“Foryou!” he bellows. His hand shoots up and grabs my face. “I’m terrified foryou, you infuriating woman! Because you keep broadcasting to the world that you’re vulnerable and you have no fucking idea who’s watching!”
“Bastian, I— I—” I try to smack his hand away, but he doesn’t let go; if anything, he holds on harder. “I’m not fucking helpless!”
“Tell that to the man in the fucking park,” he growls.
“Stop! You don’t get to do this!” Tears are streaming down my face now. “You don’t get to lock me in here and decide what’s safe for me without explaining a single thing!”
“Says who?” he scoffs.
“Says me! You don’t— You don’t get to act like youown me,goddammit!”
“I don’tactlike I own you.” His thumb passes roughly over my bottom lip. “IknowI do. I’ve known it since the moment you put your hands on my chest.”
My face pales. “Bastian?—”
He presses his hips against mine, thrusting his face closer so those black, angry eyes are all I can see. “But you want answers? You want the truth? Fine. That man in the park works for my brother. Myrealbrother—the one I’ve spent sixteen years running from.”
I’m so confused that I don’t even know where to start unpacking that one. “But your brother is… He’s…”
Bastian laughs hollowly and shakes his head. “Not that one. Sage is innocent. But Aleksei… Aleksei is a cold-blooded fuck whowould have no problem gutting you like a fish if he thought it would make his day one percent easier.”
My breath catches in my throat like a shard of glass. “Why would he?—”
“He’ll take you apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left but screaming, and I’ll have to watch, and I’ll know it’s my fault. Just like Sage. Just like everyone I’ve ever?—”
“Stop,” I beg. “Just stop.”
But he can’t. I can see it in his face—all the fear and rage and self-loathing he’s been bottling up is pouring out, and there’s no stopping it now.
“I should’ve stayed away from you.” His hands are shaking where they still cling to my throat. “I should’ve kept my distance. But I couldn’t, because you—fuck—you look at me likethat, and it makes me want things I have no right to want.”
“What things?”
His eyes lock on mine, more black and bottomless than ever before. “You. All of you. Every fucking piece.”
The air between us is electric. Suffocating. We’re not talking about scary men in parks anymore.
“I can’t give you that,” I whisper.
“I know.” His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck. “But I’m going to take it anyway.”
One arm bands around my waist. He lifts me up and drops me roughly onto the counter. The other hand grabs the waistband of my leggings and drags them down my thighs. I can hear seamstearing, but he doesn’t stop or slow. Not until he’s ripped them all the way down and cast them aside.
“Bastian, what the hell are you?—”
“Hush now, Eliana.” His hand tightens on my neck again. “Don’t say my name like that. And don’t look at me like you’re scared, because we both know you’re not.”
I gulp. “I should be.”
“Yeah,” he agrees somberly. “You really should be.”
My breath comes in short gasps. “What are you doing?”
“What I should’ve done the second I saw that man put his hands on you.” His thumb hooks into the waistband of my underwear. “I’m reminding you who you belong to.”
He yanks my underwear down my legs in one brutal motion. The fabric catches on my sneaker, and he rips it free without hesitation, tossing it somewhere behind him.
I’m bare from the waist down, spread open on my own kitchen counter, and Bastian is looking at me with a black-eyed hunger that belongs on a grizzly bear, not a man.
