Page 53 of Stolen Temptation

My body throbs with the strain of sprinting. The paranoia that comes with being pursued eats away at my focus and resolve.

Running on the balls of my feet, I take the next corner up ahead, curving around to the left?—

Sudden impact knocks the breath right out of me.

A body slams into mine,déjà vudousing me like a summer storm.

We crash to the ground. Rory spins us midair to bear the brunt of the landing. Despite his maneuver, my skullthunksagainst the cobblestone. Pain swims through my head.

Damn, that hurt.

In the next breath, Rory reverses our positions and pins me to the ground with his big body.

By the time my eyes flick open, the splotches at the corner of my vision and the pain have begun to dissipate. Rory’s stupidly handsome face hovers above mine. His shoulders rise and fall as he catches his breath.

Once the pain subsides, I become more aware of our intimate position. Rory’s hot like a furnace, and my skin soaks up his heat like a sponge. His hard thighs cage mine. His face and chest hover inches away.

And his pelvis…

Dear lord. My mouth goes dry when I notice his pelvis pressing into mine. Something thick and hard nestles between my thighs, and a rush of desire floods me.

He’s aroused.

It’s unexpected. Potent. Too much.

Rory on top of me, breathing heavily the way he did after we kissed…with his body trapping mine…hard…

I begin to throb in response. Sex should be the last thing on my mind, but I can’t seem to control my reaction.

Lust, embarrassment, and surprise all collide inside me. I need to remove myself from this situation before I completely lose my mind.

I set my jaw and jerk my knee up with all my might.

Rory’s expression folds in on itself, and he hunches toward his aching nutsack as I heave with all I have to get him off me. He falls to my right, grunting and grousing.

I spring to my feet and attempt another break for it.

Moisture wicks my eyes, rendering my vision blurry and distorted.

Before Rory kidnapped me, before Leo tried to sell me to the highest bidder, I was trapped on the De Luca estate, forced to paint for ten hours a day. When Enzo was still alive, I wasallowed to visit the city every once in a blue moon, but when Leo took power, he forbade me from stepping foot outside the compound without his permission.

To keep from going stir crazy, I snuck down to the estate’s gym and started running. At first I could only go for a few minutes at a time, but the more pent-up aggression I acknowledged, the more fear, pain, and stress Leo heaped upon me, the more I ran and the faster I got.

Before the auction, I’d been running ten miles a day for the past two weeks. That was my ‘hamster on a wheel’ time.

A time I will never return to.

I refuse. I can’t.I won’t.

The misery of my existence crashes down on me as I burst from a hedge corridor into the center of the labyrinth. The water streaming from the fountain glistens in the dusky light. The sky opens above me, twilight cascading overhead.

Tears fall from my eyes as I rotate in a circle. At least ten different pathways converge on this space. Which of them should I take?

Which one will lead me to freedom?

Frustrated exhaustion claws at me.Why is this my life?

Hopelessness sets in, even as my flight reflex continues to set off sirens in my head. I take another step back from Rory as he fiddles with something on his watch.