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He stills, his hand halfway to his own towel. Then, slowly and deliberately, he pulls it off the rack and dries himself, his eyes trained on me the whole time, his face now darker than a moonless night.

I swallow hard as the tense silence grows. “I should go to bed. We can talk more in the morning.”

He moves like the big feline he reminds me of. A blur of explosive motion, and he’s between me and the bathroom door, chiseled muscles flexing as he stares down at me, golden eyes in slits.

“No, zaychik,” he says softly. “We should go to bed. And tomorrow, you will marry me. No matter how you feel.”

26

Chloe

I wake up bleary-eyed, my head pounding and my body aching all over. Suppressing a groan, I attempt to roll over onto my side, only to find that I’m pinned in place by a heavy arm slung over my torso.

Adrenaline floods my veins, clearing away the fog of sleep, and I realize where I am.

In bed with Nikolai.

My breath catches, and I carefully turn my head to look at him. I’ve only seen him asleep once before, the one other time we spent the night together, and I’m again struck by how beautiful and dangerously animalistic he looks in repose, with jet-black lashes fanning over his sharp cheekbones and dark stubble shadowing the hard lines of his jaw. Sleep doesn’t soften his starkly molded features; instead, it lends them a savage kind of sensuality, a darkly primitive appeal.

Even now, there’s something predatory, something wicked in the way his sensuous lips are curved, the way they’re slightly parted.

Realizing I’m wasting a precious opportunity by staring at him like a star-struck groupie, I carefully wriggle out from under his arm and creep naked to the door, my heart pounding against my ribcage.

I need to escape, if only to my own room.

I need to put some distance between us.

Last night, at least the portion after the shower, is a blur in my mind, a jumble of darkly sexual sensations and wild emotions. I think I was so stunned by his declaration that I went into a kind of shock, and by the time I recovered, I was already in his bed, with my wrists pinned above my head and him driving into my sore yet perversely eager body.

I don’t remember saying no, but I must have. I don’t want to believe that I let him fuck me after what he said… or that I came several more times as he took me with unbridled ferocity over and over again.

At least he’d used a condom those other times; I’d be hyperventilating now if it had been bareback.

Reaching the door, I cast a glance behind my shoulder. Thank God he’s still asleep. I don’t know how I’m going to face him—or what I’m going to do about his marriage threat. And it is a threat. I have no idea how he can force me to say yes against my will, but I know it’s within his capabilities. That darkness I’ve always sensed in him is now directed at me.

As he told me yesterday, he excels at doing whatever it takes to get his way.

Holding my breath, I reach for the door handle and turn it, wincing internally at the faint click it makes. To my relief, he continues sleeping, so I stick my head out in the hallway, making sure it’s clear, and then I sprint down to my room, ignoring the twinge of pain in my barely healed ankle.

I get inside without incident and beeline for my bathroom, where I jump in the shower and scrub myself with soap in an attempt to wash away the memory of his rough touch. It’s futile—marks of his possession are all over my body, my skin scraped in a dozen places by his stubble, my nipples aching where he’d sucked on them and grazed them with his teeth. The worst, though, is the soreness deep inside me, a reminder of his insatiable hunger for me—and my complete inability to resist him, even in light of the madness he intends.

I turn off the water and step out of the stall, taking deep breaths to control my growing panic. Maybe he didn’t mean it. He could’ve just been upset that I turned down his proposal, and when he wakes up this morning, he’ll realize how premature it was.

He hired me just over three weeks ago, and we’ve spent a grand total of two nights together. How can he be so sure that he wants me for a lifetime, that I’m indeed the one?

Yet no matter what I tell myself, my panic refuses to abate. Despite what I said last night, I know Nikolai. Deep down, I know him—and I know he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He decided we were fated when I’d been here barely a week, and nothing that’s happened since has convinced him otherwise.