Page 68 of Little Blue

I was pretty, I knew. I’d had more than one boy, and then man, look my way. Women, too, if I was being honest. But next to Ilya, I was drab and faded. He was wildly attractive and richly dark.

We can’t—and don’t—compare.

Why did he take me?

“Another cup of flour, then whisk,” Polina instructs. Beside me, she’s prepping a casserole for dinner. She says we’ll all need something warm, because the day’s chill is bitter.

Outside the frosted windows, snow is coming down fast and hard in swirls of white. The sky is a deep, ominous grey, foretelling of a winter storm.

I dump another cup of flour into the bowl before doing as Polina instructed, whisking the dry ingredients.

“Now, you mash the bananas.” She hands me a fork. “Then add it to your wet ingredients and mix.”

Silently, I take the fork and begin mashing the bananas.

I’ve taken to enjoying my time in the kitchen with Polina, learning to cook and bake. It not only passes the time, but it’s fun. Before coming here?—

No, Irelynn, get it right. You didn’t come here.

You were kidnapped. Kidnapped.

By a man insane enough to belong in the loony bin.

But before being kidnapped, I hadn’t been able to afford the ingredients to really learn to cook or bake. I might have a list of problems a mile long, like the fact I’m falling for a very bad man, but lack of baking ingredients isn’t one.

I do my best to push thoughts of Ilya from my mind, and instead focus on the bananas I’m decimating with the fork.

I’ve come to really like Polina, and usually engage with her in conversation of all kinds. She’s even been trying her hand at teaching me Russian, though I’m terrible at it.

Today, however, I’m not in the mood to talk. Today, I’m deeply bothered.

I feel unsettled and itchy in my own skin. My heart beats uncomfortably in the cage of my chest and my hands tremble if I’m not careful, and I let my thoughts spiral too close to the truth for comfort.

Because the horrifying truth is that I’m really beginning to feel for Ilya.

Not just the hateful resentment I’d felt in the early days of my capture. But something warm. Something soft. Something dangerous.

God, I’m falling for him. Or maybe I’ve fallen.

How can I be falling for my captor? The man who upended my entire life, plucking me from it as though I were a pet he could buy and expect obedient devotion from.

I’m—well, I’m messed up.

There are things wrong with me. Deep, dark things. My roots are all twisted, and because of it, this is what I’ve become. So deranged and hungry for affection, any affection, that I’m willing to accept it from a man as blackly sinful as Ilya Volkov, killer of many men.

I drop the fork to the plate, dropping my chin into my chest just as something big and warm connects with my back. That something big and warm presses close, pinning my hips to the counter as hands covered in ink circle around my waist.

Ilya. The very devil who invades my thoughts as he invaded my life, and my heart.

“Mmm.” He hums low and deliciously dark behind my ear. “You always smell so edible. Now you smell like sweet bananas.” Goosebumps rise as warm lips trail down the side of my neck. “I could devour every inch of you and want more.”

Did he just lick me?

“Ilya,” I protest. Then I stiffen, because— “Polina?”

“I sent her away.” He presses his groin into the ass I try to push him away with. He’s hard, the pipe of his arousal settling into the crease of my ass cheeks as he rocks me into the counter.

My hands settle on the flour-dusted surface. “Stop.”

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