8. Sienna
EIGHT
SIENNA
The man standing in front of me, threatening me with a pair of handcuffs, looked exactly like Tyran Callahan. A stronger, harder, and meaner version of the man I used to know.
For one disorienting moment, I wondered if this was his twin, Kyran.
Five years ago, it had been nearly impossible to tell them apart. Same dark hair. Same sharp jaw. Same blue eyes that seemed to see far more than they ever let on. They had been mirror images of each other.
There had only been one reliable way to tell them apart.
Their cologne.
Tyran smelled like leather and spice—warm, dark, and masculine. This version of the man standing in front of me smelled exactly the same.
I stared at him, searching his face for some flaw in the resemblance that would tell me I was wrong. But there was nothing. Not in the hard line of his mouth. Not in the familiar darkness of his eyes that he no longer bothered to conceal.
He held the handcuffs loosely between his fingers, and my stomach tightened.
“Tyran, please let me explain,” I whispered.
His mouth curved into a sinister smile.
“The time for explanation has come and gone, little blondie.” The handcuffs clicked softly on my wrists. “Now run. When I catch you, I’m giving you everything you asked for five years ago.”
Before or after I was kidnapped? I wanted to ask, but my lips refused to move.
He continued in an ice-cold voice, a cruel glint shining in his blue eyes. “Or would you prefer I fuck you right here on this road where anyone can see us?”
The insinuation in his words sent an unsettling warmth curling low in my belly, completely at odds with the cold night air pressing against my cheeks.
Why had this man always caused this stupid reaction in me?
How could a single look, a few cruel words, make my body burn?
For one terrifying moment, every thought disappeared, and for the first time in five years, I felt… alive.
The forest fell silent around us, seemingly holding its breath. Not a single night creature stirred in the undergrowth. Even the wind had gone still, leaving the trees motionless against the darkness.
There was only the ragged sound of my breathing and the slow, unnervingly steady rhythm of his.
All of this felt wrong. I should have been afraid.
I was afraid.
But beneath the fear was something far more dangerous: a desperate, humiliating need to feel his hands on me.
All my senses seemed to dissolve beneath the weight of his stare. I was willing to let him do whatever he wanted as long as he touched me. Even now, with his eyes fixed on me, filled with so much detestation and fury that I felt as though they could burn me to ash before he was finished with me.
And that realization horrified me.
Immediately, I shoved every sensation into the darkest corner of my mind, burying it beneath the shame and anger already burning across my face. The handcuffs bit into my wrists as I shifted, the cold metal a sharp reminder of who stood in front of me.
“I don’t want to—”
“Fucking run, Sienna!”
His roar shattered the stillness and instinct took over.
I spun around and ran.
Branches whipped across my face as I plunged into the forest, snagging my clothes and scratching my cheeks. Wet leaves crunched beneath my boots, slick with the evening’s dampness, and roots twisted across the ground like traps waiting for my feet.
I ran faster and harder.
I ducked beneath a low branch and kept running, my heart pounding so violently it hurt.
The cuffs cut into my skin and hindered my movements. My lungs burned but adrenaline pushed me forward. I didn’t dare look back. I could hear him somewhere behind me: the occasional snap of a branch, the heavy rhythm of footsteps gaining and fading between the trees.
He was coming, but I had no intention of making this easy for him.
I knew these woods.
I had walked them every day for the past five years. In rain, snow, summer heat, and bitter winter cold. I knew which trails disappeared beneath the undergrowth, which trees marked the old paths, where the ground became soft and treacherous after rain.
Surely I knew this forest better than he did, and if I didn’t… I couldn’t think about that.