The warmth of his bare hands on my cheeks contrasted almost violently with the constant trembling that shook his entire body. Sebastian Volkov, the man who never bowed to anyone, the steel giant who controlled financial markets with a couple of phone calls, had his forehead pressed against mine. His breath reached me in short, hot, desperate bursts, and his gray eyes were clouded with a layer of tears that refused to fall.
In that grayish depth of his pupils was reflected an agony so profound, so raw and real, that I felt an unbearable physical pressure in the center of my own chest.
"Why did you run away from me?" he had asked me in a whisper.
The vulnerability in his baritone voice pierced me to the core, disarming me for a fraction of a second.
For an instant that seemed eternal, ti
