CHAPTER EIGHT
FIONA
The momentI turn onto my block after work the following day, that creeping sense claws up my limbs.
He’s here.
As I slowly turn down my street, the eerie feeling only continues to grow. The street is quiet, too quiet. Nothing but homes on one side and thick, heavy woods on the other, like they’re hiding something just beyond.
My headlights sweep around the final curve of my dead-end street, and for a second, I let myself relax.
He’s not here. It was just my mind playing tricks, feeding off my nerves.
But that illusion shatters the moment I reach the end of the block.
There, across from my house, waits a sleek red-and-black sports bike. Leaning against it, leather jacket molded to a body built for intimidation and helmet hanging loosely from one hand, is Aleksei Marinov in the flesh.
And every nerve in me lights up.
I pull into my driveway on autopilot as I contemplate what the hell to do. Confront him? Walk inside like he’s invisible? Like he hasn’t been unraveling me with nothing but a look? Like hedidn’t pin me against my car and flip some switch in me I’ve been trying to deny ever since?
No. Screw this. I’m not going to just ignore what he’s doing.
How dare he keep showing up? How dare he play these games like I’m some prop?
This ends today.
Fuck Aleksei Marinov. Fuck his entire cursed family. I’m Fiona Clark, and I make the rules.
Swinging my door open, I get out, shut it behind me, and march toward him. He just stands there, arms folded across his chest with that insufferably self-righteous look. Like he knew I’d come to him before I even knew it myself.
I keep my gaze pinned to his face, but it’s impossible not to take him in. The sharp lines. The leather stretched over his frame like a second skin. He looks like he walked out of a nightmare just to haunt me. Calm, unreadable, and dangerous in ways I haven’t even begun to understand.
I hate the way my pulse reacts. Hate the way I feel it everywhere, low and hot and curling. Like my body hasn’t gotten the memo that this man is not the hero of my story.
I shouldn’t want anything from him. Not his attention. Not his words. And definitely not the way he’s gazing at me now, like I’m already his to do with as he pleases.
But some part of me, that small and shameful part, leans into it anyway. Because no matter how many lines I draw, he’s always right there standing on the edge, daring me to cross every single one.
Heat flares through my center as the images from what I did last night replay behind my eyes. The sound of water pounding against tile, the ache between my thighs, the way my fingers moved, his growled orders echoing in my skull as I made myself come like he owned that too.
It’s sick. Irrational. I despise him for it. For having this much control over my body, for making me lust over him the way I do.
Because that’s all this is: pure lust. And that’s all it’s ever going to be.
My footsteps carry me closer until only a few feet remain between us, and he cocks a brow.
“What the hell are you doing here, Marinov? Planning to make stalking me a sport?”
He chuckles, that sound filled with amusement and menace all at once. “Really? And here I was thinking I hadn’t been trying hard enough.”
Sick bastard. He’s having fun with this.
My fingers twitch with the memory of every shooting lesson Emilia ever gave me. I can almost picture the bullet: dead center, right between those arrogant eyes.
I’m not usually this homicidal, but Aleksei Marinov is a special kind of trigger.
“Trying to provoke me, huh?” I match his stare with one of my own. “Or is this just your lame idea of foreplay?”
