Page 63 of Devil Mine

I shake my head no and then he’s walking faster, abandoning all pretense of casualness.

“Say something,” he repeats. “Anything.”

I’m certain the tone he uses is a rare occurrence and it pulls at something low in my stomach. A flash of an unidentifiable emotion darts through his eyes before quickly disappearing. I don’t know what it was exactly but it has an unstoppable urge bubbling up my throat and bursting past my lips in the form of a word, my voice unrecognizably soft and longing.

“Thiago,” I whisper.

It feels, somehow, like a confession.

He stops abruptly in his tracks.

By now, the train has picked up enough speed that it outpaces him and I lose him.

I’m not ready to lose him yet.

Twisting my neck, I try to look for him through other side windows but there’s no clear view.

Something like anxiety twists in my gut and I find myself making my way down the wagon, pushing past passengers with polite “excuse me”s and ruder shoulder shoves when they don’t immediately move, until I get to the end of the carriage and can look at him through the back window.

He’s standing on the edge of the platform, rapidly receding into the distance. But he’s still staring unflinchingly at me and his expression?

His expression is grippingly territorial, downright animalistic even.

It sends a fresh shiver coursing down my spine.

I blow him a kiss and turn away, thankful to have narrowly escaped.

???

Chapter Twenty-THREE

Tess

“You’re a hard man to track down, Tristan.”

“Fuck me,” my brother exclaims as he jumps, startled by the sound of my voice.

When he turns, he finds me standing at the bottom of his front steps with a huge grin on my face. It’s been too long since I saw him, almost half a year, and I’ve missed him.

I can tell by the expression on his own features that he feels the same.

“Holy shit,” he exclaims, bouncing down the steps and swallowing me up in a bear hug. I can’t help but laugh when his familiar arms come around me, the relief I feel instantaneous. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

The answer to his first question is far more complicated than the answer to his second. The truth is, I’d been so turned around by my encounter with Thiago that I ended up taking the train all the way to the end of the line. I got off, disoriented, and took a taxi to the Gare de Lyon where I got on a TGV to Geneva.

It doesn’t matter that our father forbids contact between us, I need my brother. Outside of Dagny, he’s the only person who can bring me comfort, and I sorely need it. I’m tired of running, of constantly looking over my shoulder, and of being alone. I know that Tristan will make me laugh, in the way only your little brother can, and that’s exactly what I need.

There’s no danger of Thiago catching up to me. I left him in Paris, probably raging at my narrow escape, and I ditched my identity as Caroline Mason. It took me too long to realize that’s how he must have been tracking me. So now I’m Sabrina Baker, at least for the foreseeable future, and Sabrina can keep running tomorrow.Tonight, Tess is going to enjoy dinner and some banter with her brother.

“I’m happy to see you too,” I tell him honestly, still laughing at the shocked expression on his face.

“Seriously, what are you doing here? Why did you risk it? Where does the tyrant think you are? How’s mum?”

My stomach knots painfully at his last question. I have a lot of things to catch him up on.

“Let’s go to dinner and we can talk. I’ll answer your questions then, okay?”

???

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