Page 14 of A Diamond Deal
CHAPTER TWO
Poppy understood itfor what it was.
A battle cry.
Rough and accented, the roar of her name swept over her skin and called every hair on her body to rise to it.
For months she’d hidden from this fight, and she didn’t want it. She wasn’t ready.
Eyes forward, she ran. Her feet faltered with the hiccup of her heart. But she wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t turn back.
She wasn’t stupid. At her fastest, she couldn’t match his stealth. She couldn’t outpace him. But shecouldhide.
Ahead, the unmarked border between the seventh and fifteenth districts called to her.
She ran beneath a broken streetlight and slipped into the alley between two tall buildings.
She scanned what loomed above her on either side. Apartments. Metal balconies covered each wall with a crisscross of diagonal steps. A pull-down ladder hovered above her.A fire escape?
She jumped—missing the first rung by too many centimetres.
She scanned the lower walls—the white doors. She tugged at a silver handle.Locked.
She turned her gaze to the end of the alleyway.
Her heart stopped.
Metal gates barred her way. She ran to them. Yanked at the padlock.Futile. Her gaze lifted. Her stomach dropped. She couldn’t climb the twisted metal with its sharp, dagger points.
‘Poppy,’ a voice said behind her. It was quiet.Lethal.
Her heart slowed. Her panting lungs ceased to breathe.
She whipped around.
His frame filled the entrance to the alleyway. Blocked any chance of escape. Dressed all in black, he was an all-consuming shadow in the darkness.
And he was getting closer.
‘Ahh!’ A noise left her mouth that should have been a scream, but it wasn’t. It was a yip that sounded too much like excitement. As if it wanted to be caught, and it enjoyed the thrill of the chase.
Her body was confused. It was too tightly coiled.Too tense.
It was not excited!
She hated confrontation—had hidden from it since she was a child for fear of exposing her father’s double life. She’d run tonight because it was instinct to run. The way it had been when she’d been young. Run away from the lies her father told her mother. The heated arguments that followed. But…
She swallowed.Hard. But there was no moisture to smooth the motion. No way to ease the tightness drawing her every muscle taut. But never had the threat of confrontation felt so…internal.
It was bone-deep. It throbbed in her temples, in her chest. And down lower. Between her thighs.
His step didn’t falter. Graceful and slow, he closed the distance between them with effortless ease.
The amber light from the windows up on high threw a light down on him—sharpened his edges.
His black hair was scraped back with precision. Each strand in place.Perfect. His broad forehead drew her gaze to his eagle nose, his clean-shaven sculpted cheekbones, his thick, naturally pouting mouth. The open collar of his black shirt exposed his wide neck, taut and pulsing. His black suit, his jacket unbuttoned, sat on his shoulders like a second skin.
He was everything she remembered, and everything she’d tried to forget.
