Page 65 of Fierce Pursuit

And it was too late to stop it.

CHAPTER 16

MARINA

For the first time in a very long time, I felt warm. Safe.

It took me a few minutes to understand why.

I wasn’t alone.

I was wrapped in the arms of a man—him.

A man I had feared. A man who had haunted my thoughts for far too long. He was everything I should have stayed away from, a force of destruction in my life. My nightmare. My dream.

My head rested against his chest, the slow, steady beat of his heart thrumming against my cheek. I let my eyes slip shut, surrendering, just for a moment, to the illusion that I could stay here.

That it wasn’t wrong.

But it was wrong.

The weight of what I had done pressed down on me, overwhelming in its finality. Kostya had taken me. No, I had given myself to him. And now, in the aftermath, Icouldn’t decide whether I wanted to recoil or press closer, to flee or to disappear into him entirely.

The war inside me was raging.

My body still pulsed with the memory of his touch, the bruising grip of his hands, the way he had unraveled me until I had nothing left to give. He had consumed me whole. Destroyed me. And yet, here I was, burrowing deeper into his warmth, as if seeking shelter from a storm I had willingly walked into.

His arm tightened around me in his sleep, and I swallowed hard.

The weight of him, the possessive way he held me, should have sent a shiver of fear down my spine. Instead, it settled something deep inside me, something dark and primal, something that terrified me almost as much as he did.

Because I liked it.

I needed it.

That was the most dangerous part of all.

I shifted slightly, and that was when I felt it—his cock, thick and hard against me, a reminder of what we had done. My stomach twisted violently, my mind racing back to the moment I had finally given in.

He’s your sister’s husband.

The thought slammed into me like a bullet, shattering whatever peace I had found in his embrace.

Veronika.

A wave of nausea surged through me. My eyes burned. The betrayal was a living, breathing thing between us, slithering around my limbs like a serpent, squeezing until I could hardly breathe.

What would she say if she saw me now?

Would she hate me? Would she laugh at me?

Veronika had never cared for him, not the way I did. She had cast him aside like all the beautiful things she never appreciated. Would she have any right to judge me for taking what she had so carelessly discarded?

Or would she look at me with the kind of sadness I couldn’t bear? The quiet, knowing kind.

For all of Veronika’s many attributes, the ones I loved, the ones that made her who she was, she had always been self-focused. Not selfish, not cruel, but so utterly consumed by her own desires, her own whims, that she rarely stopped to consider how others might feel. If it wasn’t staring her in the face, if it wasn’t undeniable, she simply wouldn’t see it.

She had never known how I felt about her husband. How could she? I had buried it so deep, kept it locked so tightly inside of me that even I had tried to pretend it wasn’t real. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more I wished—prayed—that she would somehow understand.

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