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If she wasn’t careful, Declan Foster’s mind games were going to destroy her. He was trying to taunt her. Throw her off balance.
God help her, but she wasn’t a match for him at all. But she also wasn’t going to go down without trying to outwit him and give him a nonchalant answer.
She had started dating Eric Jacobs when they were both seventeen years old. They were the perfect match, as everyone used to say. He was going to be a doctor, and she was studying criminal justice at college.
They got along well enough. They hardly ever fought. It was also Peyton’s wish that they wait until they were married before they had sex. Eric had been okay with that. She just wasn’t dying to have sex anyway so she might as well just wait.
Eric was about an inch taller than her and had kind brown eyes and dark hair. Her parents loved him. Both their parents had already been planning their wedding since they started dating.
By the time she turned nineteen, she realized her heart wasn’t as invested as her head, and she had broken things off with him. There was always congeniality between the two of them, but not chemistry. She hadn’t known she wanted sparks and fireworks and an intense, mind-consuming relationship until… until the day her life changed when she turned nineteen.
She always thought she was happy, though, but all she had been doing was existing, waiting for that something to come back.
She had last seen Eric six years ago when she broke up with him, and she hadn’t seen him since until a month ago. They bumped into each other at a coffee shop and then sat down to catch up.
The next time he sought her out, he offered her his proposal. He wanted to marry her. Peyton had tried, as gently as possible, to turn him down. She wasn’t in love with him at all. She never was, if she were honest.
They were more good friends than they had a full-scale attraction between them, but that was what Eric had wanted. Companionship. He had told her to think about it, then gave her until New Year’s Eve to decide.
Her parents still invited him to their massive New Year’s Eve party, which she regularly missed because of work, thankfully. Except for this year.
She had been thinking a lot about his proposal. She talked herself halfway into saying yes to Eric, mostly because she could take off the pressure of being unmarried, which her mother brought up at every chance she could.
She had pushed aside their lack of chemistry and thought about it practically. Would it be so bad to have someone she knew inside and out who didn’t turn her life upside down as a spouse? Someone who didn’t unravel her like a ball of wool with the slightest touch, the briefest glance.
Her gaze skimmed over the tall man, who was handcuffed to a table but sitting quite relaxed in a chair beside it.
It was uncanny how beneath that perfect ultra-smooth exterior of his, that breathtaking rugged handsomeness, and the blatant sexiness—she knew his shirt hid eight brick-like layers of abs—laid the most infamous assassin of all time.
“I’m already engaged to be married,” she said flippantly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
It wasn’t quite a lie. Marrying Eric was her safest option, given the curve her life had just taken.
She turned around, taking her suitcase with her, and headed toward the bedroom. She desperately needed to take those few minutes to herself immediately.
It all happened so fast. And so silently.
She hadn’t taken more than five steps out of the living area before she was grabbed. A hand wrapped itself around her nape, and an arm wound itself around her waist before she was yanked against a tall, hard, muscular body.
She lost her breath. Her skin burned. Everything inside her fought against his touch, but nothing could prevent her treacherous body from melting against him… as if her body knew him somehow.
Chapter Six
He knew her.
But she didn’t know who he was.
Not yet.
He knew every sweet part of her. Every delectable inch of her. Her scent. The ultra-silky softness of her hair. Her gorgeous lips and stunning green eyes.
His cock still killed him just remembering her showering, the gorgeous swell of her body, and the sweet little birthmark on her hip that made his tongue ache to touch.
He knew the sound of her breathing when she slept.
When she cried.
The way she gasped before he kissed her. The sigh she made when she parted her lips for him, offering him her sweetness, was etched into his brain forever.
