Page 102 of The Ruthless Note

“I really am a toy to you, aren’t I?” My skin bristles with heat.

He doesn’t deny it. His amber eyes are steady on me, more cruel and detached than I’ve ever seen them.

He’s the boy with the world at his fingertips. And I’m the toy he couldn’t have. The toy he’s now obsessed with owning.

Why did I think for a second that he’s someone worthy of my understanding?

I whirl around, a hand on my forehead.I’m such an idiot.

“You can’t control me the way you control everything else.” My nostrils flare. “I willnevergive you want you want.”

“You’re wrong, Brahms,” he says simply. “You belong to me.”

I whirl around, my eyes aflame. “You’re seriously screwed in the head.”

“We both are. Why do you think we keep crashing into each other? It will never end unless we give in.”

My eyes flutter closed.

This conversation is pissing me off all over again.

Mostly because he’s right.

I swore up and down that I wouldn’t be caught in this position, lips fused to Dutch Cross’s while he stole the air from my lungs.

Yet I’m here again.

Caught in his trapagain.

Throbbing for him.Again.

And it’s not like I don’t know better. I do. I just keep doing the things I know I shouldn’t.

Dutch looms over me, pressing into me so I have nowhere to run. “Do you think I have this much patience with the people who cross me, Brahms?” His voice drops to a dark rasp. “You played me.”

“And you ruined my life before and after you found out who I was.”

“Guess that makes us even.” He slides a finger down my cheek.

I glare at him. “Do you evenlikeme, Dutch?”

He laughs. The bastard actually laughs in my face. “Do you like me, Brahms?”

My eyes skitter away.

He rubs his nose over the exposed slope of my throat, breathing me in and exhaling only two words, “Stop running.”

Prey.

“Stop fighting, Brahms.”

Hunted.

“All I can think about is your body wrapped around mine,” he murmurs, flicking his tongue against my throbbing pulse.

Lifting my head, I meet the eyes of the hunter, as unique as burnished honey, clothed in the shadows of an endless night.

Something vibrates close by.

---