“I was watching,” he growls, “only because you looked like a fucking problem.”
“And you look like one big mistake,” I shoot back.
“Maybe.” His gaze drops to my mouth. “But I’m the only mistake standing between you and a bullet right now.”
His leg slides between mine, pinning me in place. I let out a soft gasp. Not from fear this time.
From heat.
“You think I won’t hurt you?” he murmurs, brushing his mouth along my jaw like he owns me already. “I won’t. But I will make you wish you’d listened sooner.”
“You’re insane,” I whisper.
His fingers slide up my thigh, high enough to make my breath catch. Not touching, just threatening.
“No,” he says. “I’m in control. And you’re shaking.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
I hate how right he is. I hate how wet I am.
Then he leans in, lips brushing my ear.
“You’re lucky it was me who found you tonight,” he whispers. “Because someone else would’ve taken you. Used you. Broken you.”
His thigh presses between mine.
“And I’m already having a hard time promising I won’t.”
For a second, everything inside me goes still. No club. No music. No danger. Just the burn between my legs and the heat in his eyes and the fact that I want him to ruin me.
Instead, he jerks back like he’s caught himself. “You’re coming with me.”
I hesitate.
His eyes darken. “Now.”
A black SUV idles at the curb, engine running, windows tinted so dark I can't see inside. Another man in black stands next to the passenger door, tall, thin, with dead eyes that make my skin crawl.
"Boss," the thin man says, opening the back door. "Are we good?"
"We're good, Tommy." The stranger, the one who knows my name, who claims to be saving me, starts pulling me toward the open door. "Let's move out."
"Wait!" I plant my feet, trying one last time to break free. "Wait, please! I don't know who you are, but this is a mistake. I'm a nobody."
"You're Viviana Marie Bonacci," he says, and hearing my full name makes me pause. "Eighteen years old, private schooled at Sacred Heart Academy. You live in the big house on Maple Ridge with your father Roberto, your mother, and your two brothers."
He knows everything about me. Everything.
"Your favorite color is blue," he continues, still pulling me toward the SUV. "You speak four languages. You play piano. And you've been sneaking out of your father’s house for the past six months."
"How do you—" I can't finish the sentence. My throat feels like it's closing up.
"How do I know?" He stops right next to the open car door and looks down at me with those cold dark eyes. "Because it's my job to know, princess. Same way it was my job to know when someone tried to kill your family tonight."
"What?"
