Page 36 of Thorns of Lust
“Why do you smell like that?” I croaked. My voice trembled. My muscles shook.
“Like what?”
Like the man I love. Like the man who was everything to me. Like the man who kept secrets from me.
Instead I shook my head and remained numb, drowning in his dark eyes. They were harsh and dark, pulling me into their depths. Yet I wasn’t scared. The scent fooled me, thinking he was someone he wasn’t. And I let it, living in that oblivion that it offered.
It was short lived.
He shifted and I instinctively took a small step back, pressing myself flat against the wall. He paused, then slid his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heel. The same hands that just mere seconds ago knocked this man out with brutal force.
He tried to appear non-threatening.Triedwas the key word here.
Nothing was non-threatening about him. There was darkness in this man. Underneath that stunning male beauty lurked something savage. Something terrifying.
My heart thundered heavily in my chest. The particles in the air charged and sizzled. My skin heated and my breaths turned shallow.
Run, Tatiana.My instinct warned. A smart person would run. Yet I forced myself to remain still, studying him. I had just seen him at the graveyard. He wasn’t exactly someone you’d forget. Running into him twice was suspicious.
He was tall. Very tall. Probably about six-foot-four, maybe even six-foot-five. He was wearing a black shirt and white pants. Extremely good quality clothes. Tailored. Expensive. This guy wassomeone. Everything about him screamed money and elegance. Self-confidence.
It was that which fascinated me more than anything else. His charisma. And the intimidation of his demeanor. This man was dangerous. I’d recognize his type amongst millions. I grew up with that type.
The question was what did he want, and why was he here? It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Heart hammering, we stood there, watching each other. Studying each other. Reluctantly I wondered what he saw - a drunk, a grieving widow, a Nikolaev.
I swallowed hard. This was bad. If it was just a street thug, I’d be able to handle it. It was better when nobody was after you than somebody. But this guy, it’d be hard to overtake him. He was too big, his eyes too sharp, and the intelligence in them daunting.
My eyes frantically searched around him but he was alone. Maybe I was wrong and he was just a passerby, a good Samaritan, who tried to assist a woman in distress. Usually men like Vasili had muscle behind them. There had to be at least one wingman but this guy had none.
My eyes flickered to his face and I knew instantly, I was fooling myself. A cloud of harshness surrounded him. The kind that spoke of things he witnessed and bad things he’d done. His face was unmoving, unblinking. Hard.
But his eyes pulled me into their dark depths, swallowing me into their savagery.
This man was exactly where he wanted to be.
“Are you okay?” he asked again. His voice brushed the side of my cheek, deep and indifferent. A strange feeling fluttered in my stomach. An even stranger sense of familiarity. Yet, my brain was too deep in the buzzed fog to identify him.
And all the while his dark eyes decrypted every inch of my soul.
“Yes.” My voice came out small. I hated to look weak so I pushed my shoulders back. “I had it handled, thank you very much.”
His brow cocked and the corners of his lips tipped up. Barely. There was no empathy in his expression. No feigned worry. He stood there, unmoving. Unblinking. As if he was waiting.
The itch beneath my skin deepened. His closeness seared, like standing too close to the fire but you refused to step away because the cold would then swallow you whole.
“You better get back to the busy street,” he instructed, the citrus and sandalwood scent filling my lungs. “I’m going to wait for the cops.”
I almost snickered.Almost.
I didn’t know who he was fooling, but it wasn’t me. His kind didn’t use cops to do the right thing. Or the wrong thing. His kind got their hands dirty just like those men, including my brothers, in the videos I watched.
Was he in one of those videos on Adrian’s laptop? It could be where I saw him before and the reason he seemed familiar.
I couldn’t shake off the feeling. I knew this man.
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