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“Stop talking to me!”
I yell so loud that two people turn to me in shock as they pass by me on the street. “Sorry, Mrs. Melman,” I say, realizing belatedly that it’s my next-door neighbor. “Fuck,” I hiss. “Look at what you’ve reduced me to. I’m becoming the neighborhood crazy lady.”
“Oh, dear, what ever will the neighbors think?” he drawls with exaggerated sarcasm. He stops next to a sleek black sedan and taps the hood. “This is me.”
I stay rooted in place. “I’m not going home with you.”
“Fucking hell, Taylor. This is not that big of a deal. Get in the damn car. God knows it’s not the first time you’ve climbed in.”
I swallow back the flush that sparks in me and scowl at him. “Make me.”
Then I put my back on him once again and resume my march home.
He trails along next to me at a mile or two an hour, trawling me without giving a damn about the traffic piling up in his wake.
“You’re blocking people,” I scold when his passenger window rolls down.
“You could solve it. Get in.”
I flip him the bird and walk a little faster. Now that I’ve taken a stand, I can’t back down without looking like I’m surrendering. And if I surrender to him now, I will spend the rest of my life surrendering to Ilarion Zakharov again and again.
No. Fuck that.
Fuck him, too.
I hold my chin high and keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Once we’re out of the town center, I relax a little. Other cars are few and far between and there’s no honking adding to my already-frayed nerves.
Just Ilarion in his stupid car.
“You’re really going to follow me like this the whole way back?”
“I just want to see how long you’ll keep this up.”
“Bet.”
“Fucking hell,” he snarls again, and the vehicle comes to a not-so-abrupt stop. I hear a door slam and the next thing I know, he’s right there, in my face, in my space, working his way beneath my skin.
“I forgot how infuriating you are.” His breath is minty sweet in my nostrils. “I should have disciplined you better when you were with me.”
My eyes almost pop out of their sockets. “I’m not a dog that you can train to come to heel,” I growl, stabbing my finger into his chest. “You’re not my master!”
I go to bypass him, but he slides over and I collide with his rock-solid chest. He’s so unyielding that I’d go tumbling off the curb if he didn’t catch me by the elbow. He lets go as soon as I’m steady again, but the afterburn of his fingers on my bare skin linger.
“Maybe that needs to change. Because even now, when it’s so fucking obvious I’ve lived in your head and your heart for the last five years, you’re trying to lie and lie and lie until you’re blue in the face. Wake the hell up, Taylor.”
My whole body is tingling. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced this sensation. This curious sense of breathlessness, of weightlessness. Of terrifying elation. “Or maybe that’s just what you want to believe.”
He grabs me around the waist and shoves me backwards, coming along with me. My ass lands on the hood of his car and I find myself gazing up into those stormy eyes, feeling as though I—we—are on the edge of a precipice.
Dreading the fall.
But dying for it, too.
Maybe even literally.
“Look at me, Taylor,” he orders in a low voice that reverberates through my body. “Do I look like that dumbass you were kinda-sorta pretending to date? Do I look like the kind of man who tells himself lies and half-truths to get through the day?”
