Page 2 of Stolen Hearts

Luca gotme…as soon as I turn twenty-one.

In the last few months, Ares has been hitting back as hard as he can trying to break the deal. But Luca has been completely unmoved by any of my brother’s offers.

The clock is ticking. Loudly.

But, at least right now, that isn’t the weight I feel stealing the air from my lungs.

That honor goes tohim. My all-consuming crush. My darkest, forbidden fantasy.

Maybe it’s the looming marriage to Luca. Maybe it’s seeing all my friends and family finding love.

Maybe I just can’t take it anymore. Maybe more than a year of my heart skipping a beat and a feeling somewhere between nausea and euphoria slamming into me every single time he walks into the room has pushed me to the limit.

Maybethat’swhy I was so determined to tell him tonight.

But now, thinking about it over my fourth or possibly fifth glass of wine, after a shower and changing for bed, all the bravado I was feeling earlier today is gone.

What the fuck did I think I was going to do? Tell the lethally gorgeous, six-foot-five, built like sin, twelve-years-older-than-megodof a man that I “have a crush” on him? That I can’t stop thinking about him? That he’s the subject of every single fantasy I have? That no other guy in the world even makes me flinch, because he’s all I can fixate on?

Yeah,no.

Because that would be supremely fucking pathetic, you dorkity-dork.

It’s not the first time I’ve said “today’s the day” to myself, six inches in front of a mirror. It won’t be the last, either. Probably. It’s just that tonight felt…I don’t know. Different. More real.

Like I might notgetanother chance.

Maybe all of this is because of the last grains of sand in my hourglass before I become the property of Luca Carveli are trickling down.

I exhale, draining the last of my glass as I stab my gaze out over Central Park.

“You’re too close to the edge.”

Fuck. Me.

My heart skips a beat. And it’s not just because someone’s just scared the absolute fuck out of me while I’m sitting forty stories above Central Park South.

It’s him.

My core tightens, and a shiver ripples down my spine as my bottom lip retreats between my teeth. Slowly, I turn, and another flame of something heated flickers deep inside me as my eyes lock onto his piercing blue ones.

The air seems to grow thin as it’s sucked from my very lungs. It’s like gravity itself becomes skewed, as if his sheer power has a profound effect on the laws of physics as he steps out of the dark pathway into the little clearing by the edge of the roof.

The blonde hair. The chiseled jaw. The superhero physique beneath dark jeans, a white t-shirt, and an open leather jacket. If you showed the average person a picture of this man and told them you were attracted to him, they’d assume it was because of his god-like, all-American looks.

And, I mean, it’s notnotthat. But it’s more what I see beneath it all that really does it for me.

I don’t think he knows I see it. I don’t think he’s aware thatanyonesees it, because the mask he wears is a very, very good one.

But I do. I’ve peeked between the seams and under the edges. And what I’ve seen…

Intrigues me. Ensnares me. It’s possibly what’s turned what should merely be a harmless physical attraction into something so deep it hurts.

It’s the darkness I see under that hero facade.

That’smy downfall. That’s what’s swallowed me whole.

“Callie.”

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