Sasha was lean, not bulky, with brown hair cut short at the sides and longer on top, as though hedidn’t care how it looked as long as it stayed out of his eyes. His jaw was strong, mouth unsmiling, expression unreadable and his gaze piercing, even through the screen.
And fuck me,the tattoos.
They crawled up his neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his prison uniform, black ink against pale skin forming a brutal yet beautiful pattern. My stomach flipped as I studied each line.
I could see more on his hands; his knuckles were marked and his wrists were inked, as if the art didn’t stop just because the clothes did. He looked as if he had been adorned by violence; as if every line meant something and none of it was for show.
His deep-set, intense eyes were framed by heavy brows giving him a permanently focused expression, as though he were always evaluating the room.
Heat hit me like a suckerpunch, immediate and treacherous, in the absolute opposite of the reaction I should have been having.
Fucking hell. This man was absolutely breathtaking.
The anchor continued talking, oblivious to my moral crisis.
“… escaped earlier this evening along with known associate Kyrill Ivanov … The two are believed to be armed and extremely dangerous …”
Kyrill. I knew that name; I had seen it in texts when Sasha had given me snippets of information about his life in prison.
“… Markov, who was sentenced to twenty-five years to life for the brutal murder of his stepfather, the successful Dallas businessman Steven Rhodes …”
Oh my fucking God. He was a murderer!
My thoughts were ricocheting inside my skull. A war broke out in my mind, with my rational side telling me it was insane to feel anything but disgust, while my crazy side was utterly entranced by this specimen of a man.
They cut to footage of the prison on the screen: flashing lights and guards everywhere. Then they cut back to Sasha’s face, as if daring me to reconcile this man with the one I talk to every day.
On the run.
Free.
My pulse went feral and I started pacing.
Okay. Okay. Breathe.
This is fine. This is not fine, but it is also definitely not my problem.
I’m safe. I’m so safe. I’m just a random woman in a messy, tiny apartment in Florida eating cereal in the dark. Why would he come for me?
Why would he eventhinkabout me?
Before I could fully process this thought, another one barreled straight through it.
He already knew where I lived. Even worse, one of his men had found me before.
My stomach dropped so hard, I had to sit back down but immediately got up again.
“No,” I said out loud, pacing and stepping over boxes, my hands shaking. “Nope. Absolutely not. He’s not coming here. He’s busy with fleeing the fucking country. Surely, he has … plans of some sort?”
This was ridiculous. I wasn’t important; I wasn’t part of his life. I was just a random pen pal he’d exchanged a few letters and texts with. A distraction. Replies at the other end of a contraband phone.
Sasha had bigger problems now, the fucking federal kind, or maybe even the international kind. I wasn’t a concern, I wasn’t even a motherflipping blip on his radar.
The news anchor said his name again.
Sasha Markov.
It sounded different out loud, somehow making him more real.