Page 17 of Hooked On Victor
But all she felt was unsteady. Warm in a way that terrified her.
“Do you always draw the women you can’t get rid of?” she asked carefully.
He lifted his head. His eyes locked on hers, dark and unblinking.
“No,” he said simply. “Just you.”
That night, she dreamed.
She dreamed of frost on old windowpanes, spiderwebbing out in intricate patterns that shone silver in the moonlight. The glass was cold under her palm as she leaned closer, breath fogging the surface. Outside, the world was white and endless, a Russian winter she’d never seen but somehow recognized in her bones.
She was wearing gloves—white silk, delicate and utterly useless against the cold. She flexed her fingers, watching the fabric crease.
There was laughter in the dark behind her. Low. Male. In Russian. She didn’t understand the words, but the cadence made her shiver. It wasn’t cruel. It was intimate. Dangerous in the way secrets were dangerous.
She turned, and he was there.
Victor.
Dressed in black, shadows clinging to him like old friends. His hair longer. A faint scar across his eyebrow. His eyes fixed on her with that same relentless, unblinking focus.
He said her name in Russian, voice a rough whisper that slid under her skin like a blade.
????.
Rose.
He reached for her, gloved fingers brushing her cheek. Cold burned where he touched.
She didn’t pull away.
Outside, the snow kept falling.
Inside, the heat of his hand on her face seared through the chill.
She woke with her heart in her throat, the taste of winter and secrets on her tongue.
Chapter six
Chapter 6 – Lightning Strikes Twice
The rain hadn’t started yet, but the sky was already warning them. Clouds loomed over the jagged coastline, swollen and ugly, the color of bad bruises. The air was so thick with waiting that it felt like the world had stopped breathing.
Rose drove the narrow, winding road with both hands clenched on the wheel, her knuckles pale under the dashboard light. The truck shuddered around tight corners where pines leaned over the pavement like sentinels, their wet needles brushing the roof in rasping whispers. Gravel popped and hissed under her tires in the growing wind.
She knew every curve of this road by now.
And she hated that she did.
She’d told herself all day that she wasn’t going back. Had stood in front of her bathroom mirror, hair scraped into a tight braid, and said it aloud in a voice that sounded too calm to be real.
You’re not going back. Not tonight. Not ever.
But here she was.
Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator the closer she got.
Damn him.
