I shrug. “Possibly.”
There’s an acute pain in her eyes. “You murdered Sandro!” She’s hysterical.
I walk toward her, but she dodges away from me.
“No, stay away from me.” Her eyes are wide with a mix of fear and anguish.
“Sandro, I assume, is your bodyguard, and I didn’t kill him.” I draw in a deep breath to keep calm. “I purposely gave him a flesh wound that will heal within weeks, but I had to make your kidnapping realistic.”
“How can you be so sure you didn’t hit something major?”
I stare at her, waiting for the penny to drop. Her anatomy professor knows exactly where to shoot a man to kill or to maim. “You do realize that’s literally what I teach week in and week out?”
Some of the tension eases. “Of course.” She shakes her head. “But you can’t kidnap me, for fuck’s sake. My brother will kill you.”
“I’d like to see him try.”
“Massimo isn’t to be underestimated.” She paces again. “He’s ruthless and cruel and he doesn’t like being made to look weak.”
I’m offended that Camilla believes I’m in danger from her brother, but I ignore it. “I won’t allow him to put a stop to this.”
Camilla comes to a halt and stares at me. “A stop to what?”
I realize that I’m treading on thin ice; I still don’t know what “this” is. Camilla means more to me than any other human being on this planet. She understands me in a way no other person has.
Oak always tried to understand me and be supportive, but I know that the way I am freaks him out and always will. I’m broken in most people’s view. A sadist, that’s the tag the world gives to me.
“Me and you.”
She approaches me, closing the gap. “I didn’t think me and you existed. After all, you said this was nothing more than sex.”
Straight to the point. “Ignore what I said.”
The hope in her eyes ignites as she shortens the gap between us. “Are you saying you want a proper relationship?”
This isn’t the time or the place for this conversation, I realize, as I’ve still not worked out what I want or what this crazy obsession with her means. “I’m saying I don’t want this to end.”
“But I graduate in less than two weeks.”
She’s not going to make this easy. “And your point is?”
Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she gives me a pointed look. “Gavril, stop playing with me. Do you want to be with me?”
I smirk at her vulnerability and close the last few feet between us, setting my hands on her hips and drawing her close. “Do you want to be with me?”
She hits me in the chest, shaking her head. “Gavril.”
I feel that darkness roaring to life as I hold her, knowing that if I tell her the truth, the beast will be well and truly uncaged. “I may be a monster, but yes, somehow you’ve made me feel things I believed impossible.”
She shakes her head. “You’re not a monster.”
I want to believe that, but she doesn’t know what I’ve done. The kind of mayhem I left in my wake.
“You don’t know what I’ve done, Camilla.”
Pressing a finger against my lips, she looks deep into my eyes. “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past. All that matters is the future.”
A pain burns through my veins and constricts around my heart. It’s been so long since I felt anything but liquid ice flowing through them.