Page 126 of My Dark Horse Prince

“Nothing you do is stupid,” he says. “But I’ll buy out the store as long as he’s not with us.”

I arch one eyebrow. “Be honest. If he came, you’d still buy out the store just to bug him.”

“I would, yeah.” His smile is almost too much. He looks like the guy who played Superman in the last movie. With the dimples and the blue eyes. “It’s nice, this renewable energy thing. I’ve become a very rich man.”

My heart is racing, and I need it to stop. Get ahold of yourself, Mirdza. I swallow. “I didn’t really thank Danils very well for the help he provided with my mom’s divorce,” I say.

“That’s why I paid for his dinner,” Grigoriy says. “And I’m happy to thank him for you, right now.” He turns us toward Danils’s fancy German sedan.

I grab his elbow, and he freezes. When he turns back around, his eyes aren’t dancing, and they aren’t sparkling either.

They’re smoldering.

Danger, Mirdza. So much freaking danger. My mouth goes dry. My eyelids flutter stupidly. And suddenly, I can’t remember my own name. It starts with an M, I think. Or maybe an S.

“What?” He stalks closer, and I scrabble backward.

There must be somewhere safe. Somewhere I was headed before. My body finally backs up against something cool and smooth. When I turn just enough to see that it’s blue, I realize that it’s my new Ford Bronco. My beautiful new car.

The one this man bought for me.

“Mirdza.” His voice does something to me, something bad, something good, something I don’t understand. I’m hot. I’m cold. I’m scared. I’m giddy. I’m up and down and all around.

A feeling of complete loss of control wars with total joy.

I lick my lips.

That’s a mistake. His eyes dart downward and lock on, like a heat-seeking missile. “You pulled me back. You’re staring at me. You laughed all night long.” He lifts one hand and reaches out to touch my face, but his hand stops an inch before it reaches my skin.

Why did he stop? I need him to stroke me, to press his big, strong, powerful hand against my body. Now that he no longer needs to touch me. . .does he not want to anymore?

I inhale sharply, and the corner of his mouth turns upward. His head tilts. His teeth bite down onto his lower lip, and I’m transfixed. Like a deer staring unblinking into the headlights of the car that’s about to mow it down, I can’t look away.

“Mirdza.” His voice, low and possessive, is like the caress he’s withholding. “Tell me to go away. Tell me to leave you alone.”

I exhale involuntarily. “No.”

His hands slam down against the car’s frame on either side of my face, bracketing me against the new car he gave me. “Tell me to go right now, or you won’t be able to drag me away.”

This time, my voice is breathy, but I shape the words. “I don’t want you to go.”

His smile’s predatory, like a tiger who has trapped a gazelle. Like a falcon closing in on a cowering mouse.

But only if the mouse welcomed the dive.

I reach up then, before he can react, and pull his head down toward mine. When our lips touch, it’s sunshine in the middle of a thunderstorm. It’s a warm breeze on a wintry day. It’s a healing touch when I’m trying to embrace death. It’s black and white together. It’s up and down at once.

That’s what Grigoriy has always been to me.

Something that shouldn’t exist. Something that changes my miserable existence into something safe and warm and whole. The tiger who loves the wounded gazelle. The falcon who picks up the mouse and flies her into the sky. I don’t understand the why, but I know that something about him has transformed me fundamentally since the very beginning into more than I’m capable of being. He has healed me in a way I couldn’t be healed.

On top of all of that, my body is yearning in a way it never has. I want to wrap my legs around him and hop up on the hood of this new car, heedless of who might be watching. I want to drag my nails across his broad, muscled back. And I want to press my body against his, curling into him, claiming him, disappearing in him from his head down to his enormous, clomping, boot-clad feet.

I think I might love Grigoriy Khilkov.

“So I guess this means you’re back together?” Danils swears again from somewhere behind me.

By the time his words register and I pull away from Grigoriy, he’s already turned around, headed for his car again.

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