He said he would never let me go.

Never.

After everything I’d been through, settling for living in a beautiful mansion near Verona didn’t sound so bad. After being cruelly treated for so long, I was exhausted. I didn’t have faith in people anymore.

That belief died a long time ago.

It would be easy to give up, to hang myself from the bedpost in the bedroom.

It was very tempting.

But I had one thing to live for, one thing I couldn’t give up on.

Never.

So I had to come up with a plan. I either had to kill him or run away.

Even though he said he would never let me go, the idea of killing him didn’t seem right. He said I could eat whenever I wanted, and as long as I didn’t provoke him, he never laid a hand on me. He was attracted to me, wanted a reason to get between my legs, but he never acted on it.

This guy was a god compared to the devil I used to live with.

Egor deserved death, not Carter.

That gave me one alternative.

To run.

I had a tracker in my ankle, and I was stuck in a mansion with an alarm system and a wall that surrounded the property. The wall wasn’t an issue. With adrenaline pumping in my veins, climbing over that thing wouldn’t slow me down. Even the alarm system wouldn’t stop me, not if I timed it right. If I did it in the dead of night when he was asleep, I could make it out the front door and over the wall before he could catch up. In the darkness, I could run or hide somewhere. With the countryside on either side of us, I had a good chance.

Or better yet, I could take one of his cars. I could dismantle all the others so he couldn’t come after me.

It was an elaborate plan, but I could pull it off if I took my time.

I had to make sure this worked. If I didn’t, Carter would make good on his threat.

He would hurt me and fuck me—like he promised.

It would be nothing like being with Egor, that was obvious. Egor was just cruel. Carter was a good-looking man, a man so confident that he could subdue me without hurting me. His words were enough. He was the king of this palace, and he ruled so effortlessly. Fucking him wouldn’t be the worst, not when he had the body of a god and the face of a model. If we’d met under different circumstances, I would gladly get under him.

That lowered the risk significantly.

Because if I didn’t make it out…I could deal with the consequences.

I walked into the kitchen that morning and found Carter sitting at the dining table, the sunlight filtering through the windows and bringing heat into the room. Shirtless and in just his sweatpants, he looked the same as he did every morning. With messy hair, a beard growing in, and lazy eyes, he sat with the newspaper in his hands. A cup of coffee was beside him.

He didn’t have any breakfast because he expected me to cook for him—every morning.

I stepped out of the kitchen, my arms crossed over my chest. I wore the jeans and t-shirt he’d provided for me, my hair pulled into a braid over one shoulder. “Do you ever wear a shirt?” Unless he left the house, he always paraded around half naked. His body was perfect, and he obviously wasn’t ashamed of the chiseled muscles of his chest and torso. With his strength and tanned skin, he possessed the kind of fitness that suggested he worked out on a regular basis. I had no idea when those sessions occurred because I’d never seen them.

He wasn’t startled by my unannounced presence. His eyes kept scanning his paper. “Too distracting for you?”

I rolled my eyes.

He grinned like he knew what I’d just done. “My door is always open, sweetheart. Just let me know.” He looked up from his paper, wearing the most arrogant grin I’d ever seen. “You can hop on my lap right now.”

I rolled my eyes again, exaggerating my movements so he could see how sincere it was. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“You.” He set the paper down and dropped his smile, looking at me with an intensity that would frighten anyone.

I’d have been more scared if I didn’t know he wouldn’t rush me and pin me against the wall.

He kept up his stare, not blinking or even moving. His broad shoulders covered the back of the chair, and even without a crown, he still possessed the kind of power only a member of the nobility would have. When he looked at me like that, his stare was even more invasive than Egor’s bare touch. Carter could touch me without placing a hand on my skin. He could invade me easily, getting inside my mind with just his confidence.

I refused to let him believe he could get under my skin, so I turned around and walked into the kitchen. “The usual, it is.” Once the wall separated us, I finally took a deep breath and dropped my stern expression. This man made me walk on eggshells without actually doing anything to me. It was a different kind of presence. When Egor didn’t get his way, he resorted to torture to make me cooperate. But this man didn’t need to resort to such measures.

“You’re blushing.”

“Jesus.” I nearly jumped out of my skin, not noticing him standing there. He must have walked into the room quietly, or I was so distracted I hadn’t noticed him. My hand flew to my chest, feeling my erratic heartbeat under the skin.

He gripped the edge of the counter on the other side of the island, staring at me with the same fierce expression he wore in the dining room.

“Is there something you wanted?”

He cocked his head slightly, his eyes narrowing a little more. “You look like a strawberry right now. A cute strawberry. I wonder if your pussy is the same color.”

My eyes widened to the size of baseballs, and my jaw nearly hit the floor. “Keep it up, and you won’t be getting breakfast at all.”

“That’s fine by me. I already said I preferred you.”

He was digging his way under my skin, making my breath uneven and shallow. He was burying himself deep, like a knife cutting through muscle and bone. I couldn’t let it affect me, couldn’t give him any indication that I really was blushing…everywhere. I turned to the fridge and grabbed the carton of eggs. “I’ll make you what I made yesterday, then.” I grabbed my supplies and set them on the counter, doing my best to ignore him.

He hovered there, still staring at me with the intimate expression. As long as he stood there, my cheeks would continue to burn the color of rubies. Something about his presence unnerved me, not the way Egor’s did. I didn’t feel unsafe in that moment. I felt something else entirely.

I cleared my throat. “Yes?”

He moved around the corner, and just when I thought he was going to leave the room, he came around the kitchen island.

To my side.

He came right up behind me, pressing his chest against my back. His hands moved to the counter, gripping it with his large hands. His knuckles popped up, and his forearms were corded with veins. His breath fell on the back of my neck, and when he pressed into me a little harder, I could feel the outline of his dick.

His fat dick.

I hadn’t paid attention the last time he was on top of me. I was in a state of panic, terrified that this strange man was going to fuck me on the bedroom floor. But now I stared down at the bowl of scrambled egg whites in front of me, feeling the definition of his thick cock in his sweatpants. He was definitely bigger than Egor, definitely bigger than any other man I’d had before.

No wonder he was so arrogant.

He stayed there, his hard chest pressing against me every time he took a breath. His hands gripped the counter harder, his knuckles starting to turn white. I could feel the heat radiate from his body, the need to take me right in the middle of his kitchen.

I waited for him to move, but it was obvious he was going to stay in that exact spot until I pulled him tighter or pushed him off. “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what you want me to do.”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “I never said I wanted you.”

He pressed his mouth against my ear, his breath audible in my ears. “But you haven’t pushed me away either.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, my palms becoming sweaty for no reason at all.

“And we both know you have no problem throwing me off.” He pressed me farther into the counter, caging me like an animal. He breathed louder into my ear canal, his lips brushing against my hairline. “I see the way you look at me. I see the way you pretend you don’t want me when you really do. So let’s stop pretending.” He angled his neck down and gave me a kiss on the neck, right over my pulse. It was short and simple, just a brush of his lips against my hot skin, but I could feel the softness of his lips, the coarseness of his facial hair. A slight tremor moved down my spine, a natural response that I couldn’t control. It all happened so quickly, and I felt a rush I hadn’t felt in so long.

Arousal.

I hadn’t wanted a man in years. Sex was a chore that I had to do every day. It was torture, to have a man like Egor inside me, to dump his seed within me against my consent. It was painful and abrasive, making me bleed because I was always so dry.

But now, the idea of sex wasn’t unappetizing. It was exciting and adventurous like it used to be.

Carter changed everything with that simple kiss.

He pulled his mouth away and hovered there, absorbing my reaction like a sponge. He released the counter then wrapped his arms around my waist, securing his powerful muscles around me like ropes made of metal. He squeezed me against him, his cologne heavy in my nose. He breathed into my ear again, his arousal obvious in the way his hands shook slightly. “It’ll be different with me.” His lips brushed against the shell of my ear when he spoke. “I’ll make you come—every time.”

It was a bold promise to make, especially since orgasms weren’t necessarily synonymous with sex. I never had them with Egor, obviously. But the men in my past didn’t deliver them on a regular basis either. Carter had a different level of confidence, either because of his size or because of his experience.

For a second, it was actually tempting.

Then the logic descended, and I pushed away the fog Carter created. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to give Carter a reason to tighten his hold, to not want to release me. I had to escape, to get back to where I belonged. “Get off me, Carter.” I kept my voice steady, doing my best to seem as sincere as possible.

His hands squeezed me a little harder, like he had no intention of letting me go.

I held my breath, unsure what would happen.

Then he pulled his arms away and moved toward the dining room, listening to my request like he said he would. “I heard what you said.” He turned around to look at me before he walked into the dining room. “But we both know you don’t mean it.”