Page 89 of Reckless Obsession

This is a bad idea.

❧

Thirty minutes later, the intercom buzzes.

My doorman’s voice comes through, polite and professional as ever, letting me know that Maksim has arrived.

I glance toward the stove and then away from it. I’m not exactly restless, but I’m thinking, and thinking is always the more dangerous problem. Inviting Maksim here was impulsive, reckless and entirely avoidable. Nothing about him makes me nervous, but he does make me careless, and that’s somehow worse.

Minutes after that, my doorbell rings.

A low laugh slips out of me as I make my way toward the door, because the truth is, Maksim doesn’t need an announcement to come up here, and he definitely doesn’t need to ring the bell.

He knows exactly how to get into my apartment without my doorman or me ever realizing it.

He’s been stalking me for years and knows the entry code no matter how often I change it. For a while, I kept resetting it out of pure spite. Eventually, I stopped bothering. There didn’t seem to be much point in fighting a man who treats boundaries like optional suggestions and privacy like a mildly offensive personal insult.

I’m not sure he realizes I know he sneaks in when I’m not around. It’s unhealthy, definitely illegal, and objectively invasive. Any rational person would see it as a violation, change the locks, install cameras, or even get a restraining order just to feel safer. Yet, every time I come home and catch that faint scent in the air—his cologne lingering in my space, the dark, expensive aroma of amber and musk with softer notes woven in—I feel something warmer than irritation.

Which is insane.

Not on his part. On mine.

When I open the door, Maksim stands there with one hand in his pocket and an expensive bottle of red wine dangling loosely from the other, like he’s arriving for a proper dinner instead of whatever the hell this is. He’s wearing dark jeans and a fitted black T-shirt that does absolutely nothing to make him less distracting. His blond hair is a little messy, not quite as short as it used to be, and his mouth is already curved into that familiar expression—half smirk, half challenge, fully aware of its effect.

He lifts the bottle slightly. “I brought wine.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Did you steal that from Anton’s collection?”

He brushes past me before I fully step aside, because of course he does.

“How the hell did you know that?” he asks, amused. “I was at his place when I texted you.”

The scent of his cologne follows him in, and my mind betrays me instantly to his body bent over the desk. My hand around his throat, the wrecked sound of him moaning into the air between us.

For fuck’s sake.

Maksim takes a few slow steps into the living room, looking around with an appreciative hum as if this is his first time seeing the place, as if he hasn’t already wandered through it in my absence often enough to know every important detail.

“Your place looks incredible,” he says, turning in a slow circle. “The dark aesthetic really suits you. It’s moody, intense and a little fucked up. Just like its owner.”

I close the door slowly, watching him. A slow smile builds inside me.

He’s so full of shit.

“So,” I say, walking toward him, “you’re really going to stand there and pretend you don’t know the password to my apartment or what the inside looks like?”

His eyes meet mine immediately, bright and shameless.

“I do?” he asks, putting on an expression of pure innocence that would almost be convincing if I were legally blind.

A scoff leaves me.

I keep walking until I’m standing directly in front of him, close enough to feel his heat, close enough that the air between us changes shape. He doesn’t step back. Of course he doesn’t. There’s no guilt in his face, no sign that he feels even remotely bad about invading my privacy. Just that same stubborn, handsome, infuriating confidence he wears like it was stitched into his skin.

“You have a very distinctive scent, Maksim,” I say slowly, my gaze drifting over him. “Amber. Musk. And that hint of jasmine buried beneath it.”

One of his brows lifts, and I catch the flicker of surprise in his eyes.