Page 77 of Dance of Defiance

“Oh, and Val. Obviously.”

My jaw tightens.

“Ooo, I forgot something inside!” She turns, shoving her clutch and her phone into my hands. “Can you hold these for a sec? Thanks!”

Then she's off in a pink tornado to get whatever she forgot.

I stare at her phone for all of two seconds before I open it, click on Val’s name, and save his number—which he's never given me—in my contacts.

A minute later, Evie comes back out. “Ready to go?”

“Yup.”

14

VAL

I turnto face him in the men's room, my ears thudding.

Fuck, he looks like a lost lamb. A huge, built-like-a-brick-house, swarthy, sexy as fucklamb.

The juxtaposition of it all hits me again: the six-and-a-half-foot tall, thickly muscled, ultra-masculine Bratva heir who tussles in underground fight clubs and looks like he commits murder before breakfast…

…Contrasted against that hungry, subby look in his eyes when he gazes at me like he desperately wants me—needs me—to take away the last of his control.

To tell him exactly what to do.

To tell him what a good boy he is.

But Icannotdo the whiplashing back and forth any longer: one minute, he’s putty in my hand, whimpering and moaning and coming all over himself. The next, that self-hating, closeted asshole part of him comes out swinging, and we go right back to square fucking one.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Roman?”

His throat works up and down, his mouth tight as he eyes me.

“I—I don’t know.”

I’msoclose to telling him to fuck off and figure it out on his own.

Not because Iwanthim to get away from me. I don’t, not at all. But I can’t be his fucking guide through this.

It’s the reason I’m alone. The reason I enjoy casual, fun, and temporary. I’m incapable of anything more than that, whether it’s because of my childhood in the brutal foster care system, or the monsters in the dark, or my addict, derelict parents, or even that maybe something got knocked loose in my head the day I lost my memories.

But when he looks at me with such fuckingneedin his eyes, like he’s truly lost in the woods, and I might be his only guide through the trees, and when he sucks his lip between his teeth and bites down just so?

I’m fucking captive.

Disarmed.Wrecked.

Part of me hopes that he spooks, turns, andruns the fuck awaywhen I start to move toward him. I want to break his spell, to slap some common sense into him and maybe a decision that his best option is to be what they—and he—want him to be.

The tough, macho bratva heir.

One that isn’t confused.

Who’s every inch what he’s “supposed” to be: in control, engaged to a woman, andstraight, without any doubts or confusion on the subject.

But the motherfucker doesn’t bolt. He just fucking stands there, staring at me, eyes wide, teeth worrying his full lower lip in a way that makes my pulse roar.