His hand clamps around my throat, cold fingers closing like an iron collar.
I gasp, my hands flying to his wrist, nails digging into his skin, desperate for relief. He squeezes, not enough to cut off all air, but enough to remind me exactly who is in control.
My body trembles violently.
And something in him changes. His eyes come alive, like a spark lit something dead behind them.
“Scared, hm?” he says, voice darkly amused.
A low, awful chuckle rumbles from his broad chest.
He releases me, but before I can step back, he holds the back of my head and drags his knuckles down my cheek. Sloppy. Lewd. As if petting a shaggy dog.
Revulsion coils in my gut. He sees it and smiles, wicked. That smile shouldn’t be pretty, but it is. Sinfully so. It’s the kind of smile that could ruin a girl. Or kill her.
He leans in, mouth brushing the shell of my ear.Damn. He smells like expensive cologne, winter air and cedar. His cheek radiates heat, shockingly so. I expected a man like him to feel like a corpse.
His breath ghosts across my skin.
“If you keep shaking like that,” he whispers, “you might make me hard.”
My knees nearly buckle, and a choked noise escapes my throat.
He nips my earlobe.
“Does the American princess swallow?”
I gasp and stumble backward so fast I nearly fall.
Gustav straightens, bored again, as if he didn’t just manhandle me like a cat tortures a mouse.
“Dinner in one hour,” he says, turning away, hands in his pockets. “We will go over the rules.”
Rules.
I don’t want to know what those are.
He doesn’t look back when he adds, “Wear something sexy. Tight. So I know what I’m marrying.”
My face flames.
He tosses me a careless, dismissive glance over his shoulder. He smiles that sinister grin. It would be hot as hell if he wasn’t... him.
And for one horrifying heartbeat, I understand why women fall for men like him.
Power is attractive.
Confidence is addictive.
And he has both in terrifying excess.
Despite the disgust twisting my face, he walks back to me, bats my cheek gentle enough not to bruise, but demeaning enough to make tears sting my eyes.
He laughs, loud andcrazy.
Reminding me how small I am in his world.
He disappears back into the dark hallway he came from, leaving the echo of my pulse pounding in my ears.
