One minute I’m flying high, and the next I’m nosediving straight to the bottom, staring right into a pair of devil-black eyes I assumed were gone forever.
“Luca,” I gasp out.
“What the hell are you doing with that man?”
I wrestle out of his hold, which is a joke. He’s six foot four inches of solid muscle. Without his prison chains on, he could pin me against the wall, and I’d be a rag doll in his hands.
I grit my teeth as explosive memories threaten to overpower me. Spinning around, I shove my palm against his chest and stumble backward on my heels. “We’re toxic, Luca. We’re every torn-out page of wrong.” Hot tears blind my vision. “As far as I’m concerned, you died ten years ago. You need to leave right now or—”
“Or what, cara mia?” he murmurs.
“I’ll be making a call to Detective Hunter to let her know you’re back in town.”
I hope the words sound as bitter as they taste. I hope that hearing them cuts him with the same jagged knife that’s lodged in my chest just from looking at him.
He shakes his head slowly at my outburst. “I’m not going anywhere, Madi. You’ve been a bad girl, and I’m done waiting for you to remember all the reasons why.”
Another step back and my shoulders slam into the wall. “I’m not a bad girl anymore, Luca, I’m a free girl,” I counter weakly. “And trust me, I remember plenty.”
“Not everything. Not yet.” Luca wastes no time closing the distance between us, capturing my chin between his fingers, his forearm pressed hard against my chest. “And you’re not free, Madi. Not even close. You throw that word around like it’s a right instead of a gift.” I try to pull away from him, but he tightens his hold, brushing his lips against my ear. “What did I always tell you?”
I want to fight him, but my limbs are numb. Having him this close forces me back to that cabin in the woods again. To a time that was just us—spinning the bad into hope, and our desperation into survival. “That you’d never lie to me,” I whisper, the words sounding as obscene to me as their truth.
His thumb strokes my lips, setting my whole body aflame. “What else?”
“But you’d hurt me if you had to.”
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