Page 44 of Take Me

But then I hear it. A twig snapping.

The fox gets up, ears pointing into the air, ready to bolt too.

There’s a swish through the air, and I jerk at a sharp sting in my right butt cheek. Time seems to slow down as I blink toward the fox, staggering a step forward as my balance wavers. Turning my head, I see a small dart lodged in my ass.

I stare at the fox as I drop to my knees, my head swimming and the forest blurring before me.

I fall forward, hitting the ground with a thud, and red fur flashes in my peripheral vision as the fox leaps away.

I’ve lost, is all I can think. They’ve caught me. I’ve squandered my only chance at escape.

Pine needles crunch gently as feet move toward me. A pair of brown boots appear, the vision distorted and hazy. Turning my head slightly, I blink to focus my gaze on the man who crouches before me, but all I see is camouflage clothes and something long. A rifle.

Fingers move over my cheek to brush my long hair from my face, and the faint scent of an earthy cologne hits my nose. The hand trails farther down in one long, firm stroke, over my back and down to my ass, where it pulls out the dart.

“Mine,” a deep voice says with fierce possession as the man who shot me wraps a hand around my neck.

“Nikolai. Is that…” I close my eyes, the world spinning too quickly before me. “Is that you?” I manage just before the world fades and I slip into a dreamland.

CHAPTER

12

The sound of the heavy door in my cell wakes me. I groan as I blink against the artificial lights and see a pair of sleek leather shoes step inside. It takes me a moment to realize they’re not the same brown ones with perforations and a round toe that Mikhail wears. These are smooth and black with a square toe. Less flashy, more elegant.

But the realization holds little meaning to me. I just want to rest my weary body and go back to sleep, so I turn my back to whoever is there and hug my teddy tight.

“Time to go home,” a smooth baritone says.

The voice doesn’t belong to Mikhail either.

It belongs to someone I’ve been dreaming about since the day they took me—the man I always think about when hugging the teddy.

But it can’t be. My mind is playing yet another trick on me, crueler than any of the previous as the hallucination takes on vivid form, more clear and real than ever before.

He sinks to his haunches behind me, and when a big, smooth hand touches my shoulder, tears slip from my eyes.

I shake my head, feeling utterly broken. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t keep hoping and imagining. It hurts too much when the illusion fades.

The hand gently pulls at me, turning me onto my back, and when I stare into a familiar face that doesn’t belong down here, I shake my head more ardently. “It’s not you,” I murmur, closing my eyes again.

He leans down, and the scent of pine and wet moss swamps me with such clarity that I break into tears.

“It is me,” the voice says softly against my ear. “I’ve been here all week, and now I’m taking you home.”

A hand comes to my cheek, caressing softly. Genuinely. Mikhail’s touch is never this genuine. Nothing down here is.

So I allow myself to look again, and this time, I know it’s not a dream. The touch, the scent, his voice. His eyes. It really is him.

I stare at him, tears brimming in my eyes, and for the first time down here, I don’t want to hide.

We watch each other for several minutes, me baring my soul and all my innermost private emotions to him as he traces the lines of my face and wipes away the tears that roll down my cheeks.

“Why?” I finally ask, needing to know why he had me kidnapped and stuck in hell for two months when I was already like putty in his hands.

Nikolai wraps his hand around my chin and strokes his thumb along my jaw. “I have very specific needs and a busy schedule. Letting you go meant risking you’d get caught in your head. And then it would have been a real hassle to fix the mess.”

“Couldn’t you just have taken me with you?”

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