Page 36 of Captive Vows
He moved his hand over my collarbone, resting it more over my heart—and my breasts—than my neck. “Your heart is racing.”
I wasn’t surprised. Desire quickly built up in me and made me delirious for him. A spark of innate need took hold of me.
“Are you excited?” He tightened his arms around me.
“Um.” I furrowed my brow. “Until you showed up, I was sort of convinced you wanted to order me killed for arguing with you at breakfast.”
He grunted a single laugh. “Over that trivial nonsense?” His fingers spread out over my skin. In a tank top like this, I could easily envision him dipping his hand beneath the fabric and really copping a feel.
Don’t delude yourself.
Not him.
Not like this.
I couldn’t deny this attraction taking root, but I wasn’t blind. I wasn’t that naïve. Luka was a rough, violent, and hard man.
Like Oliver had warned me almost a month ago at the studio, I had to be careful if I tried to play games with older men in charge, the ones who called the shots. I wasn’t trying to play any games, but this stupid part of my mind that was directed by lust and hormones had me wishing Luka would play with me. At all. In any possible way he wanted.
And he surely couldn’t want someone like me.
Not when he went to such lengths to remind me that I was his thing. His possession to own.
Nothing more.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he stated plainly, almost bored.
“Then wh?—”
“Shh. What do you think of this instead of an assumption that you’ll have a death sentence?” He pushed open one of a pair of double doors. The movement of using his foot to nudge it open pressed his leg alongside mine. Every torturous second of that friction teased me, but I didn’t have long to dwell on the naughty thrill of imagining my bare leg rubbing against his.
Because we were in a studio. A dance studio, to be exact. He’d dragged me out of my guest room to show me a brand-new dance studio. I smelled the new wood. Even the hint of stainclung to the air. The mirrors stretched across the entire wall to the east. On the other side of the spacious room, floor-to-ceiling windows showed the nightscape of the city. Other odds and ends that made this an area to dance in were installed or set aside. But it was the quietly playing music from one of my favorite ballets that really got to me.
I was stunned.
Speechless and in awe, I roved my gaze around the room and tried to convince myself that this wasn’t a dream. That I wasn’t hallucinating.
This was a dance studio. But was it all for me?
“I believe that’s twenty-eight now,” he whispered in my ear.
I blinked, so surprised and in a trance at the beautiful studio space that I hadn’t realized he still held me. Leaning my back against him as he kept his arms around me, he secured me in a possessive hug.
“What?” I furrowed my brow.
“Twenty-eight on your tally marks of the silent treatment. You didn’t answer me.”
“I—” I turned, facing him and not entirely eager to push him away. Being within the embrace of his arms felt… good. “I don’t know how to answer you.”
“Say something.”
“I…” I blinked again, putting my hands on his chest to steady myself as I looked around the room again. “What is this?”
“A dance studio.”
“You just happened to have one in your home all this time and are only now telling me?”
“I had it built for you.”
