The vehicle was too silent, too quiet, no sound, nothing.
Lila sat in the backseat, hands clutched tightly together in her lap, the nails biting into the palms so she could feel anything tangible. The soft leather beneath her felt too soft, like sitting on the fur, the air was too chill, too cold and smooth. She was departing — not only the first and only home she had ever had, but the final remnant of the part of herself she used to be.
Viktor sits next to her, one arm flung across the back of the seat, his hand nearly touching hers as his fingers brush against the curve of her shoulder if he chooses. He doesn't touch her.
Not yet. And that's the worst part — waiting. Wait. Just wait a little bit!
He smelled like smoke and something darker, something masculine and dangerous. It wasn't cologne, not the kind her father's clients wore. This was power — sweat, gun oil, leather, and blood dried under my fingernails, no matter how clean they looked. Only from the outer side does he look clean, but from the inside, nobody can tell how many bodies he has buried beneath him.
He caught her staring. Looking with sharp eyes.
"Kiska, you feel cold?" he asked, his voice low and dark as gravel beneath his boots.
"No," she lied. She didn't want to tell him what she felt.
His corner of the mouth tilted into a curve, but it wasn't a smile. It was a warning. A reminder that he could read her. Predict her and what will be the punishment for lying to Viktor.
The city whizzed by outside the windows, looks blurred. Neon lights flashing over wet streets. It still felt dirty, still felt mean, but here, in Viktor's world, it was another kind of sensation, a sensation that can't be felt anywhere. A place where control and desire are knotted together as a noose around the throat.
"Do you know why I brought you?" he asked suddenly, his voice slicing through the silence.
Lila's throat constricted. "Because you own me now." You are now mine and mine only! I can take Lila anywhere I want this way!
But!
He turned all the way around, his knee against hers, his touch deliberate, yet too quick to be careless.
"No," he replied softly. "I could have a thousand girls like you." I didn't bring you because you begged."
Her breath caught. She doesn't want to listen to Viktor more. She couldn't resist those words that Viktor was going to say!
She didn't know whether to feel flattered or terrified. Maybe she was feeling both.
"Girls like you," he went on, "they shatter before anybody so much as lays a hand on them. "They weep, they plead, they crawl." He raised a strand of her hair and threaded it with his fingers as if it were silk. "But you… You didn't. Even when you were scared, you didn't plead, you didn't beg, that's what I like!"
Lila gulped hard, she could barely swallow. Her heart beating wildly against the confines of her rib-cage. "What does that make me?" What am I to you?
His eyes traveled over her, a dragging, purposeful gaze that made the warmth beneath her clothing burn. "It makes you mine," he said. "It makes you dangerous." "You are more powerful than you can imagine!"
The mansion was colder than the car, all glass and marble, so beautiful that it felt more like a trap masquerading as luxury. Lila gasped before she could even take a breath as Viktor ushered her up the stairs, his hand resting on the base of her back, light but proprietary. His attention stayed on Lila, sharp and hungry. He thinks of Lila as his own property now.
Tatiana and Sofia stood in the corner of the room watching as if vultures over something already wounded. But Viktor did not even look their way. Not even pay a single piece of attention to them.
His gaze remained on Lila, hungry and piercing. Like he was going to eat her!
Her bedroom was dark when they made their way inside. Viktor shut the door after them, the soft click as it locked sounding sharper than a gunshot. I feel horror. Lila's heart was beating hard like it was going to stop any time!
Lila stood in the center of the room, her heart racing so fiercely that she could hear it beating in her ears.
Viktor stood by the door, resting against it, observing her like a predator who already sensed the prey too frail to escape.
"Are you afraid of me?" he asked. " Feeling scared?
She ought to have agreed. She agreed in an instant ,but she said
"No,"
The air between them thickened with something too dense to be labeled as attraction. It was heavier than that — a pull so strong that it resembled being at the edge of a cliff, looking down and knowing that he was the fall and the landing as well.
Viktor crossed the room in three slow steps, stopping just close enough for her to feel his heat. His fingers brushed her jaw, tracing the line down to her throat, where her pulse throbbed beneath his touch. His fingers swept against the angle of her jaw, tracing the line down to the beat of his fingers against the throbbing curve of her throat.
"You should be," he murmured. "Because I don't break my toys, Lila." His thumb dragged over her lower lip, soft at first, then firmer.
"I ruin them."
Her breath caught. "And what if I destroy you first?" "And then give you pain?" "Sounds good to you, Lila?"
Viktor's laugh was low, dark, the kind a bedroom should hold, never a boardroom. "Try, Lila." His hand darted up her throat, not constricting, but holding — a reminder of who was more powerful, who could take all she had with one hand. "But when you lose — and you will lose — I'll make sure that you remember who you belong to." at first sight!
Her first night at Viktor's house, she did not sleep. Not because she was not sleepy, but because every noise in the dark sounded like him. Every intake of breath felt as if she were breathing him in.
She recognized what this was. He hadn't so much as kissed her yet, but his prints were already beneath her skin.
It wasn't romance.
It wasn't lust. It wasn't greed.
It, too, was ownership, sewn into silk sheets and whispered threats.
It was the way he gazed at her, as if she were prey yet challenged. It was how he looked at her, like she was both prey and a challenge.
It was the way that her own body betrayed her, yearning for the touch of a guy who could shatter her with a kiss.
It was the start of something dark, something sinister. It was the beginning of something dark, something dangerous — and Lila had already known there was no turning back now!
There was no way back.