Katia’s POV
The silence in the narrow hallway was deafening, a vacuum that sucked the oxygen out of the air and replaced it with the heavy, intoxicating scent of Julian’s cologne and the raw smell of whiskey. My back was pressed hard against the cold, industrial wall, but all I could feel was the furnace of his body. My lips were tingling, swollen, and throbbing from a kiss that had just dismantled six years of ironclad self-preservation in a matter of heartbeats.
I looked at him, really looked at him, and the gravity of the situation crashed into me with the force of a high-speed collision. This wasn't a fleeting moment of madness in France. This was my sister’s husband standing over me with a look of such territorial, visceral hunger that it made my knees buckle. And the physical evide
