HIS EYES HARDENED TO THE point of cruelty then he let loose. “RUN.”

Fear licked up my spine, and I didn’t question his bullshit again. I didn’t even think.

I pivoted and ran.

If there were two things I knew how to do besides drugs, it was wear heels as high as my net worth and run. Because you didn’t grow up in Miami Beach and not know how to wear heels, and you sure as fuck didn’t let yourself get fat when you were Leo Amherst’s daughter and dear ole daddy told you, starting at age twelve, to keep your ass tight.

So, I knew how to run and wear heels, but until this very moment, I didn’t know I could do both at once.

Apparently a six-and-a-half-foot alpha monster of ink and muscle yelling in my face was all the motivation I needed.

I didn’t even question the insanity of what was happening… until my foot landed unevenly on a cracked piece of the shitty excuse for a road and my step faltered. Then I glanced over my shoulder.

“Run,” he bellowed.

A single command in his dominating voice, and I picked up the pace.

The cold burning my lungs, my feet screaming for mercy, fight-or-flight instinct pumping adrenaline through my veins, I was running as fast as I could.

Then I heard his footsteps behind me.

My heart slammed against my laboring lungs, and irrational panic robbed me of air. I knew he was a bodyguard. I knew the quickening thuds of his boots against pavement behind me weren’t life threatening. I knew he wouldn’t kill me.

But the panic in my veins wasn’t listening to reason, and the neglected muscles in my legs burned as they tried to work faster. My fingers digging into my palms, my arms pumping harder, my head filled with a hyperawareness of every single thing around me. The air, the road, the sounds of the highway a half mile away, his gaining footsteps—I kept running.

Running and praying I kept my balance while I sprinted as fast as humanly possible.

But in the next instant, I felt him.

The air shifted, the sound of his boots on the pavement was right next to me, and he was on me.

Except he wasn’t.

Suddenly beside me, he kept pace.

His mouth closed, his eyes focused straight ahead, he ran next to me.

Not even breathing hard, no strain on his face, his expression locked, the fucker just ran with me.

The adrenaline spiking my system crashed, and I stumbled.

Pitching forward, my mouth opened on a gasp, and my arms flew out in front of me to brace for the inevitable contact with shitty fucking asphalt.

Except I didn’t fall.

A strong arm snaked across my waist as a hard body slammed into my back, and then I was in his arms.

But I wasn’t simply in his arms.

Cradling me, he lifted me to his chest and held me there tight. Not panting, not making a sound, he turned and started back toward the Escalade.

My head spinning, a hundred questions burning, a thousand more emotions picking at my conscience, not the least of which was anger, I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t.

Because my tongue suddenly got caught in my throat, and my arms snaked around his neck without my permission, and for the first time in years, I felt safe. Really safe. Then something so obscenely horrible happened, I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

Giant, silent tears dripped down my cheeks.

Before I could swipe at my embarrassment, his sharp gaze cut to my face.

Turning away from his dark, knowing eyes, I focused on the Escalade as my bodyguard carried me like it was nothing.

My bodyguard.

I was such a cliché, I hated myself.

Stopping in front of the passenger door that was still open, he set me on my feet, but instead of letting me go, his huge hands cupped my cheeks as his fingers gripped the back of my neck. Dark eyes that’d seen more years and more war than I’d ever understand searched my face, and suddenly I felt like the teenager he’d been accusing me of.

“Sorry,” I whispered, embarrassed about crying and talking shit to that Cara woman and having to be picked up from rehab and everything else that’d led me to this point in my life.

His rough thumbs swept across my wet cheeks, and his expression softened marginally, but not his eyes. His dark, beautiful eyes looked like they’d seen too much war to ever let their guard down again.

“You’ll be fine,” he quietly reassured.

For two heartbeats, I stared back at his high cheekbones, full lips and serious expression, and I allowed myself to believe him. Not just about his psycho mafia ex or her vengeful husband, but about everything reeling through my mind.

That I wouldn’t drown in my past the second I stepped foot in my penthouse. That my father and I would somehow, someway, have a relationship one day. That my stepmother would forgive me. That anything surrounding me would ever be normal.

That one day I would have a life outside the insanity I was raised in.

Wanting to believe what he’d said, no matter how he meant his words, I inhaled. Distant car fumes from the highway, cracked asphalt mixed with earth, damp grass—the scents all around us mixed together with the seductive aroma of protective bodyguard, and a dangerous perception swirled into my head.

This right here, this heady bouquet of life, it was what I’d been waiting for.

Not the hot afternoon briny scent of Miami Beach, not late-night sweating bodies on a club dance floor, not the chemical tang of an illegal drug being snorted up my nose—I didn’t want the charade of those fragrances anymore.

I wanted the real scent of life.

Simple.

Pure.

Honest.

The exertion of two bodies.

The wind carrying the scent of rain.

The air uncomplicated by the color of wealth.

I wanted all of these things, but I wanted something more.

I wanted to stand in the protection of a man who’d pulled me out of my own spiraling thoughts on a broken, deserted road fronting the highway.

But I was no longer high on designer drugs and lying to myself about everything. I knew the man in front of me would never give a teenage princess the time of day.

So, I did the only thing I could think of.

Fueled by desperation for a new kind of life, frantic for the one thing that felt real—I threw myself at him.