Page 101 of Anton

He catches my wrist and pins it to the wall. “Not the words you heard, Thora.”

“Then what words?” I hold his bicep, feeling it tense beneath my palm.

“The ones I said to you before.” His lips hover near mine, so close I feel every word against mine. “That you’re all I think about. All I want. That I can’t get you out of my head.”

My heart stumbles. I hate that he can say one thing and make all the hurt inside me turn desperate for more.

More of this. More of us.

“You don’t get to do that,” I breathe.

“I know.”

“You humiliated me in front of your brother.”

“I know.”

“You hurt me.”

His mouth brushes the corner of mine.

“I’m sorry.” His voice grows thick with sincerity in a way I haven’t heard before, and my heart only melts more.

His lips return to the same spot, and tears gather in my eyes as every cell in my body sparks back to life. I can’t move or speak. All I can do is fist his shirt and pull him to me until there’s nothing left.

“You need to stay away from me,” he says, words rough against my skin. “For your own good. Because I’m too weak to stay away from you.”

A shaky chuckle slips out of me. “Then maybe stop blowing up my dates’ cars.”

He groans against my neck. “I’ll work on it.”

“Work harder.”

His body presses into mine until the hard swell of his cock pushes against my stomach. I fist his hair as my hips roll into him, wanting him to finger-fuck me to oblivion and then maybe turn me around and fuck me right here.

I don’t care who sees us. I just want him.

He grabs my hip, fingers sliding beneath the waistband of my jeans, and my head falls back against the wall as he starts to work the button open.

Then a car moves at the edge of my vision, a black sedan rolling past us a little too slowly with the window lowered enough for me to catch the man behind the wheel. A ski mask covers his face, but his eyes are locked on us.

On Anton…I think.

My stomach drops as his arm lifts, and the dark shape of a gun appears in his hand.

“Anton!” I scream, shoving him as hard as I can just as his vision snaps in the same direction.

But the muffled pop of the gunshot cuts through the air before either of us can move far enough. For one horrible second, everything goes silent. Then blood blooms across Anton’s white shirt, and a scream tears out of me.

“Oh my God!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ANTON

The gunshot comes as a sharp, muffled burst as I grab Thora and twist us hard, putting my body between her and the bullet.

But it’s too late. The svolich grazes my arm and speeds away, tires scraping hard against the pavement as I pull out my nine and fire a few rounds into his bumper, keeping my body in front of hers the entire time.