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Sergei’s head turned, but I was already through the door.
Cold rain struck my face as my heels hit the pavement. I gathered the robe around me and ran between the stopped vehicles, ignoring the shouts, the horns, and the driver yelling behind me. A man leaned on his horn when I cut in front of his SUV. Someone else lowered a window and cursed.
I didn’t care. Not one bit. Fuck them.
There was an opening in the concrete barrier twenty yards ahead. Beyond it, a dark service road curved away from the highway toward a row of low industrial buildings.
I could disappear there.
I made it twelve yards, and then an arm closed around my waist and lifted me completely off my feet.
“Put me down!”
Sergei turned and pressed me against the concrete barrier before I could kick, using his huge body to block the moving lane. I drove the hairpin toward the hand locked around my middle. His fingers closed around my wrist, pressed one small nerve at the base of my thumb, and the pin dropped from my hand before I could stop it. He picked it up from the road, slipped it into his pocket, and looked down at me.
That had been humiliatingly easy for him.
His hair was damp from the rain. Water gathered along the strong line of his jaw and darkened his shirt across the shoulders. His chest rose and fell more heavily than before, but not because twelve yards had winded him. He was angry. The strange part was that his anger didn’t make him loud. It made him quieter, which felt infinitely more dangerous.
“You ran into open traffic,” he stated.
I shoved at his chest. “Get away from me.”
He stepped back at once. The freedom was so unexpected that I nearly lost my balance. Sergei caught my elbow, steadied me, then released it.
“Do it,” I snapped.
His brows drew together. “Do what?”
“Whatever punishment you’ve been intending since the private room. Get it over with.”
His eyes moved over my face, then down to my hands. They were shaking harder now. My breathing came too fast, the cold air scraping through my lungs.
“Now is not the right time.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“You were shot at little more than an hour ago,” he said. “You are flooded with adrenaline, you’re scared, and you still believe the men outside Nocturne were an invention designed by your father. Punishing you now would not be discipline.”
“What would it be?”
“A man using fear because he can. I don’t do that,” he said softly. “In time, you’ll see the truth. You’ll understand why opening that door put you back within reach of the men who came for you. Then we will discuss the consequences.”
“There will be no consequences.”
“There will be, little pet.”
“You’re insane.”
“Possibly.”
Before I could respond, he reached for the buckle of his belt.
My breath caught, and he noticed.
Sergei pulled the black leather free from the loops of his trousers in one smooth motion. The sound of it sliding through the fabric sent an unwanted shiver down my spine, but he didn’t fold it over his hand or order me across his knee in the rain. Instead, he looked at the silver ring at the center of my velvet choker.
“Don’t you dare.”
