I glanced past him, saw a gate attendant reaching for a red phone. To alert security?
Talk about making a major decision under pressure: My freedom for his?
I recalled how Sevastyan had been last night, in our bed. My dream man.
Damn, damn, damn! It seemed I could leave him—but I couldn’t send him to prison. Not after everything he’d done for me.
This man saved my life.
His grip tightened, and his frenzied gaze pinned mine. His pupils were blown, his eyes appearing almost black. “I won’t be taken from you. Do you understand me?”
I swallowed, hoping very much that I did not understand him. I had a flashback of what he’d done to Gleb, and pitied any guard who confronted this enraged enforcer. I had no choice but to go with him. For now. “Let go of my arm, and I’ll come with you.”
Instead, he dragged me along, my wishes ignored yet again.
“You can’t do this!”
“Doing it.”
Okay, so he could force me back—didn’t mean I’d stay. He couldn’t watch me every hour of the day and night. I promised him, “Short of your locking me in a cage, I will return to Nebraska.”
“I’m not above using a cage.”
“You dick!” As soon as we were outside the airport, I launched the toe of one of my pointy heels at his calf, booting him as I had his car back at Berezka.
He didn’t seem to feel it whatsoever. So I kicked his ankle.
Nothing. And then he was tossing me into the back of his limo, signaling for the driver to go.
Apprehension overwhelmed my anger. The privacy window was up; I was at Sevastyan’s mercy.
What was he going to do to me?
As if even a foot was too much distance between us, he yanked me across his lap. He squeezed me against his chest, those massive arm muscles rippling around me.
On the way back from the club, he’d held me like this. Never had I felt more cherished and protected.
Now? I’d never felt more conflicted. Had some traitorous part of me clamored for him when he’d scanned the crowd for his woman? Had some part of me thrilled earlier to hear myself called his fiancée?
What is wrong with me??
As I sputtered protests, he stripped off my messenger bag and coat—still too much between us?—then he clasped me harder, inhaling the scent of my hair, like we’d been parted for ages. In a distant tone, he asked, “Why would you leave?”
“You know why! I didn’t sign on for a one-sided relationship, didn’t sign on to be treated like a thing. You don’t confide in me, you order me around, and you lie to me!”
As if he hadn’t heard me, he grated in Russian, “You’re not to leave me, Natalya. I’ll never let you go.”
“My God, are you hearing me at all? You sound like a freak! You can’t keep me if I don’t want to be kept!” I managed to draw back a couple of inches to glimpse his face—then wished I hadn’t.
A professional hit man had fixated on me, and now seemed to be experiencing some kind of mental break because I’d left him. It was as if he couldn’t make out my words because some bomb blast was repeatedly going off in his head.
Realizing how futile it was to try to communicate with him, I fell silent. But he wasn’t done.
“For now, I’ll discipline you.”
I swallowed. “Putting the D back into BDSM?”
Against my hair, he said, “I told you that if you ran from me again, I’d catch you. I told you I’d spread you over my knees and whip your ass until you knew better.”