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“I don’t like cops,” she finally says.

I stare at her, wondering if it could possibly be as simple as that. She hates cops. Seeing as I was hired to find her, her husband’s most likely in the Bratva. She’s probably had cops in her house, searching through her things for evidence, harassing her family.

I should start the car because we need to get moving. Every minute we stay here is a minute we could get caught. The fields on either side of us are black and still. Somewhere distant, an owl hoots in the dark.

I look at her sitting on the hood of my Mercedes in the moonlight, wearing my clothes, with her bandaged hand and bruised cheek and her hair loose around her face. I feel the realization settle into me, quiet, absolute, and deadly: I am not taking her home for her husband.

I’m taking her home for me.

“Do you love him?” My voice is very low, almost lost in the dark. “Your husband.”

Viktoriya is transfixed by the sight of me so close. Her lower lip has gone soft, and she’s parted them for me.

Finally, she whispers, “No.”

My hand cups her jaw, and I dip my head down to hers. “Does he make you feel like I do?”

I feel the warm exhale against my mouth when she whispers, “He—no.”

“Good.” I mean it with every cold, possessive inch of me.

I haven’t kissed a woman in years. Kissing is a kind of intimacy I haven’t wanted. There’s a closeness and honesty to it that has repelled me.

I want it now. All of it. All of her.

I close the last inch between us and devour her. Her lips part under mine with a sound that travels straight through my chest. I feel her fingers twist in my jacket, gripping hard, like she’s afraid I’ll stop.

I’m never going to stop.

When I finally lift my head, we’re both breathing hard and her eyes are slow to open, heavy and dark, and exactly the way I want her to look at me.

I kiss her again, slower this time. She leans into it, her bandaged hand finding my chest, right over my hammering heart.

I want her in my home. I want her in my bed. I want her under me, over me, and beneath my hands until she forgets any other man who’s ever touched her. I want her body to only know mine and answer to no one else.

Every one of my decisions since I was twelve years old has felt cold and merciless. This one doesn’t.

Her husband will send men. Whoever he is, a man who can afford me can afford a small army, and when I don’t deliver, he’ll come looking for her. I’ll have to kill him, but that’s the least of what I’m prepared to do for Viktoriya.

I brush my thumb across her lower lip, watching her eyes flutter. She’s mine, and now that I’ve decided it, there’s nothing anyone can do to make me change my mind.

“We should get back on the road,” I say, and help her off the hood of the car.

To alter my appearance, I take off my jacket and toss it on the back seat, then pull on a hoodie and a baseball cap. I’m whistling as I do it, delighted about my prospects. Not about a job well done or more money in the bank that I don’t really need, but a woman in my car who kisses me like she’s starving and fights like a wildcat to stay by my side.

Life suddenly, without warning, couldn’t be sweeter.

We’re back on the highway when I notice the fuel gauge is sitting lower than I’d like it to be. There are still many miles between here and Corvale. Plenty of time to coax details out of Viktoriya about her husband, his name, his connections. Plenty of time to plan how I’m going to kill him. I find myself looking forward to the conversation.

But first we need gas. Better to fill up now before the cops have too much time to get our identities circulating.

As I take us back to the highway, I spot the glow of a twenty-four-hour gas station up ahead and pull in.

I take the handcuffs out of my pants pocket, grasp her right wrist, and handcuff her to the handhold above her door. “Want a Coke?”

She stares from her shackled wrist to me in disbelief. “You’re locking me up? After what we’ve just been through together?”

I chuckle darkly and tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You’re a firecracker, printsessa. I don’t know if I’ll ever let down my guard around you.” I lean in and press a kiss to her temple. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”