Page 23 of Kidnapped Bride

It only made me angrier when he kept eating, shoving food into his face without a care in the world.

"I trusted you," I continued. Maybe I was a fool for going off on him, but it had to be said. I deserved better than what he'd done to me, and he had hurt me. "I literally broke my father's rules to sneak out and be with you."

Tears started welling up in my eyes as I thought of how hard I had fallen for him.

He was so incredible and it felt so perfect.

Too good to be true, really, which was my mistake.

I knew it was too good to be true, but I went with the thrill of chemistry, not the wisdom of logic.

My hand shook as I downed the second glass of wine and set it back on the table, then tore into the chicken hungrily.

I ignored table manners, eating with my fingers rather than cutting the meat off the bone with a knife and fork, but it distracted me from crying.

Letting him see me cry would only feel worse.

It would legitimize the heartbreak I felt which he had caused.

Niko refilled my glass again and I didn't stop him.

I should've.

I knew where drinking on an empty stomach was going to take me, but the wine was dulling the sharp edges and after days of being angry and crying, I wanted to feel free again.

"You seem flustered," he said after a minute of silence where I drank and picked at a potato.

"I'm angry."

"I noticed something, Kira…" Nikolai leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and said, "When I'm around you, you get bent out of shape. That makes me react and I raise my voice… Then you get all flustered. Your pupils blow wide and your breathing changes."

"Because I'm scared of you." My heart fluttered as I stared at my plate, refusing to make eye contact. He was right, though. He did get me flustered.

Somewhere under the fear, there was something that responded to his authority.

When he pinned me to the wall and told me he didn't have to play nice, my heart was pounding so hard I could hear it, and not all of that was terror.

Some of it was the same thing I'd felt on the couch the night he took me, when he told me what to say and how to say it and my body was set on fire by his voice alone.

I hated it.

This man could scare me and turn me on in the same breath and he knew it.

I drank more wine and pushed my plate away.

The food was good, but I couldn't focus on eating when my head was already swimming and my thoughts were going somewhere I hadn't planned.

I didn’t want to be turned on by him, and I didn't want to feel aroused.

But an idea played at the back of my mind.

The man who texted me for two weeks was calculated, sure.

He'd built a version of himself designed to win me over.

But those calculations and schemes could go both ways.

Niko was a hard man, difficult to read.