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Maybe because I really have lost my damn mind.

Jin holds me tight against him, his fury palpable. He’s pinned me against the brick wall of a dark alley, his fingers digging into my hips, his blade pressing into my skin.

Just firmly enough that I feel the pressure of its sharp point. My pulse flutters against it, quickening by the second.

His lips brush my ear so intimately even as he issues his threat. His words drip with dark and carnal intention.

“What have I told you?” he hisses, biting my ear hard enough that I wince. His teeth gnaw against the tender flesh in an almostanimalistic way, like he’s truly about to devour me. “You will never outrun the mark. You belong to me now.”

I can only choke out his name.

My mind’s gone blank. My body refuses to cooperate. His name leaves my lips as a strangled, hoarse sound.

All I can do is squirm in his hold, a rabbit trapped in a snare.

And now the ferocious, carnivorous tiger is about to swallow me whole.

Jin’s lips travel from the shell of my ear along the curve of my jaw. I try to turn my head slightly, but he grips me by the chin and wrenches it straight. Nipping at my jaw, his warm breath fans out across my skin as he speaks.

“Tell me what you think you were doing,” he demands. “Tell me why.”

I’m not even sure I can tell him. As he pushes me against the jagged brick and the cool blade grazes my skin, I can’t even come up with an answer.

Just that I had decided on day one when I asked for supplies that I would make an escape attempt. I had written out the list of things, subtly including hairpins with the laundry list of items, hoping he wouldn’t grow suspicious.

It had worked—Jin grabbed me every item on the list. No questions asked.

It took me hours to pick the lock around my ankle. Mostly because it’s an awkward position to work from, even as I sat on the floor with my legs curled toward my chest. But also because I’m definitely no locks expert.

I was working off a hope and a prayer that movies and TV hadn’t told me wrong—a hairpin reallycouldpick a lock.

By the time it clicked open, it was dark out. I was at a crossroads.

Chicken out and stay putorgo for it and make my escape. I think a part of me sensed from the start that Jin would come and he’d punish me.

You wanted it. You wanted his attention. For him to be driven to this kind of state because of you.

“I… I don’t know,” I finally answer him.

“Don’t lie,” he hisses, crushing my hip under his grip. “Don’t lie about what you’re doing.”

“It’s the truth!” I blurt out. “I just… it’s been difficult cooped up in your apartment and you’re gone for hours! I asked for the bobby pins so that I could pick the lock and then… then…”

“Thenwhat?!” he snaps.

I flinch, my breaths coming out as short gasps. “I told you I don’t know! I knew… I knew that you’d…”

He shoves me forward against the wall until the jagged brick bites into me and he’s practically on top of me. I can feel the hard groove of his body pinned to mine. He feels like a wall of muscle, somehow firmer and harder than the brick itself.

But that’s not the only thing I can feel—his cock presses between my ass cheeks, thick and heavy even inside his pants.

Hot desire floods me.

I clench my eyes shut and nibble on my bottom lip, trying to shut it out. I can’t possibly be turned on right now, not as Jin grips me up in a dark alley and holds a knife to my throat.

I’m damn sure not the only one though.

Jin sounds pleased when I trail off. “You knew that what, Monroe?” he asks quietly, calmly. The intense fury is gone, at least for now. “You knew that I would come, is that so? You knew that I would hunt you?”