Page 37 of Deception

Lips skimming mine, Tomasz blows out a long breath, and I’m hit with the strangest sense of déjà vu. As though I’ve already been here, just like this. The longer I stare up at his eyes with my heart gonging in my chest, the midnight blue fades to ice. I’ve been in this exact position before.

The memory hits me with the force of a runaway train, and as I try to pull back, Tomasz holds me in place, studying the enlightenment on my face with a rancorous twist of his lips. I’ve been here before. Same stance, different place, other man.

This was my goodbye.

This was the moment that I realised I might never see Freddie again. Something inside me knew that our moment after the polo match was it.

“Were you watching me then?”

“Red…” he croons low, his hands going to my shoulders. “There is nothing about you that I don’t know.”

Whether it’s the truth or a lie, I’m not sure. All I know is that the longer he holds me like this, the more I suffocate in his grasp.

“You’re mine, do you understand?” When I don’t reply, he shakes me onto my tiptoes with a force he’s never used before. As though it’s coming from somewhere darker and more dangerous than what I’ve seen so far. It’s the first true glimpse of the devil I was told about. “Do. You. Understand?”

“Yes.” The reply spills before I can stop it, and as his lips quirk into a lopsided smirk, he slowly sets me back on my feet.

There’s an air of victory about him that makes my hackles rise as he coos gruffly, “Good.”

Everything in me wants to take back my “yes” and rip it to shreds. I want to bury it so deep that it’ll rot somewhere in the marrow of my bones, never to be heard again. But we’re so close. His heat is infectious, coursing through me without mercy, scorching my flesh and blood and spirit. No one has ever made me feel this conflicted, made me question myself the way he does. I’ve never hated anything the way I hate him.

Trying to find a reason for it is pointless too, because it’s all I’ve asked myself in the time we’ve been apart. There must be more to this pull between us.

Right?More than the hum in my chest and the thrill that ignites my soul. With him, I see things differently. Fuck, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have appreciated the incredible melange of pink and lilac that painted the sky on the boat ride to him. He took my freedom, but he’s given me a longing for more that I’ve never had. That goes beyond wanting to be loved by someone else. Tomasz has made me appreciate my strength.

Drifting my gaze down the chiselled line of his jaw to his chest, I try to clear my head.

“Look at me.” My stare instantly snaps to him. “You’re mine, and if you betray me, Red…” he rumbles. The grit in his voice is as rough as the hands squeezing around my biceps.

Licking his lip, he pulls it into his mouth with a sneer before he continues. “I will kill you.”

The lurch of my heartbeat brings me nearer to him—so close that I could twist myself free of his hold and pop his elbows out of place, take the gun he’s got slipped into the top of his trousers and put bullets in a couple of his men before they could stop me.

Still, I take a deep breath, focusing on the force of his hold, the burn that stabs through me at the scent of his spicy cologne. Holding Tomasz’s gaze, I smile, licking my lips the way he licked his.

“Not if I kill you first.”

A deep, guttural laugh escapes him. All the alarms going off in my head at our proximity do nothing to dissipate the heat blooming deep in my belly, pulling me the rest of the way until our bodies are flush again while my heart pounds to the rhythm of his pulsing dick against the flat of my belly.

“Haven’t we been here before?” Tomasz whispers, the words trailing to my ear before he bites down on the lobe hard enough that I pull back.

With a dark grin, he looks down on me, blue eyes sharp, mean, filled with hate-spiked lust. He makes no move to look away, and neither do I. His will is not stronger than mine.

“You failed, remember?”

Reaching up, I push against his hold on me before I swipe the glistening spit from his lips.

“Keep flying high,” I scoff back at him. His stare narrows on me, icy slits that make my body ache to feel his violence. “It’ll be a longer way to fall.”

His laughter fades, leaving a wide smile. In a move that surprises me, he pulls his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and puts them on me, batting my hand away when I make to take them off again.

“You’re going to want them,” he tells me as he starts down the narrow hedge-lined path leading to the middle of the simple maze.

It’s not until he steps out of the way, leaving the small clearing in open view, that I understand what he meant. My heart is beating so fast that my head spins. For a moment, salvation feels so close.

I’m going home.

Fucking stupid, shitty, bloody fucking hope. It dies as swiftly as it came when the man that escorted me to the club the night I was supposed to kill Tomasz looks at me with a sneer.

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