Malik wielded emotions like weapons, twisting them, controlling them—controlling me.
Now, his hands both framed my throat. His thumbs stroked from the hollow to the sides, hypnotic.
“I’ll tell you the answer to your question.” His voice curled around me, intimate and deadly.
Stroke.
“I neverfuckedAlina.”
Stroke.
“There were only two important women in my life.”
Stroke.
His hands never stopped moving, never released me. His touch was a paradox—soft and dangerous, gentle and possessive.
My breath hitched. “Who?”
Malik’s emerald eyes locked onto mine, something unreadable hidden in their depths.
“The first was Layla.”
Stroke.
“I loved her,” he whispered. “Until I watched Balthazar drain the life from her—until I watched him kill her without mercy.”
His hands went still.
And so did my heart.
As I gazed into his eyes, I felt myself fall.
Falling into galaxies—endless, vivid, swirling with color and unfathomable depths of feeling.
“Who was the second one?” I whispered.
Malik blinked, his dark lashes sweeping down, then up again.
“What?”
“You said there were two important women in your life.” I swallowed. “Who was the other one?”
He cocked his head, studying me. A soft, enigmatic smile curved his lips.
Maybe he was lost in memory, remembering her.
Maybe he found me amusing.
There was no way to tell.
Then—in that mysterious way of his—he was suddenly across the room, pacing, his presence a storm brewing at the edges of my senses.
My fingers lifted to my throat, tracing where his touch had lingered, where his hands had held me.
“The second woman was Isabelle,” he said.
His voice was choked and strangled.
