Page 48 of Pretty Dark Vows

I’m in front of the painting, facing away from the door, when the skin at the back of my neck prickles.

I whirl around, adrenaline surging through me even though I know I’m alone. I’m just fucking paranoid, but I haven’t heard a thing since I entered the room other than the sound of my own breath, so it’s—

Notfine.

I’m not just paranoid.

“Logan,” I blurt, dropping the Zippo as I instinctively scramble backward to get away from the cold fury on his face as he barrels down on me like an oncoming freight train.

I can’t. There’s nowhere for me to go. He comes at me with a single-minded intensity that’s far more terrifying than Austin McKenna and his gun-toting minions and threats. Logan’s icy rage isn’t a threat. It’s not even a promise. It’s like staring down death.

“Logan,” I repeat, holding up my hands to ward him off. “I—”

I don’t know what I’m planning to say, but he doesn’t give me the chance. He knocks my hands aside before I can react and locks one of his larger hands around my throat without a word, pinning me to the wall behind me. His grip isn’t tight enough to cut off my air supply, but his hand is so big that it feels like my throat is trapped in a vise. Adrenaline surges through me, and I’m sure he can feel the way my pulse beats frantically against his palm.

I yank on his arm, my fingers digging into the corded muscles of his forearm, but the man is made of fucking steel. His grip doesn’t loosen even a little bit as he steps even closer, looming over me like a dark shadow.

He holds me in place without flinching and leans in, his gaze locked on mine as he murmurs softly, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

He’s close enough for me to make out the eerie beauty of his pale blue eyes and feel the heat of his rage on my skin, and for a second, even through the panic, it shocks me. As if Logan shouldn’t have body heat, since everything else about him is ice.

Then he makes a noise in his throat, tightening his grip just enough to remind me that he’s the one in control of whether or not I get to breathe.

“Do you hear me, wildcat?” he demands. “You made a mistake. You touched my bed. You opened my drawers.” His eyes narrow, dark lashes partially obscuring the bright blue of his eyes. “You defiled my space.”

Through the rush of fight-or-flight instincts raging through my head, it hits me. The bedrooms. He’s not talking aboutthisroom, he’s talking about the bedrooms I snooped in earlier. One was his.

How the fuck did he figure out I was in there?

I was careful.

I put everything I touched back exactly as it was.

And yet… he knows.

Logan leans in even closer. So close that those pale, unblinking eyes of his are the only things I can see. So close that when he shifts his grip on my throat, his cool, clean scent floods my nostrils.

“Why are you here?” he demands in a low voice. “What… the fuck… do you really…want?”

He drags out every word, his gaze never wavering from mine. He looks more like a monster than a man in this moment, and my stomach dips as I’m hit by a terrifying thought.

If I answer his question the wrong way, there’s a good chance that Logan is going to kill me.

13

RILEY

He’s goingto kill me.

That thought spurs something inside me, and I renew my struggle against his hold. But he’s like a robot, a machine made for one purpose, unbreakable and unstoppable. Keeping his hand firmly wrapped around my throat, he pries my other hand away from his forearm and presses it to the wall above my head, his nostrils flaring as he keeps me pinned with the weight of his body.

I wriggle against him, helpless against the force of his rage. He still hasn’t cut off my air completely, but the pressure around my throat is a constant reminder of the power he has over me.

Every breath I take, it’s because he allows it.

My gaze locks with his as I have that thought, and for some reason I can’t even fathom, a burst of heat rushes through my veins. My chest heaves as I suck in a breath past the constriction that tightens my throat, and my skin prickles with a strange sensation that’s almost like… arousal.

No. That doesn’t make any fucking sense, Riley. This man could kill you. He’s unhinged.

---