A tight grip latched onto my arm and yanked me away from the streetlight and into a side alley. I opened my mouth and screamed bloody murder. This was it. My life flashed before my eyes as I fought with everything in me to gain distance.
My futile attempts only managed to increase my heartrate, fear chilling the blood that pumped through my veins. By now, I’d known this adrenaline high well. It was my fight or flight response kicking in.
After everything I’d been through, I was not going to go down like this. Those words felt familiar. Maybe it had nothing to do with what I’d been through in the past. Maybe it was just how I was wired, my stubborn side showing as I refused to back down.
A familiar scent invaded my senses as the man's arms wrapped tightly around me, effectively stopping any more physical resistance. The smell. I knew it well, but couldn’t put my finger on it.
We moved further down the alley, my feet barely being able to touch the ground. I was shoved. My back hit the hard brick building; a hand covered my mouth as my eyes finally locked on his. The alley may have been dark but there wasn’t anything to entirely block out the light coming from the street. Where we were, a soft glow touched us, bouncing off Nikolai’s wet dark hair and giving me a glimpse of his eyes.
Furious within an instant of realizing whose arms were wrapped around me, I pushed at his chest. For a second, I wondered if I would have preferred to be dragged off by a stranger, at least that would have meant that Nikolai hadn’t lied to me.
He lied to me. Right to my fucking face.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Nikolai?” I hissed at him after ripping his hand away from my mouth.
“The more pressing question is, what the fuck are you doing wandering the streets?” He hissed right back at me, seeming just as furious. “Alone, and at this time of night. You should know better, Ana.”
“Nikolai!” I snapped.
“We have an agreement. You asked me to trust you. That meant trusting you to keep yourself safe while you were here. You didn’t know that I was still in town, what if something had actually happened to you and I hadn't been here. Did you even think Ana?”
I sucked in a deep breath; he was angry because he was worried about me. And he was worried about me because he loved me. I took a second to try and put myself in his shoes, and suddenly I sympathized with him.
I knew it was a hard ask for him to leave me even before I asked it.
“How long have you been following me?”
Please. Please lord, tell me he only just got back to town.
“Since you told me to leave.” He struggled to get the words out through gritted teeth.
I hung my head in defeat. He saw the date. Not to mention everything else - the dress shopping, the flouncing around town with Rachel, probably even the run I did with Kaleb just yesterday.
Fuck.
“You saw…?”
“That’s him?”
“Yeah. His name is Marco Bellucci, son of Rosa and Cassio Bellucci,” I replied with urgency but I highly doubted he knew who they were, and he definitely didn’t know why they were so important to me.
“I didn’t realize that you needed space from me so that you could date someone else.”
“Nikolai. Don’t be ridiculous. You know me well enough to know that I’m not dating anyone else. Tonight was set up by my parents.”
“Looked like you were having a good enough time…”
He was fishing. If he’d been watching me, he knew that the ‘date’ was a complete dud. But, to ease his worried mind, I captured his lips with mine. The kiss was short and sweet, my hands cupping his face and stroking the scruff that had grown since I’d last seen him. “You have nothing to worry about. For me, this is all business. And where Marco is concerned, he’s a conceited prick. The date was a complete dud.”
Nikolai made a humming noise as he rubbed his nose against mine. I relished in the contact and sank deeper into his embrace. It felt like so long since we’d been this close.
He moved to nuzzle my neck, the gentlest of touches setting me alight. His voice whispered against my ear, his warm breath causing a chill to run down my spine. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too…” His lips pressed small wet kisses along the column of my neck. I moaned at the contact. “Nikolai.”
His lips continued up and down, venturing further and further south of my neck. My shoulder, my collar bone until he reached the neckline of my dress. He pulled back when he couldn’t go any further, his lips taking mine instead. I opened up for him and let his tongue caress mine.
Nikolai’s hands slid down my arms and wrapped themselves around my waist. Mine inched up and wound themselves around his neck.
I’d forgotten how intensely mind-blowing his kisses were, the feel of his body under my hands felt rigid like a coil. He was intoxicating, the fumes clouding my mind and judgement as his hands slipped under my dress and grabbed my ass. With one smooth move, I was off the ground, my legs hooked around his hips.
I could feel his desire through his jeans as his hips rocked into mine. Literally stuck between a rock and a hard place, my hips rolled to match his rhythm. Stroke for stroke.
“Nikolai,” I breathed as his lips once again wandered down to my chest. I was lost in a sea of lust, not caring that we were in the middle of a dark alley. Not bothered by the fact that we could get caught at any second, maybe the thought excited me even more because before I knew what I was doing my hands were reaching for the button of his jeans.
