Unlocking the door, I push it open to go inside, and goose bumps rise every hair on my body.
He’s been here. Inside our house. I feel it now. Feel him. Smell him?
No, that’s my imagination.
I quietly close the door and lean my back against it, feeling the pocketknife in my hand. I decide to switch it out for a real one and set it on the counter. My hand is trembling as I pick up another knife, a sharper one, and I don’t allow myself to think about Lev. To wonder if I’ll be able to do it. To kill him.
Kill him?
I grip the lip of the sink as a wave of nausea overwhelms me.
I’ve done it before. I know what it feels like to plunge your knife into someone’s gut. I know how warm blood is when it pours over your hand. And I know how much blood there is.
But Lev?
I wipe my eyes and steel my spine. I need to get packed. I need to get our things and go.
But just then, I hear it.
Footsteps.
Fuck.
My inhale is an audible tremble matching the slow steps. He’s not trying to sneak up on me.
The footsteps stop, and the hair on the back of my neck rises, the air in the room shifting, becoming heavier, making it harder to breathe.
There’s a crunching sound.
“Hope you don’t mind I helped myself,” he says, and his voice makes my spine go rigid, makes me grip the knife so hard my knuckles go white. “And I took a shower. Fixed the leak, too.”
The leaky shower drips for an hour after every shower. It drives me nuts.
“Turn around, Katie. Let me see you.”
I’m going to be sick. I shake my head and make some strange, involuntary sound from inside my throat.
Footsteps warn me he’s coming closer, then he’s right behind me. I feel him, feel the warmth of his big body when he stops so close that another inch and we’d be touching, and I remember the last time he touched me.
But it’s on purpose that he doesn’t touch me. I know it when he brings his arms around me and brushes the crumbs off his hands in the sink and all I can do is look down at them, so big. They’ve been gentle, and they’ve been rough, but I haven’t seen them be violent. Not yet. Not to me.
He leans his head close, and I close my eyes when the familiar scruff on his jaw scratches my cheek, when his fingers push my hair away from my ear, and I feel his breath tickle my neck when he speaks.
“Cat got your tongue, Kat.”
One big hand closes around my knife hand while the other relieves me of it. I stand there, mute, and watch it clang into the sink.
“Now what were you going to do with that?”
The taunt animates me, and I thrust my elbow backward into his ribs. I don’t know what I expect, but I hit a wall of solid muscle.
“Ouch,” he says, and I hear the grin on his face.
I whirl, bringing both hands to his face, nails digging into his cheeks as I let out a violent scream and fight. I fight like this is the fight of my life because it is. He’s going to kill me like he killed Nina. Like he killed her family and who knows how many others.
I fight even though I know I’m no match for him. He’s too strong, too big, and too well trained.
I got lucky once against a predator, but Lev, he’s different. Smarter. Faster.
Within a moment, he has me pressed against his chest, hand crushing my mouth to smother my scream and lifting me off my feet to carry me backward.
I kick and twist and fight every step of the way as I try to pry his arm off me, but he seems unaffected as he easily carries me through the kitchen and into the living room, then through to my bedroom where he throws me on the bed so hard I bounce twice from the force of it.
I look up at him, see the rage in his black eyes, his fisted hands, the muscles of his arms, his wide shoulders. I see the new tattoo snaking along his forearm, disappearing under the T-shirt.
His hair is still wet, and I remember he said he’d taken a shower. He’s not in a hurry. He’s relaxed, even. Not afraid of getting caught or of me escaping him now. Because I can’t. I know it. We both know it.
He sets a knee on the bed, and I roll away.
“Get away from me!” I scream when he catches me, rolls me back, and straddles me, keeping most of his weight on his knees as he takes my arms and drags them over my head to cuff me to my own headboard.