Page 102 of Savage Hearts

“I’m not telling you anything one way or another except this: you’ll stay here with me as long as I want you to.”

He stands abruptly, looking down at me with hot, half-lidded eyes. “As for the question of ownership, you might want to ask yourself why you still haven’t begged me to take you home.”

He turns on his heel and leaves the room.

I shout after him, “I’ve been kidnapped! It’s implied that I want to go home!”

That low, satisfied chuckle I hear from the other room tells me he doesn’t believe me, either.

I don’t speak to him for two days. I can’t. I’m too angry.

I’m not sure which one of us I’m more angry with, however, him or me.

He’s right: I should have begged him to take me home by now. I should’ve done it the first time I opened my eyes. But I haven’t, and that means something.

Something disturbing I haven’t quite figured out.

Or maybe I don’t want to figure it out. The implications aren’t good.

Or maybe I don’t want to know what he’d do if I asked him to take me home.

Maybe he would, and I don’t want him to.

And maybe my brain just needs a vacation from all the maybes, because not a single thing makes sense anymore. I hardly know which way is up.

On the third day, he takes me outside for the first time. Bundled in a heavy wool blanket and a sweater and sweatpants he brought me, my feet snug in a pair of nubby cotton socks, I stand blinking on the porch in the bright light, leaning a hip against the wood railing and holding a hand up to shield my eyes from the sun. My breath steams out in front of my face in billowing white clouds.

It’s icy cold. The air is still. The sky is a clear, brilliant blue. All around the cabin, for as far as the eye can see, a pristine alpine meadow glitters under a dusting of snow. The tall fir trees surrounding the meadow are dusted, too, their powdered-sugar branches arching gracefully.

Other than the occasional chirp of a bird, it’s utterly silent.

I feel like we’re the only people in the world. In a make-believe, fairy-tale world of our own design, where no one exists but the two of us.

Standing beside me, looking out at the endless view, Mal says quietly, “Mikhail and I grew up here. The Antonovs have lived in this house for four generations.” He pauses. “Well, not this house. The original cabin my great-grandfather built burned down. Hit by lightning. Mik and I rebuilt it from the ground up.”

I look at his profile, so handsome and hard.

He belongs here, in this silent wilderness. Belongs the same as the wolves, the elk, and his friend, the arrogant crow. He’s as untamed asall the wild creatures who inhabit this place, and he lives the same kind of life as theirs.

Savage.

“I grew up in a cabin, too.”

When he glances at me, his eyes are so piercing, I have to look away.

“In Lake Tahoe. It was smaller than this place. My great-grandfather didn’t build it. But it reminds me of there. The smell. The pines. The wildness around everything, how being so close to nature reminds you that you’re part of it, too. In my apartment in the city, I always felt separate from things. Like real life was somewhere else, out there. It couldn’t get to me. But in the woods, I feel more…”

I stop, searching for a word until Malek provides it. “Alive.”

I nod. “And unsafe.”

“Which is why I like it.”

“It suits you.”

After a short pause, he says, “I have a place in the city, too. Moscow. I stay there when work requires it. But this is where I’d rather be.”

“How far is it to Moscow from here?”