Page 105 of If I Were Yours

“I’m leaving now.” He steps onto the bearskin and cups my face between his hands.

“No, no, no. You can’t,” I beg, shaking my head as tears pebble from my eyes.

“I have to,” he says with grave earnestness.

I start hyperventilating as the room shrinks.

“Please don’t.” I blink my watery eyes to focus on the man who has meant the world to me during the last year and a half. The man I love. The man I’m now about to lose. The consequence of my decision creeps around my lungs, and I blurt between shallow breaths—words I was sure I wouldn’t say. “Please take me with you.”

My vision clears as hope blooms within me. Markus is studying my face closely, his eyes roaming over my features with question and concern as he seems to doubt his own decision to give me away.

“Do you really mean that?”

I’m about to nod when a large hand presses to my shoulder blade. Warm and gentle. Heat spreads into my frazzled nerves, rippling through my skin. My eyes fall shut, and the weight of it all fades.

That hand means everything.

When I open my eyes again, Markus’s expression is firm with resolve, his posture a bit taller, his eyes more focused. “You belong here,” he says. “Grigory will take care of you.”

I open my mouth to protest, but no words come out.

He leans in to press a soft kiss to my lips, and panic rises anew as the hand on my back disappears and our goodbye snuffs out the air in the room.

“Please,” I manage when Markus breaks the kiss.

But there’s no help to be found.

A blindfold descends over my eyes, and Markus’s hands disappear. My world becomes shrouded in blackness as Grigory ties the fabric at the back of my neck, and Markus’s footsteps resound with the finality of the situation.

A door opens and closes. One more, this time farther away. Then a car engine starts, and the humming disappears as the car drives away, leaving the place in dead silence.

Grigory has stepped away, and I can’t sense him. All I have is black loneliness.

I want to cry, beg, maybe scream, but all I can do is stand there, frozen in time.

— CHAPTER 40 —

CLARA

I don’t know how long I stand there, shrouded in darkness, spread out and naked. Grigory has disappeared from my awareness. I have no idea where he is. I can’t feel him. The only sound is the crackling fireplace and my staggered breaths.

At some point, I start to think he’s left, and loneliness creeps up on me. I move in the restraints, too uneasy to stand still. But the feeling of being stuck only makes it worse, and I whimper as fear twists my already unsettled gut.

Desperation rises within me, tightening my muscles, and I’m about to call out for him when I finally hear a deep breath behind me. I startle at the sound, my system so wrought that anything will scare me at this point.

I clench my fists around the ropes and heave in air as disbelief has me teetering on the verge of an outburst. He’s just been standing there all this time, watching as I’ve grown more and more scared. I open my mouth, wanting to scream or curse, but Grigory speaks before I crash into crazy.

“Are you ready to prove that you want to be mine?” His voice is a rumbling force through the stillness.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t feel ready for anything. I just want this night to end. But even through the anger and fear, I feel the tug of Grigory’s power working its way through my defenses and stirring my submissive desires. So I say the only thing that makes sense. “Yes.”

A low growl fills the air behind me with feral danger. Grigory’s shoes click against the wooden floor as he steps back. And then the air hisses as something slashes through it.

Crack!

I let out a strangled scream, cowering in the ropes. He hasn’t even struck me yet, and I’m already quivering, shaking my head rapidly. I can’t do this. I just can’t.

A deep sigh breaks through the stillness behind me as Grigory steps close to me. I can almost feel the heat from his body at my back. Almost.

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