Free A Scandal in the Headlines by Caitlin Crews

lies. Not about this.”
    Alessandro was leaning back against one of the windows when she turned to look at him again, but nothing about him was languid. She could see his coiled strength, his seething power. He was dressed all in white tonight, and should have looked relaxed. Casual. But he looked more to her like a warrior king, surveying the field of battle and entirely too confident of his own impending victory.
    He smiled again, and she felt it bloom inside of her, almost like pain. That low, impossible almost-pain that never entirely left her and that pulsed now, bright anddemanding and hungry. Between her legs. In the fullness of her breasts. Even behind her eyes.
    “I didn’t realize you wanted to play games,” she said stiffly, because she had to say something, and she was rapidly forgetting all the reasons why she couldn’t simply throw herself at him and worry about it later.
    “Of course you did.” Laughter lurked in his voice again, gleamed in those dark, knowing eyes. “You want to play them, too.”
    “I don’t.” But what if she did? She flushed red hot, imagining.
    You are truly shameless
, a cold voice hissed inside her, condemning her anew.
    Alessandro only crooked his index finger at her then, ordering her to come to him. To admit the things she wanted—to surrender herself to them. To him.
    And she wanted that almost more than she could bear.
    “No,” she said too loudly, and she knew she was talking to herself. To remind herself of who she was, before she did something else she’d bitterly regret.
    He wasn’t safe, no matter how much that insane part of her insisted otherwise. He wasn’t. And she was too afraid that giving in to him, to this, would make her believe she could trust him with the truth. She couldn’t.
    No matter how hard that was to remember.
    “Stop pretending, Elena,” he said then, that darker edge in his voice curling around her, drawing her in, calling her out that easily. “You’re halfway to desperate. Up all night, tormented and needy. Longing for more but too afraid to ask for it.”
    That wolf’s smile, challenging her. Daring her. Seeing all the things in her she wanted desperately to keep hidden away in the dark. Making her realize that she’d underestimated him, completely. And that he knew that, too.
    “I said no,” she managed to get out, but her voice was too thick, and it shook, and his smile only deepened.
    “I won’t even make you beg.” He didn’t have to do anything but look at her, predatory and sure, and she wanted everything she couldn’t have, everything she couldn’t risk. She wanted him more than her next breath. “All you have to do is own it. This. Ask and you will receive,
cara
.”
    It should have been easy to ignore Alessandro. To shrug off the darkly stirring things he said to her, the fantasies he brought to life within her with so little effort. It should have been simple to concentrate on these weeks of reprieve, and what it meant not to have to look over her shoulder after all these months, not to have to run.
    Elena didn’t understand why she couldn’t seem to do it.
    “It’s only a matter of time,” he’d said in his devastating way that night, when she’d finally turned to go. “Inevitable.”
    “Nothing is inevitable,” she’d bit out over her shoulder, fully aware that he’d been throwing that word back in her face. Remembering exactly when she’d whispered it to him, what she’d felt when she did.
    He’d laughed at her. “Keep telling yourself that.”
    So she did—fervently and repeatedly—but it didn’t seem to work.
    The nights were long and precarious. Each night she lay awake for hours, trying desperately to think of anything but him, and losing herself in need-infused fantasies instead. Or worse, reliving what had already happened.
    Every touch. Every sigh. Every telling whisper.
    Even if she managed to fall asleep, there was no relief. She would dream only of him and then wake, heart pounding