Page 2 of Hearts Of Darkness

“What’s your name?” he murmurs, loosening his grip to let me speak.

“Eve,” I gasp out.

“Eve who?”

“Eve Miller!”

“Eve Miller.” He repeats it slowly, but the way he says it feels like a hard caress, like some kind of twisted foreplay. “Tell me, Miss Miller, are you going to be a good girl? Are you going to behave?” He’s talking directly into my ear, and I can feel his hot breath on my skin. It’s scrambling my senses, tormenting me further.

Giving me no time to answer, he locks his arm across my shoulders, imprisoning me against his body and assaulting me with his warmth and scent. It’s musky, potent…Male.There’s no trace of panic underneath it all, no nervous sweat or unnatural body heat. This man is in total control of this situation. It makes my next words tumble out of my mouth like some crazy, half-assed defense mechanism:

“Please let me go, I have plans!”

I have plans?

It’s a stupid thing to say given the circumstances, but I’m meant to be at Anna’s house. It’s my birthday celebration dinner tonight.Twenty-five and barely alive.Will I live to see twenty-six? Not if this man has anything to do with it.

“I had plans too, Eve.Bigplans. It looks like we’ll both be rearranging tonight.”

Who is this man?

A fugitive? A human trafficker? A drug dealer?

My last thought makes my blood freeze. Is he someone I’ve name-checked in one of my articles for The Miami Reporter? I’ve gotten threats before but only via my work’s mailroom. Maybe it’s someone trying to get to my dad through me.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“Not unless you do something stupid.”

“I won’t! I promise!”

Huh?

Why am I not fighting back? In my line of work, I’ve interviewed dealers, users, snitches—every type of shitty immoral character you can think of, but this man is something else.

He chuckles darkly. “That’s good to hear. The repercussions would be…a pity.”

He forces me toward the store’s exit, manipulating my slender body with ease. I catch a glimpse of our twin reflections in the glass door as we approach. My face is pinched and scared, hauntingly pale beneath my light tan, and my long, dark hair is a mussed-up mess.

Nothing prepares me for my first glimpse ofhim.Tall and handsome, well-built and olive-skinned—with dangerously defined features, a firm square jaw adorned with a shadow of stubble, and tousled black hair that’s been slicked back off his face.

He lowers his gun to open the door and guides me out onto the sidewalk. The street is deserted apart from the odd car rolling past. He keeps his weapon pressed tight against the small of my back anyway.

So close.

Too close.

Anyone looking twice might think we were lovers.

I shiver, despite the red-hot heat radiating from his body. My brain can’t seem to rationalize any of this. It’s like I’m on the outside looking in, feeling all the detached emotions of an innocent bystander instead of the victim.

An SUV appears at the far end of the street and accelerates in our direction. I flinch as it screeches to a halt next to us, and two large men jump out. They’re dressed in black army fatigues. Foreign looking. Intimidating. One has an ugly scar that runs the entire length of his face, shattering the skin around his eye socket into dozens of spidery-red fragments.

“Someone talked,” the scary-looking guy announces. “There’s a leak higher up than we thought.”

My assailant curses under his breath, something hostile and unpleasant in a foreign language, as a cacophony of lights and sirens erupt somewhere in the distance. I find myself being spun around, and then I’m face to face with him for the first time tonight. My hand flies to my mouth to stifle my screams. A pair of the darkest, cruelest eyes are blazing into mine.

“Who’s the girl?”

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