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He couldn't possibly have guessed what I had been up to, and I wasn't going to tell him a damn thing if he didn't answer my questions.

“Let. Me. Go,” I tried calmly.

I just wanted to go home, feeling cowardly and stupid for not being able to carry out this simple plan.

It was a good thing Bay wasn't here. She would have been so screwed right now.

“And then what?” he continued to taunt me. “Where would the fun be if I just let you go?” His smile disappeared instantly. “Especially after I warned you clearly last time?”

The intensity of his piercing gaze sent a chill down my spine.

That was the moment I realized that I was screwed if he didn't let me go. That he was serious about making me disappear.

I had been right. This man had skeletons in his closet.

“Are you going to kill me?” I managed to get out because, for the first time in a long time, I felt panic choking my throat.

Kieran stepped closer without breaking eye contact.

A pleasant, intense masculine scent wafted toward me, mixed with the smell of motor oil.

I forced myself to hold my breath, cursing myself for letting such trivial things make this guy seem more attractive.

“Tempting offer,” he said, stepping even closer until we were less than three feet apart. “You'd be my first Legacy.” He smiled again. Playfully. Threateningly. “But now that I see you like this, tied up and defenseless…” He looked down at me, much too slowly, so slowly that his gaze left electric impulses on my skin. “I have completely different ideas.”

THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND

Bad Omens

Our eyes met again, and I was drawn to the brown pigment mark in his iris.

I needed a moment to process what he had just said.

He was trying to intimidate me.

“I'm not afraid of you!” I blurted out, but it sounded only half as confident as I had intended.

Kieran raised his right hand in the air.

“Oh?” Claws shot out of his fingers and I flinched. “No?”

Black veins crawled up his wrists, vanished under his leather jacket, and twisted beneath his skin toward his neck marked with sharp black runes, over his face, until they reached his yellow-glowing eyes, which sparkled with a sinister glint.

“What do I have to do to make you afraid?”

I was no longer able to think clearly, could no longer calculate what would happen next, didn't know who this man in front of me was, what he was capable of. All I could feel was my pounding heart.

“A lot,” I murmured, breathless.

“A lot?” he repeated playfully.

He stepped even closer.

“Oh, little troublemaker,” he whispered in a voice so deep that I trembled inside. “Are you afraid after all?”

It was his closeness, his voice, his scent... Things that made me forget how to think clearly.

Way too slowly, he moved his hand to the collar of my hoodie.