Page 202 of Mile High Ruin

I stare at Vadim, waiting for the trick.

There is none that I can see.

So I walk. One step.

Then another.

My heart beats so hard that I feel it in my throat, and some stupid, wounded part of me is already wondering why he’s not stopping me even though that’s exactly what I asked for.

I make it three steps past him.

Then his hand closes around my arm. He turns me before I can react and backs me into the wall.

The breath leaves my lungs. “Vadim.”

He plants one hand beside my head, boxing me in without touching anything else, his body close enough that the heat of him reaches me through both our coats.

“I tried,” he says quietly.

My pulse jumps. “Tried what?”

“To let you walk away,” he says.

I should be scared at what those words means, the depth of his obsession. But instead, every nerve in my body wakes at once. He’s too close.

Months disappear in the space between one breath and the next. His scent. The low rasp of his voice. The way his eyes drop briefly to my mouth before returning to mine.

I remember exactly what his hands feel like on me. Exactly what his mouth does when he stops pretending to be patient. I hate that my body remembers faster than my anger does.

“You’re trying to scare me,” I whisper.

“Yes.”

The honesty sends heat through me.

“You’re doing a terrible job.”

His gaze darkens. “I noticed.”

Neither of us moves.

The street noise seems farther away now. I can hear my own breathing. His hand remains against the wall beside my head, but the other settles slowly at my waist.

He pauses there. Waiting.

He always waits when it matters.

That nearly destroys me.

I should push him away. I should tell him to take his hands off me.

Instead, my fingers curl into the front of his coat.

Vadim looks down at them. Then back at me. “Sloane.”

The warning in my name makes everything worse.

“I hate you.”