as I regain my balance and pump my legs to get away.
He catches me just as I’m going through the door, his arm locking around my waist as my back is tugged against his chest. Hand gripping my chin, he turns my face enough that he can whisper against my ear.
“Winner takes all, Adeline.”
Dragging me back, he leads me into his bedroom, spinning me toward the large bed in the center of the room as he slams his door shut with his foot.
The space is as dark as he is with grey walls and black sheets, the wooden floors near black in color. Curtains block the sunlight from shining through the windows, a single lamp on a bedside table illuminating the space.
I barely have time to take in all the details of his private domain before I’m being directed to the bed, my body stretched over the mattress as he captures my wrists again and straps them to the headboard.
My eyes lift to his, my body trembling with both want and fear of a man who is still very much a mystery.
“Why do I have the feeling you do this often?”
He laughs softly as the corner of his mouth quirks. Glancing at me, he tilts his head just slightly.
“Why is it so impossible for you to believe that you’re the only one?”
Ari walks to a dresser and opens a wooden box on top. He removes the cufflinks from his shirt and drops them in before closing it. Turning back to me, his nimble fingers slowly unbutton his shirt, his grey eyes peering over at me while the shadow around him licks his skin like a lover.
It’s a fight to keep my eyes on his face when he strips the shirt from his broad shoulders to toss it over the back of a chair near a closet.
Every inch of his body appears carved from granite, the hard ridges and shadowed valleys just begging for a woman’s fingers to explore them. The golden color to his skin must be natural because I see no tan lines that speak of hours spent beneath the sun.
Not that I can see Ari that way. He’s a man more comfortable at night.
Crossing his arms over his chest doesn’t help ease my fascination, the strong pectoral muscles flexing, his biceps bulging from the pose.
And while I take my time exploring down to where his pants sit just below the definition of his abdomen and oblique muscles, he stares across at me knowingly.
“You’ve always been a fighter,” he says, drawing my attention back to his face. “Since day one. Awake, in your sleep, it doesn’t matter. You never let someone push you around. Not even Jason, though he tried. But the first time he bruised you, you left him behind. Went to your house. Refused to answer his calls.”
A bark of laughter shakes my shoulders, the movement tugging my wrists against the restraints.
“I would have kept refusing his calls if you’d given me the chance.”
His lips curl. “He would still be alive today if you realized he was a dick long before that and stopped going back to him.”
It’s chilling how casually he can talk about murder.
Crossing an ankle over the other, Ari leans back against the dresser. “But this isn’t about him, it’s about you. The why of what I’ve done.”
I shake my wrists. “We could have this conversation without me being tied up for it.”
“As if you’d stay still long enough for me to talk. It’s easier for me this way.”
My hands drop to the mattress above my head.
“I admired the way you fought. But that was only one point in your favor. Another was that you didn’t give the first fuck about how people saw you. You danced, Adeline, in clubs, at home, wherever you fucking felt like it and you became lost to whatever music you heard. It would be stupid of you to think I was the only one watching. Everybody saw you because the freedom you found in those moments is something very few people ever experience. There is purity in that. You had the ability to give the finger to the world and do what you wanted to do. I admired that, too.”
His gaze travels down my body, over the t-shirt I wear, along my bare legs. I can feel his stare, like fingertips gently exploring my skin.
“And let’s not forget the thoughts and desires inside that screwed up head of yours. I admired that about you most.”