Page 113 of Boardroom Sins

He doesn’t stop when I call after him. He’s at the top of the landing and turning toward his bedroom, showing no signs of slowing down.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me!”

That, of all things, gets him. He pauses with one hand on the doorknob. His shoulders are a mountain range beneath his shirt.

“Go to your room, Rae.”

“No!” I reach the top of the stairs, slightly out of breath. “No, I’m not going anywhere until you explain what the hell you’re doing.”

He turns slowly. His gray eyes are storm clouds again, dark and roiling with something weary. “I don’t owe you explanations.”

“Like hell you don’t!” I close the distance between us until I’m standing right in front of him, craning my neck to meet his gaze. “You flew me across an ocean. You bought me a dress. You cooked me dinner. You kissed me—twice!—and now, you’re telling me to ‘find someone else’? What kind of game is this?”

A muscle jumps in his jaw. “It’s not a game.”

“Then what the hell is it?” I ask. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re doing everything in your power to make me want you, and then punishing me for doing exactly that. Is that fun for you? Is this some kind of sick hobby of yours?”

His nostrils flare. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“So tell me!” I throw my hands up. “Use your words, Lukas. Explain it to me like I’m five, because it seems like I’m just too dumb to understand why you keep pushing me away right after you pull me close.”

He snares my wrist in his grasp. “You want to know why?” he rasps. “Because I’m not a good man, Rae. I’ve done things you can’t imagine. You’d run screaming if you knew half of it.”

“Then let me run,” I beg. “Let me make that choice for myself.”

His grip tightens on my wrist. I can feel a tremor running through his fingers, as if he’s fighting something inside himself.

“You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m not talking about bad decisions or silly little regrets. I’m talking about blood on my hands.Realblood. The kind that doesn’t wash off.”

The tremor in his hand spreads up his arm. His whole body is coiled, like a spring wound past its breaking point.

He lookswrecked.

Right now, Lukas Lazarev looks like a man who’s been dragged through hell and left to rot and die in the blistering sun. His silver hair is disheveled, strands falling across his forehead where my fingers must have mussed them during our kiss. His beard, usually so meticulously groomed, is raked to stand on end. There’s a flush creeping up his tanned neck, disappearing into the open collar of his linen shirt.

But it’s his eyes that destroy me most of all.

Those storm-gray eyes are bloodshot. The lines bracketing his mouth look deeper than they did yesterday. He’s a roiling mass of tension and rage.

He’s beautiful, is what he is. Devastatingly, ruinously beautiful.

“I’m not asking you to be good,” I whisper. “I’m asking you to behonest.”

“Honest,” he repeats. “Honesty.You want honesty?”

“Yes.”

He releases my wrist. But instead of stepping back, he steps forward, crowding me against the wall of the hallway.

“Here’s honesty you might be able to understand, little girl: If you don’t go in your bedroom right now and shut that door, I will defile you in ways you cannot even begin to understand.”

I suck in a breath. All my fight is gone, just like that, at the snap of his fingers. I’m once again pinned between him and a wall, same as I was just a moment ago downstairs. But now, insteadof a sun-soaked kiss with the French countryside descending into indigo evening as the cinematic backdrop, I’m caged alone in a dark, stone-lined hallway as the shadows cluster closer and closer.

“I’ve been patient,” Lukas continues, his voice dropping to a growl that resonates through my bones. “I’ve beencareful.I’ve done everything in my power to keep my hands off you, and you keep pushing. Poking.Wanting.”

His face is inches from mine. Every plane and line of it is taut and cruel.

“I’m not worth wanting, Rae. I’m the thing mothers warn their daughters about. I’m the monster hiding under the bed. And if you keep dangling your pretty little wrists over the edge of the darkness, sooner or later, I’m going to snatch you.”