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The second Nik turned his back to speak to the pilot, I took off running. As soon as my feet started slapping against the asphalt, the futility of the impromptu plan crashed down around me. But I wasn’t about to hand myself over on a silver platter to a Bratva king, either. Just a couple of hours ago, I had no idea the Bratva even existed, and now I was apparently married into it. I had to at least try to make a break for it.

A couple hundred yards away, there was a tiny gatehouse, interrupting the long line of fence surrounding the private airfield. Not knowing if whoever was in there would be able to understand English, I just kept running. I didn’t dare waste a precious millisecond by turning around to see if Nik had realized I was on the move, but I could almost feel his presence behind me.

At any moment, I expected to be tackled to the ground by the guard who had been doubling as a flight attendant on the plane. Deciding not to risk the gate, I dodged at the last minute and sprinted for a thick patch of trees on the other side of the high fence. It had been ages since I climbed a fence, but it seemed smarter than trying to get the people at the gate to understand or even believe me before Nik or his guards caught up to me.

Did I expect anything like this when I was boarding my first-ever flight to Los Angeles? At best, I had hoped I could get a job in a mom-and-pop diner. It was difficult to recall how thrilled I had been to get hired at the top restaurant in town. Like a dream come true.

How quickly it had turned into a nightmare.

I smacked into the fence, going too fast to slow down. Just as my fingers curled around the chain link and I wedged one of my feet into a hole about a foot off the ground, big hands clamped around my shoulders and whirled me around. I shrieked at the suddenness of it and doubled over, trying to catch my breath. Nik barely breathed hard as he kept one hand on my back while I recovered from my short-lived dash for freedom.

“I never skip cardio days,” he said, patting my back while I wheezed.

“Shut up,” I managed to get out.

He chuckled, completely unbothered by my plight. Plopping me over his shoulder, he calmly walked back toward the plane.

“Would you like a coffee?” he asked as he put me back down on the ground at the foot of the stairs.

The flight attendant guard and the pilot, who looked a lot less pleasant than when he first welcomed us aboard, closed ranks around me. Someone at the welcome center stood outside the door, staring curiously but making no move to help. It was clear I was stuck. Completely at Nik’s whims.

And now he was holding out a tall iced latte. With a hollow laugh, I accepted and trudged back into the plane to wait for them to work their magic and get me into the country without any form of ID. In truth, I was burning with curiosity. Just how powerful was this man who stole me away to this fantasy place on a moment’s notice? He was either extremely powerful or very, very rich, because it only took about a half an hour, and we were on our way.

The sky was so blue I couldn’t stop craning my neck to watch the puffy wisps of clouds float by. Living in LA for only a month had made me forget that the sky wasn’t a sickly whitish gray most of the time. Vibrant bursts of color flew by as we headed toward the beach, and then Nik helped me out of the car to see the neat little groupings of huts on the crystal-clear, azure water.

It was more beautiful than any picture could capture, truly the place of many longing daydreams. If only I was here by choice.

Everything from the last twenty-four hours crashed down on me at once, and I stopped dead on the narrow boardwalk, filled with sudden fury. Nik stopped and turned, probably thinking I wanted to take in the view, until he saw my face. I surged forward the few feet between us and smacked him as hard as I could in the chest. Bouncing off of his rock-hard muscles, I refrained from rubbing my palms.

The guard who was carrying our bags stopped abruptly behind me and pretended to be fascinated by something in the water. Nik looked at me with his eyes brimming with innocence, completely unable to grasp why I was so upset.

“What’s that for?” he asked, holding out his hands.

Was he kidding? “You stole my dream vacation,” I hissed. This was the same feeling as when he carried me over the threshold after our sham of a wedding ceremony, but magnified by about a thousand.

“I’m giving you your dream vacation,” he said, still perplexed.

I jumped forward to smack him again, only causing my palms to sting worse as jolts of pain rocketed up my wrists. Was he actually a brick wall under his shirt?

“You don’t seem to understand that kidnapping and forced marriage wasn’t part of the dream,” I told him, daring him to argue with that.

A very brief second of what might have looked like hurt flashed in his eyes before he narrowed them, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what I had just said. I thought about saying it again, louder, but brushed past him and stormed the rest of the way to our bungalow.

He must have dismissed his guard, or stationed him somewhere else, because Nik was the one putting our bags inside the door before I could slam it in his face. He was stony and silent now, and I decided it might be better to slink away and regroup. Without a word, he left as soon as the bags hit the floor, closing me into the suite.

I stared in frustration, then slumped onto the nearest chair. Did I want to keep fighting? Shouldn’t I be glad he was giving me some space? I looked around, and my haze of anger melted away. The bungalow interior was airy and bright, with cool mint tones and pale wood furniture. In the middle of the wood-beamed ceiling, a fan turned lazily, and skylights cast golden pools of sunshine on the big bed. Sheer curtains fluttered at the edges of the long wall of open glass doors, letting in a salty breeze to ruffle my hair.

In the middle of a seating area, there was a plexiglass space in the floor that showed the water moving gently below and I stood at the edge for a second, completely mesmerized. Despite myself, I began to get a bit of much-needed perspective.

Nik hadn’t harmed me. On the contrary, I was in the middle of paradise, and it didn’t seem logical that he would have gone to the trouble of staging a wedding and bringing me here if he meant to hurt me. If that was what he wanted, he would have stood back and let Arkadi grab me from the restaurant.

But if Nik didn’t want to hurt me, then what did he want?

The question stole the brief moment of calm, and I moved outside onto the deck behind the bungalow, gripping the railing as I stared out at the sea surrounding me. The shimmering, glassy surface was nothing like the raging churn of the Pacific, but trying to work out what Nik might want was too terrifying for the idyllic scene to soothe away.

So terrifying I considered the distance to the next bungalow, but I’d never been a great swimmer, and Nik seemed so powerful he probably had the fish working for him somehow.

Another breeze made me pull my ponytail out and let my long hair free to flutter behind my shoulders. The air was balmy and just shy of being too hot, and I kicked off my shoes to sit down at the entry point of the deck. After a few minutes of dangling my feet in the water, a few silvery little fish darted past, but they didn’t nip at me or do anything sinister.

The fact I was being paranoid about aquatic wildlife made me laugh. Perspective was back again, and a new idea hit me. What if Nik wasn’t coming back? Maybe he brought me here to hide out until things calmed down in LA, and he wasn’t even staying with me. He said he was giving me my dream vacation, not that he would spend it with me. Maybe this wasn’t a honeymoon at all.

That should have thrilled me. So why wasn’t I thrilled? Or even relieved. Did I want Nik to come back?

The sound of the door swinging open in the bungalow made me jump to my feet, once again considering jumping in the water. My heart raced as I waited, but if it was even Nik, he didn’t come out to see what I was up to.

Hmph. That meant he knew there was no possible way to escape. I slowly moved up the deck to the doors to see him standing by the plexiglass floor, looking at the view with an unreadable expression. His fingers absently moved to his shirt and began to unbutton it.

My mouth dried up, and I froze at the edge of the sheer curtains, which was no good hiding place at all. Nik was too engrossed with the scene below his feet to notice me, and I became engrossed as more buttons came undone. A second later, he shrugged off the shirt and sighed with relief as the cool breeze hit his skin.

So much bare skin. Tan, muscled, tattooed skin. My eyes glazed over a bit as I took in his well-defined pecs, and the sight of his eight-pack had me leaning closer. There was no doubt about this tyrant who had decided I belonged to him. He was freaking hot. And I started to feel too much like a perv, standing outside and gaping in at him as he got changed.

I tiptoed backward a few steps, not able to tear my eyes away from him as his hands moved to his belt. If I saw much more, I would disintegrate through the boardwalk slats and become fish food. Gripping the rail again, with my back turned away from the bungalow, I tried to get my heart rate under control.

Tried desperately to get that overheated, needy feeling in my core to uncoil. What the hell was wrong with me? Yes, I’d been attracted to Nik back when I still called him Mr. Fokin. But this wasn’t a case of sneaking glances at his tush in a suit when he strode through the kitchen to inspect my work. Now, we were supposed to be married and my body and brain were not communicating properly. One of them had gone completely off the reservation.

“Gorgeous view,” Nik rumbled from behind me, his hand gently resting at the small of my back.

I gasped and jumped about a foot, whirling around to glare at him. It didn’t last long because he looked scrumptious in board shorts and a tank top that clung to every muscle. I’d always been curious about the tattoos I sometimes glimpsed on his forearms, but now the ones on his rippling biceps and broad shoulders were on full display. A heart with some numbers in it, words I couldn’t understand, another dragon, a bird in flight. What did they all mean to him, and when could I run my fingers over the lines of dark ink?

No, Emerson, no. Get a grip.

“Do you want to rest or do some sightseeing?” he asked, not seeming to notice I was ogling him and about to combust.

Clenching my hands into fists, I took a step away from him. “I want to know why I’m here,” I said.

He shrugged. “I thought that was obvious.”

God, he was infuriating. But anger was easier to deal with than that unbridled lust threatening my sanity. “No, nothing’s obvious. I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what you want.”

His blue eyes, already so much deeper than the bright shade of the sky, got even darker as he closed the short distance between us in one step. Being so close was dangerous. My brain screamed for me to step back, but I was frozen as he towered over me. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and a slow smile curled his lips.

“What do I want?” he asked. “That’s easy, Emerson. I want you.”