"We'll see." He picks up a piece of croissant and tears off a small section. "Tell me, what's your favorite scene you drew of me?"
"I'm not answering that."
"You will eventually." The bread touches my lips. "We have time."
I eat because refusing feels impossible. Because my body is betraying me. Because some sick part of me has been waiting for this since I drew that first sketch months ago.
"I hate you," I whisper.
"No, you don't. You hate that you want me." He offers a strawberry again. "Open."
I do. And this time, when his thumb brushes my lip, I don'tpull away. My tongue catches the juice, tastes him along with the fruit, and the intimacy of it makes my breath catch.
"Good girl," he says again. "See? You can follow instructions when you want to."
"This doesn't mean anything."
"It means everything. It means you're who I thought you were." He taps the open sketchbook. "Someone who craves what I can give her."
"You don't know what I crave."
"Don't I?" He stands and moves behind me. His presence sends goosebumps across my skin. "You crave danger wrapped in safety. Violence controlled. Someone who can hurt you but chooses not to. Someone who sees how dark you are inside and wants you anyway."
His breath is hot against my ear, overriding every instinct to run as he leans in, "Someone exactly like me."
I’m shaking—deep, uncontrollable tremors that make it hard to breathe. Fear hums under my skin, shame right beside it. But beneath all of that, a hotter pull stirs—one that makes me want to lean back, to find the warmth of him at my back and let myself be held before I fall apart completely.
This is what the heroines in my books feel, I realize. This surrender that's half terror, half relief. The giving up of control to someone who knows what to do with it.
"Tell me I'm wrong," he murmurs. "Tell me you don't lie awake at night thinking about this. About me. About all the ways I could ruin you."
I can't. The words won't come because they'd be lies, and we both know it. Because I have laid awake thinking exactly that. Have touched myself to thoughts of him. Have drawn him in positions that made me wet just sketching them.
"That's what I thought." He steps back. Losing his heat feels like abandonment. "Finish your breakfast. I have calls to make."
He walks away as if he hadn’t systematically dismantledevery defense I had with a freaking strawberry. Like this is totally normal. Like he feeds women from his hand every morning while discussing their private sexual fantasies.
I sit there, surrounded by evidence of my obsession. Then I remember I never had control. Not from the moment he walked into the diner bleeding. Maybe not even from the first time I drew his face.
Now he knows.
Now he knows everything.
I don't move.
I just stare at my drawings, tasting strawberries, feeling the ghost of his thumb on my lip, and wondering what step three will be.
Wondering if I'll fight it and knowing I probably won't.
From his office, I hear him speaking low, rapid Russian. Business. Bratva business.
Normal, for him.
But nothing about this is normal for me.
7
LILA
