Chapter 3

• “A masterpiece, not a picture. And you don’t really have a choice. If I decide you’ll die…” His upper body leans forward and he loosens his fingers from around my wrist, his voice lowering to a frightening whisper. “You’ll die.”
• I scream when my foot nearly gives way and my nails dig into his arm with a ferocious need for life bubbling in my veins with the desperation of a caged animal. A prisoner that’s been in solitary confinement for bloody years.
• I’m pretty sure I scratched him, but if he’s hurt, he shows no signs of discomfort.
• “This isn’t funny,” I pant, my voice choked.
• “Do you see me laughing?” His long fingers wrap around the cigarette and he takes a drag before pulling it away from his mouth. “You have until my smoke ends to give me something.”
• “Something?”
• “Whatever you’re willing to do in exchange for mychivalrousact of saving a damsel in distress.”
• I don’t miss the way he stresses the word chivalrous, or the provocative way he uses words in general. As if they’re weapons in his arsenal.
• The battalion at his command.
• He’s enjoying this, isn’t he? This whole situation that started with my attempts to forget has landed me with a nightmare. My gaze strays to the half-smoked cigarette and just when I’m thinking about prolonging time, he inhales what remains in a few seconds and throws the butt away. “Your time is up. Goodbye.”
• He starts to release himself from my hold, but I dig my nails in farther. “Wait!”
• No change occurs in his features even as the air tousles his hair back. Even as I’m sure he feels me shaking with the desperation of a leaf struggling to survive.
• Nothing seems to have any effect on him.
• And it scares the shit out of me.
• How can someone be this…thiscold?
• This detached?
• This lifeless?
• “Changed your mind?”
• “Yeah.” My voice trembles even as I attempt to sound in control of myself. “Pull me up and I’ll do whatever you want.”
• “Sure you want to word it that way?Whatever I wantmight include a number of things that are frowned upon by the general public.”
• “I don’t care.” The moment I’m on safe ground, I’m out of this crazy wanker’s orbit.
• “It’s your funeral.” His fingers wrap around my wrist in a merciless grip and he tugs me from the edge with baffling ease.
• It’s as if I wasn’t hanging toward death by a thread just now.
• As if the water below wasn’t opening its fangs to chew me in between them. Maybe, just maybe, that’s not a good thing, considering the devil I’m facing.
• My harsh breaths sound animalistic in the silence of the night. I attempt to regulate them, but it’s of no use.
• I was brought up to have a steel will and an imposing presence. I was raised with a last name that’s larger than life, and with family and friends who attract attention wherever we go.
• And yet, everything I knew seems to vanish at this moment. It’s like I’m dissociating from who I’m supposed to be and morphing into a version even I can’t seem to fathom.
• And it’s all because of the man standing in front of me. His features are vacant, his eyes still dull and lifeless, and every bleak color in the palette.
• If I had to put a color on him, it’d most definitely be black—deadpan, cold, and a boundless hue.
• I try to free my wrist from his hand, but he tightens his hold until I’m sure he’ll break my bones just to peek inside them.
• It’s been only a minute since I met him, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he did break my wrist. After all, he wanted to take a picture of me falling to my death.
• And while that’s odd, it’s downright terrifying, too. Because I know, I just know that this American stranger would be able to do it in a blink and not think about the consequences.
• “Let me go,” I say in a clipped tone.
• His lips tip at the corners. “Ask nicely and I might.”
• “What’s the definition of nicely to you?”
• “Add a please or drop on your knees. Either will do. Doing them both at the same time would be highly recommended.”
• “How about neither?”
• He tilts his head to the side. “That would be both pointless and foolish. After all, you’re at my mercy.”
• In a swift movement, he pushes me to the edge again. I try to stop the brutality of his movement, but my strength is a mere straw in the face of his raw power.
• In no time, my legs are hanging on the verge of the cliff, but this time, I grab hold of the strap of his camera, his shirt, and any surface I can dig my nails in.
• Cold.
• He’s so cold, it freezes my fingers and leaves me breathless. “Please!”
• An appreciative sound slips from his lips, but he doesn’t drag me back. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”
• My nostrils flare, but I manage to say, “Can you stop this?”
• “Not when you didn’t finish your second part of the bargain.”
• I stare at him, probably looking dumbfounded as hell. “Second part?”
• He places a hand on top of my head, and that’s when I notice that he’s tall. So tall that it’s intimidating.
• At first, he merely caresses a few strands of my hair behind my ears. The gesture is so intimate that my mouth goes dry.
• My heart beats so loudly that I think it’ll rip from my rib cage.
• No one has ever touched me with this level of nonnegotiable confidence. No—not confidence. It’s power.
• The overwhelming type.
• His fingers that were just stroking my hair dig in my skull and shove down so hard, my legs give out. Just like that.
• No resistance.
• Nothing.
• I’m falling.
• Falling…
• Falling…
• I think he’s pushed me to my death, after all, but my knees bump against the solid ground and so does my heart.
• When I stare up, I find that gleam again. Earlier, I thought it was a flash of light, some semblance of white in the black.
• I thought wrong.