“When I take you home,” he continues in his musical accent, “you have a choice.”
My hope lifts a fraction. “To South Africa?”
“To France.”
The words are a punch. I don’t know how many more punches I can take. I force the question from numb lips. “What choice?”
“It can be like yesterday, like the day we spent, or it can be like this.” He motions around the space. “What you decide is entirely up to you, but you should know that each choice comes with a price.”
I hold my breath, waiting for him to carry on.
“If I take you to my family in France, this is what awaits you. You’ll be locked up, a prisoner. The men will take turns with you, starting with my brother, and he’s not a kind man. He’ll keep you alive, but you’ll wish you were dead. The only way I can protect you is to lay claim to you.” His gaze pierces mine. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
My body is shaking uncontrollably, my mind refusing to give meaning to the words.
“Do you understand, Zoe?”
I shake my head.
“You’re going to have to become my mistress.” The flames in his eyes burn glacially. “You’re going to have to let me fuck you, convincingly and often.”
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More from Anna Zaires and Charmaine Pauls
If you enjoyed Midnight Days, check out the following titles from Anna and Charmaine!
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Other Collaborations by Anna & Charmaine:
Darker Than Love – Yan and Mina’s action-packed enemies-to-lovers romance
Dark & Contemporary Romance by Anna Zaires:
The Molotov Obsession Duet – Nikolai and Chloe’s addictive, all-consuming love story
The Twist Me Trilogy – Nora & Julian’s dark, twisted love story
The Capture Me Trilogy – Lucas & Yulia’s breathtaking enemies-to-lovers romance
The Tormentor Mine Series – Peter & Sara’s intense captive romance
Wall Street Titan – a sizzling contemporary romcom featuring a billionaire and a cat lady
Dark & Contemporary Romance by Charmaine Pauls:
Beauty in the Broken – a dark forced-marriage romance about revenge and salvation
The Diamonds are Forever Trilogy – a dark romance featuring a hot French mafia kingpin
The Beauty in the Stolen Trilogy – romantic suspense set in South Africa’s criminal underworld
The Loan Shark Duet – a dark mafia romance with a Beauty and The Beast theme
The Age Between Us Duet – an older-woman/younger-man romance that will melt your e-reader
Catch Me Twice — a heartbreaking second-chance romance about betrayal and redemption
Sci-Fi Romance by Anna Zaires:
The Mia & Korum Trilogy – an epic sci-fi romance with the ultimate alpha male
The Krinar Captive – Emily & Zaron’s captive romance, set just before the Krinar Invasion
The Krinar Exposé – Anna’s scorching hot collaboration with Hettie Ivers, featuring Amy & Vair—and their sex club games
The Krinar World stories – sci-fi romance stories by other authors, set in the Krinar world
Sci-Fi & Paranormal Romance by Charmaine Pauls:
The Krinar Experiment – alpha alien kidnapping at its hottest, set in Anna Zaires’s Krinar world
The Krinar’s Informant – an alpha alien captive romance, set in Anna Zaires’s Krinar world
7 Forbidden Arts Series – a dark, forced-mates paranormal romance
Laugh-Out-Loud Romantic Comedy by Misha Bell, the geeky, raunchy pen name by Anna Zaires and her hubby, Dima Zales
Hard Code – a workplace romcom about a quirky coder tasked with quality testing sex toys, and her mysterious Russian boss, who steps in to help out
Hard Ware – a hilarious slow-burn romance featuring a sex toy company CEO, a hot, mysterious stranger, and star-crossed puppy love
Hard Byte – a fake date romcom about a prime-number-obsessed Anglophile who makes a deal with the Devil, her boss, to save her dream project
Royally Tricked – a raunchy royal romance featuring a daredevil prince and a germaphobic, movie-obsessed magician
Sci-fi and Fantasy Collaborations by Anna Zaires and her hubby, Dima Zales:
The Girl Who Sees – the thrilling tale of Sasha Urban, a stage illusionist who discovers unexpected secret powers
The Bailey Spade Series – the mind-bending saga of a girl who can explore dreams and steal memories
Mind Dimensions – the action-packed urban fantasy adventures of Darren, who can stop time and read minds
Upgrade – the mind-blowing technothriller featuring venture capitalist Mike Cohen, whose Brainocyte technology will forever change the world
The Last Humans – the futuristic sci-fi/dystopian story of Theo, who lives in a world where nothing is as it seems
The Sorcery Code – the epic fantasy adventures of sorcerer Blaise and his creation, the beautiful and powerful Gala
Sneak Peek from Terrible Beauty by Anna Zaires
NOTE: Terrible Beauty is the new dark romance by Anna Zaires featuring Alina, Nikolai’s sister from the Molotov Obsession duet. Sign up for Anna’s newsletter to learn more!
Cool lips brush my throbbing forehead, bringing with them a faint aroma of pine, ocean, and leather. “Shh… It’s okay. You’re okay. I just gave you something to ease your headache and make this easier.”
The male voice is deep and dark, strangely familiar. The words are spoken in Russian. My fuzzy mind struggles to focus. Why Russian? I’m in America, aren’t I? How do I know this voice? This scent?
I try to pry open my heavy lids, but they refuse to budge. Same goes for my hand when I attempt to lift it. Everything feels impossibly heavy, like my very bones are made of metal, my flesh of concrete. My head lolls to one side, my neck muscles unable to support its weight. It’s as if I were a newborn. I try to speak, but an incoherent noise escapes my throat, blending with a distant roar that my ears can now discern.
Maybe I am a newborn. That would explain why I’m so ridiculously helpless and can’t make sense of anything.
“Here, lie down.” Strong hands guide me onto some soft, flat surface. Well, most of me. My head ends up on something elevated and hard, yet comfortable. Not a pillow, too hard for that, but not a stone either. There isn’t much give in the object, but there is some. Also, it’s oddly warm.
The object shifts slightly, and from the foggy recesses of my mind, the answer to the mystery emerges. A lap. My head is lying on someone’s lap. A male someone, judging by the steely, thickly muscled thighs underneath my aching skull.
My pulse accelerates. Even with my thoughts sluggish and tangled, I know this isn’t normal for me. I don’t do laps or men. At least I haven’t thus far in all of my twenty-five years.