter would do.
In the back of her mind, Evangeline felt a niggling panic about what that could mean. It was easy to drown it out. The panic that she was trapped with a dangerous man whose inner beast made him even more formidable? Yeah, she was definitely focusing on that one.
She lifted her hand, gnawed nervously on her thumbnail. It wasn’t just his size and his dark aura that she had to worry about now. A human woman was no match for a shifter, no matter what kind of animal he shifted into. Heightened senses, increased speed, crazy fast healing… those were just the perks she knew about. This guy… this Maddox… he already had the upper hand simply because of what he was. Throw in the terrifying fact that he knew so much about her and had managed to separate her from anyone who could have helped her…
It was going to be up to Evangeline to help herself.
She couldn’t stay. That was out of the question. He promised her answers, but he could shove those answers up his furry ass for all she cared. He might think he had a good reason to steal her away from her home. Fine. She could learn all about it when he went on trial.
First, she had to get the hell out of there.
Evangeline searched the room again. Every inch of it. There were two doors: the locked exit and an empty closet. Three windows. Wary
of how he could probably hear every step she made, she tiptoed over to the two small windows on the far side of the room.
Shit. Locked.
Okay. Fine. There was still one more.
She gripped the edge lightly, her heart in her throat. It eased up gently with barely a whisper.
Yes!
Once she’d opened the window, Evangeline poked her head out. A warm breeze caressed her face, her hair flying all around her. It carried the scent of a forest with it, a mix of dirt and moisture and wood. A rich cotton candy sky peeked through the rare gaps between branches and towering trees. It was sunset.
Evangeline blinked. What time was it? It had been barely afternoon when she set out of Mugs for her apartment. So she’d lost hours while she slept, if not longer than that.
Great.
She immediately reached for her pocket, searching for her phone. It surprised her that she hadn’t thought to look for it before; probably because, deep down, she knew her captor wouldn’t have been so stupid to leave her a way to call for help. Grabbing it if only to check the time? It was a habit.
