Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
FIONA
The moment I turn onto my block after work the following day, that creeping sense claws up my limbs.
He’s here.
As I slowly turn down my street, the eerie feeling only continues to grow. The street is quiet, too quiet. Nothing but homes on one side and thick, heavy woods on the other, like they’re hiding something just beyond.
My headlights sweep around the final curve of my dead-end street, and for a second, I let myself relax.
He’s not here. It was just my mind playing tricks, feeding off my nerves.
But that illusion shatters the moment I reach the end of the block.
There, across from my house, waits a sleek red-and-black sports bike. Leaning against it, leather jacket molded to a body built for intimidation and helmet hanging loosely from one hand, is Aleksei Marinov in the flesh.
And every nerve in me lights up.
I pull into my driveway on autopilot as I contemplate what the hell to do. Confront him? Walk inside like he’s invisible? Like he hasn’t been unraveling me with nothing but a look? Like he didn’t pin me against my car and flip some switch in me I’ve been trying to deny ever since?
No. Screw this. I’m not going to just ignore what he’s doing.
How dare he keep showing up? How dare he play these games like I’m some prop?
This ends today.
Fuck Aleksei Marinov. Fuck his entire cursed family. I’m Fiona Clark, and I make the rules.
Swinging my door open, I get out, shut it behind me, and march toward him. He just stands there, arms folded across his chest with that insufferably self-righteous look. Like he knew I’d come to him before I even knew it myself.
I keep my gaze pinned to his face, but it’s impossible not to take him in. The sharp lines. The leather stretched over his frame like a second skin. He looks like he walked out of a nightmare just to haunt me. Calm, unreadable, and dangerous in ways I haven’t even begun to understand.
I hate the way my pulse reacts. Hate the way I feel it everywhere, low and hot and curling. Like my body hasn’t gotten the memo that this man is not the hero of my story.
I shouldn’t want anything from him. Not his attention. Not his words. And definitely not the way he’s gazing at me now, like I’m already his to do with as he pleases.
But some part of me, that small and shameful part, leans into it anyway. Because no matter how many lines I draw, he’s always right there standing on the edge, daring me to cross every single one.
Heat flares through my center as the images from what I did last night replay behind my eyes. The sound of water pounding against tile, the ache between my thighs, the way my fingers moved, his growled orders echoing in my skull as I made myself come like he owned that too.
It’s sick. Irrational. I despise him for it. For having this much control over my body, for making me lust over him the way I do.
Because that’s all this is: pure lust. And that’s all it’s ever going to be.
My footsteps carry me closer until only a few feet remain between us, and he cocks a brow.
“What the hell are you doing here, Marinov? Planning to make stalking me a sport?”
He chuckles, that sound filled with amusement and menace all at once. “Really? And here I was thinking I hadn’t been trying hard enough.”
Sick bastard. He’s having fun with this.
My fingers twitch with the memory of every shooting lesson Emilia ever gave me. I can almost picture the bullet: dead center, right between those arrogant eyes.
I’m not usually this homicidal, but Aleksei Marinov is a special kind of trigger.
“Trying to provoke me, huh?” I match his stare with one of my own. “Or is this just your lame idea of foreplay?”
His jaw flexes, a dangerous glint in his eyes, and my heart stumbles before I force it steady.
A smirk plays across his lips. “If it is, you are doing an excellent job playing along.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Marinov,” I snap. “You might have money, power, and a face that makes women forget their morals, but I’m not one of your groupies. You don’t rattle me.”
His gaze dips to my lips, settling there for far too long. “No? Then why are you trembling?”
His knuckles feather across my jaw, and I attempt to hide the way my body shudders.
I take a step forward instead, toe to toe with the devil. “Maybe I’m just restraining myself. Because if I acted on every impulse I had around you, I’d be burying your body in those woods.”
He laughs. “Violent fantasies, detka? Should I be flattered or concerned?”
“Neither.” I tilt up my chin. “Just know that if you keep showing up like this, one day I won’t stop at words.”
His smirk fades just a fraction. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
There’s an unreadable flicker in his eyes before his hand lowers slowly, his fingertip grazing my wrist and dragging upward, mapping the length of my arm. His touch is maddening, and this sensation inside me clenches in protest even as my skin betrays me with a tremble.
“Don’t touch me.” The words leave my mouth with more bite than I feel, but at least I say them.
That’s right, Fiona. Good girl. There’s that backbone.
His gaze never wavers, not for a second, as the pad of his finger finds the curve of my collarbone, slinking over it with a patience that makes my breath catch. My body tightens, heat pooling deep in my belly, my pulse thudding where his skin meets mine.
“But look how much you like it when I do.”
His fingers find the button at my chest, slipping it open with maddening ease. Like he’s done it a hundred times in his fantasies and is finally indulging in the real thing.
I need to stop him, but I just stand here frozen in place—not from fear, but from a dark curiosity. Because despite everything I’ve told myself, part of me needs to know what he’ll do next.
His breath ghosts against my cheek, warm and laced with venom. “Tell me…how wet does your cunt get when you think about me in the shower?”
Fuck…
My ribs cinch so tight, it’s like they might crack.
He knows. Somehow, the sick bastard knows what I did last night. The way I let my fingers slip between my thighs with his name burning through my skull.
“Don’t.” The word escapes in a breathless tremor, shaken loose from the thunder in my chest.
He leans in, lips grazing the shell of my ear. “Don’t what? Don’t stop? Because I don’t plan to.”
Another button slips free, the cream blouse falling open just enough to expose the edge of lace and skin before he presses me back against the bike.
The cool metal bites through the thin fabric of my skirt, but it’s nothing compared to the heat of his mouth against my throat. Hot, unrelenting, devouring.
His tongue traces the frantic rhythm of my pulse like he set it racing just to savor the wreckage.
His teeth graze the skin there—sharp enough to threaten, soft enough to tease—and my knees nearly give beneath the pressure.
A needy sound escapes me, and my fingers fist in his hair, tugging hard, desperate to regain control.
But it’s already gone. Because when he growls low in his throat, I feel it. Between my thighs, in my chest, twisting up my spine like a warning shot I’m too far gone to heed.
“Still pretending you don’t want this?” he whispers against my skin, dragging the words down my neck.
My only answer is my breath catching when his hand slips beneath the hem of my skirt. Rough fingertips graze my thigh, each stroke drifting higher, bolder, crueler in its precision.
I know I should stop him, but I can’t do anything except feel. Trapped between disgrace and a hunger so deep, it threatens to swallow me whole.
Because this isn’t just lust anymore. It’s war.
And I’m losing.
My eyes shut the moment his fingers brush against my core, the thin barrier of my panties doing nothing to blunt the pulse of need spiraling through me.
I arch into the touch, shame flooding my veins as my body obeys him like it belongs to him.
But then it hits me.
The courtroom. That verdict. Him standing there in his suit and superior fucking smirk. The monster behind the mask. The man who ruins lives with a flick of his hand.
The memory cuts clean through the fog of desire, and my spine snaps straight.
What the hell am I doing? How did I let it go this far?
“Let me go. Now.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. His free hand slides up, curling around my throat with maddening calm.
“I will never let you go, okhotnitsa. And the more you run, the deeper I will bury myself under your skin. Until there is no you without me.” His words scorch straight through me, searing themselves into bone.
My knee flies upward before the thought even fully forms, landing hard between his legs. He staggers back, a strangled sound clawing from his throat, eyes wild with disbelief and something far scarier.
Shit. Shit, shit, SHIT!
“You really shouldn’t have done that.” A muscle tics in his jaw, those hands curling into fists.
But it’s the calm that terrifies me more than the anger.
He moves toward me. One step. Another. In that disturbing way predators move when they are deciding whether to maul or play first.
And just like that, I know I’m completely and utterly fucked.
“I…” I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
Sorry?
Screw you?
Please don’t kill me?
He takes another step forward.
“You will pay for this.” His eyes gleam with murderous intent.
“Wh—what?” I stumble backward, arms covered in goose bumps, the air vibrating with the malice rolling off him.
It’s suffocating. All-consuming.
A smirk splits his face, sharp enough to bleed.
“You have three seconds to run, moya okhotnitsa,” he growls, a haunting blend of guttural and dangerous. “And you’d better pray I don’t catch you.”
Then he lunges.
Adrenaline explodes through my body. And I run as fast as I can.
The forest swallows me whole, branches slashing at my skin as I tear through the trees like my life depends on it.
Because it just might.