Chapter 1

Paris

I tried to warn her that I wasn’t a good man.

From the very beginning, I told her she deserved someone better. Now, she knows it’s true.

Selfish, ruthless bastard. That’s what I am, what I always have been. I’ve never made a secret of that fact. Never apologized for it, either. Hell, it’s the only way I know how to survive.

When I see something I desire, I don’t waste time waiting for it to land at my feet. I reach for it. I take what I want, by fair means or foul. And more than a year ago—when I caught my first glimpse of Avery Ross—what I wanted above anything else was her.

For the past five months, she’s been mine.

Long enough for me to realize how incredible she is. Long enough for her to turn me inside out. To make me forget what it was to crave any other woman but her.

Christ, what have I done?

In a few short months, this beautiful, broken, infinitely brave woman has made me want something I’ve never had nor ever dreamed I would need.

Now, she’s gone.

I feel her absence as if a piece of me has been ripped away from my body. And the worst of it is I have no one to blame but myself.

On a snarled curse, I slam my palm on the steering wheel of my Mercedes AMG GT as the traffic ahead of me on A1 out of Paris creeps at a virtual standstill. A slim opening appears beside me on the freeway. I seize it, grimacing as I make a reckless dodge through the clogged rivers of compact cars, taxis, tourist vans, and delivery vehicles that stand between me and the Charles de Gaulle Airport.

“Go, damn it!” I lay on the horn, furious. Desperate to keep moving. I have to reach her before she’s gone for good. “Out of my fucking way!”

Zig-zagging past the slower moving vehicles, I gun the 450-plus horsepower engine and roar over a brief space of open highway. A few hundred yards ahead, that gap closes up. Another goddamned standstill. Fuck it. I veer onto the concrete shoulder, speeding along it like a man possessed.

In truth, I am a man possessed. I have been ever since I set my sights on Avery.

Her face haunts me as I navigate the congested traffic heading toward the exit for the airport. All I can see is her tear-filled green eyes looking up at me in shock—in despisement—over the way I’d betrayed her.

You set everything up, Nick! You took my life apart piece by piece until you had me in your hands. In your bed.

All true.

I couldn’t deny anything she’d said back at my flat where we made love only a couple of hours ago. Nothing I said could make her understand. I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me. In a handful of seconds she went from loving me to hating me. As she’d shoved past me, determined to leave, I told myself I had earned every bit of her scorn, every bit of this pain.

And when she ran from my place with her purse and passport in hand, into a taxi that sped her away, I told myself the fairest thing to do—the only right thing—was to let her go.

Yeah, fuck that.

Since when have I treated her fairly? Since when have I concerned myself with doing the right thing by her?

I’ll be damned if I’m going to start now. Not when she’s the one person in this world who means anything to me. The only woman I’ve ever truly loved.

I swerve in to the airport entrance and race for the departures terminal. A French policeman shouts at me as I leap out of the car and leave it unattended at the curb. Ignoring the sharp whistle and the barked orders to stop—first in French, then in English—I run into the busy terminal and head directly for the AirFrance ticket counter. If Avery intends to fly home to New York City, odds are she’s found an available seat on one of the frequent nonstops taking off from this hub.

The first-class line is a dozen deep with customers who scoff and grumble and curse at me as I bypass all of them to reach the counter attendant. She gives me a wary look, her gaze darting over my shoulder where the police officer continues to shout at me.

“Sir, you cannot jump the line. There are other people waiting—”

Tags: Lara Adrian 100 Erotic
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