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Fury flashes across his face. “Fuck, no.”

“Exactly.” I step even closer to him, my heart drumming up a storm. “Because you’re not like your father. No matter what your sister thinks… no matter what I feared after you saved me.”

His nostrils flare as he stares down at me. “Feared?” His voice is sandpaper rough, the words tinged for the first time with a hint of a Russian accent. “As in, past tense?” He grasps my arms again, his eyes a feral golden-green. “You think you’re safe with me? Because… what? You now know the full ugly truth? Because you think you understand me?”

“I’ve always been safe with you.” And deep down, I’ve always known it. That’s why I’ve been able to bury my head in the sand all these weeks, why seeing him kill and torture hasn’t made me recoil at his touch—and why being forced to marry him hasn’t changed my feelings.

Even when I feel like prey under that intense tiger gaze of his, I know he’d never hurt me.

His jaw flexes violently. “How the fuck can you be so sure? How can you trust me, much less love me, given the poison flowing through my veins?”

“Do you love me? Trust me, given the poison flowing through my veins?” My voice rises as the words spill out, filled with all the anger I haven’t had a chance to process, all the self-loathing I’ve been suppressing. It’s as if a dam has broken, and I can’t stop the bitter torrent, can’t rebuild the mental block that’s kept me sane all these weeks. “I’m a child of rape, the result of a two-faced, sociopathic scumbag assaulting my teenage mother. At least your parents wanted each other at some point—at least you were conceived in something resembling love.”

He lets go of me, his gaze turning opaque again. “It’s not the same.”

“Is it not?” I wind my fists in his shirt, not letting him turn away. “Think about it. My blood is tainted, same as yours. My father also killed my mother—not out of twisted passion but cold calculation. And he most definitely would’ve killed me too. Still might try, in fact. So how exactly are our stories different? How am I in any way better than you? If anything, we’re a perfect fit—or as you like to say, fated to be together.”

He stares down at me, his broad chest moving in an uneven rhythm, and I can see I’m getting through to him, that he’s absorbing this basic truth. A truth I didn’t fully comprehend myself until this moment.

I may not believe in fate as such, but something brought me here, to this family with all its ugliness and beauty. To this wonderful, lethal, damaged man, who’ll never flinch at doing what it takes to keep me safe and slay my demons… as long as I also slay his.

I let go of his shirt and lay my palms on each side of his face, feeling the hard strength of his bones under the warm, stubble-roughened skin. “I love you, Nikolai… I love you and I want to be with you, dark past, obsessiveness, and all. Whatever our fathers did, however fucked-up our parents’ relationships, we are not them, and we don’t have to follow in their footsteps. I’ll never rape a teenage girl—and you will never hurt me, no matter how strong your feelings for me become… no matter what trials we go through in the future.”

His chest heaves faster as I speak, his eyes darkening until they’re the color of tarnished bronze. “Chloe…” His voice is hoarse as he cups his hands over mine. “Zaychik, you have no idea how strong my feelings for you already are, how all-consuming my obsession with you.”

I dampen my lips. “I think I do.” The cameras are a good indication. We’ll need to talk about them at some point soon, but for now, I have more important things to focus on… such as the way his gaze falls to my mouth and ignites with familiar volcanic heat, the dark hunger that excites me and, on some level, scares me—but only because it evokes an equally potent response in me.

He’s not the only one whose love now borders on obsession.

He stares at my mouth for another beat, his hands clenching over mine. Then, with a sharp inhale, he crushes his lips to mine, one hand fisting in my hair while the other grips my ass cheek, yanking my lower body flush against his.

He’s already hard, the bulge of his erection pushing into me as he drags me over to his desk while devouring me with a brutal kiss, a kiss that I respond to with equal fervor. We fall onto the hard surface in a tangle of limbs and eagerly groping hands, coming together in a fury of lust and love, in the tender violence of passion.