Page 23 of Little Blue

I realize then that I don’t even know his name.

He knows things about me he shouldn’t know, but I know nothing about him. Other than the fact he clearly unalives people for—what—fun?

Is he a serial killer? Of course, he is. What other person kills people?

How is this my life?

My eyes drift over the length of him in the chair and I jerk when I see Lucy curled, like a little traitor, on his lap.

“Lucy!” I hiss, appalled when the man lifts one big, tatted hand, and strokes my cat.

A deep rumble drawls from the chair. “You do realize he’s a boy, yes?”

“Of course, I know he’s a boy,” I snap. “He’s my cat.”

“He needs a new name.”

“His name is Lucifer. I call him Lucy for short.”

There’s a pause. I imagine he’s cocking one of those arched brows. “Lucifer?”

“Yep. Lucifer.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my kidnapper. A killer—I banish the thought. “Speaking of names, what is yours?”

Another pause, then a deep. “Ilya.”

“Ilya,” I repeat, testing it on my tongue. It suits him. Dangerously lethal and darkly seductive.

My heart skips in my chest when he lifts Lucy from his lap, placing him on the floor. Then, he stalks across the darkened room, lit only by the firelight casting shadows in stone. When he pauses at the edge of the bed with the fire at his back, he looks like a dark devil draped in hellfire.

My breathing shallows, my heart quickening.

He commands, “Say it again.”

My eyes pop wide. “W-what?”

“My name.” He bends to plant one big hand into the bed, leaning into my space until winter and flame and sin threaten to devour me whole. “Say it.”

“Why am I here?”

“Irelynn,” he warns.

I don’t want to give him what he wants. I want to show him that I am not the woman he wants as his wife. I’m not the woman he wants for the rest of his life.

I lift my chin. “Why am I here?”

The hand not planted in the bed lifts. It finds my throat with deadly precision, his long, thick fingers wrapping around my very delicate, very breakable neck. He squeezes gently, a firm and yet somehow tender pulse of his fingers. A silent warning he follows with, “My name, Little Blue.”

When his thumb slides over my thundering pulse point, the pad rough and calloused, I breathe a soft, unsure, “Ilya.”

Something bursts in his eyes. Shards of ice, maybe? Fire, possibly. Something deadly and haunting before they drift closed. As though the sound of his name on my lips is a delicacy bursting with flavor on his tongue. Something to be savoured.

My eyes track the lines of his face. He’s so jaggedly beautiful. So hard and withdrawn. When his eyes are open, they’re so greedy for attention they demand every ounce there is to give. Now that they’re closed, I can really take in the other aspects of his face. A wide forehead, high cheekbones and bladelike nose above a full mouth and hard, square jaw. Ebony hair, thick and rich with a hint of unruly wave, tops his head. He wears a scruff of hair on what I suspect is a usually clean-shaven face.

He's arrestingly handsome. There is an undercurrent of power that pulses beneath his flesh, a kind of power I know for a fact women gravitate to.

He could have anyone he wanted willingly. Why resort to kidnapping me?

His eyes open, and I flinch at the shock of them. I’ve never seen eyes like his. If I believed in the paranormal, I might be afraid he was something other.

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