He parked, stepped out, and came around to open my door before I could reach for the handle.
“Stop doing that,” I said.
“Doing what?”
“Being... gallant.”
“I’m not gallant.” His voice was quiet but blunt. “I’m protective.”
“Same thing.”
“No.” He leaned in just enough that I felt the warmth of him. “Gallant is optional. Protective isn’t.”
My heart thudded painfully.
“Come inside,” he said.
I hesitated on purpose—to prove I wasn’t being dragged along by him. But he didn’t push, didn’t touch me, didn’t crowd. He simply waited. I exhaled shakily and stepped past him, walking into a house that felt too warm, too intimate, toohim.
His scent hit me first—cedar, smoke, a hint of something darker that clung to every inch of this place. I hated how much itanchored me. He closed the door. Locked it. And for a moment... I froze.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said from behind me, voice steady. “Not tonight. Not ever.”
I turned to face him. “You need to stop saying things like that.”
“Why?”
“Because they sound like promises.”
“They are.”
I swallowed hard. “Dmitri…”
“Tell me why you don’t want to be here.”
I lifted my chin. “Because I don’t trust you.”
He stepped closer—slow, deliberate—until I could see the flecks of steel in his eyes.
“No,” he murmured, “you trust me too much. That’s your problem.”
“I don’t?—”
“Why’d you keep me on the phone?” He didn’t let me answer. “Why not Cori? Or one of your cousins? Or the cops?”
I clenched my fists. “You were already on the phone.”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Cori gave you his phone.”
“It means everything.” He conveniently skipped the Cori part.
His voice wasn’t raised. It wasn’t angry. It was maddeningly sure. And that scared me more than the SUV that ran me off the road.
I stepped aside, putting distance between us. “I’m staying here only long enough to get my head straight. Then I’m going home.”
“You’re not.” He said it like a fact, not an argument.
