I sit on the edge of the couch, hands clasped in my lap, and try to breathe. My heart is racing. My skin feels too tight. I'm going to be given to a stranger. ARussianstranger, whatever that means. Someone powerful. Someone dangerous.
This is fine,I think hysterically.This is totally fine. You've survived worse.
Except I haven't. Not really.
I hear voices. Low. Male. One of them is the senator—I recognize his smooth politician's cadence. The other voice is deeper. Accented. Cold.
They're arguing about something. The words are muffled, but the tone isn't. The Russian is angry.
Then footsteps.
Coming closer.
I stand up without meaning to. My legs are shaking. I press my hands against my thighs to stop the trembling.
The senator appears first, his smile strained. Behind him—
Oh god.
The man is huge. Tall—at least six-four—with broad shoulders and the kind of body that looks like it was built for violence. His hair is dark, threaded with silver at the temples. His face is hard. Angular. A scar cuts through his left eyebrow, and his eyes—
His eyes are ice blue. Pale and piercing and filled with something cold and calculating.
He's looking at me like I'm a problem he needs to solve.
And my stupid, traitorous body responds to him anyway.
What is wrong with me?
He's terrifying. Everything about him radiates danger—the way he stands, the way he watches, the tattoos I can see creeping up his neck above his collar. He's wearing all black. He looks like death personified.
But he's also... beautiful. In a brutal, devastating way. The kind of face that would make you look twice even as every instinct screamed to run. High cheekbones. A jaw that could cut glass. That scar through his eyebrow only makes him more striking, not less.
The senator is handsome in a polished, politician way. This man is something else entirely. Something raw and dangerous and magnetic.
I hate that I notice. I hate that my pulse quickens for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. I've been sold, I'm standing barefoot in a stranger's penthouse, and some part of me is looking at this man and thinkinghim.
You're broken,I tell myself.You're absolutely broken.
"This is her," the senator says, gesturing at me like I'm a piece of furniture. "Lily. Nineteen. Virgin, verified. I thought she might... suit your needs."
The Russian doesn't respond. He just keeps staring at me.
I can't breathe.
And I don't know anymore if it's fear or something else.
"Well?" The senator's voice is tight. Nervous. "Do you accept?"
The Russian still doesn't speak. He walks toward me—slow, deliberate—and I want to run. My body screams at me to run. But I'm frozen in place, a rabbit staring down a wolf.
Except rabbits don't feel heat pooling in their stomachs when the wolf approaches.
Stop it. Stop it. STOP.
He stops in front of me. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to see his face. He smells like cedar and leather andsomething warm underneath, something that makes me want to lean closer even as I'm shaking with terror.
"What is your name?" His voice is low. Rough. Heavily accented. It rumbles through me like thunder, and I feel it in places I shouldn't.
