I have no idea where I’m heading as I sprint down the front steps, but that doesn’t matter. All I want is to evade Julian for a few moments, to buy myself some time. I don’t know what it will gain me, but I know that I need this—that I need to feel like I did something to defy him, that I didn’t bow down to the inevitable without a fight.

I’m halfway across the wide green lawn when I feel Julian gaining on me. I can hear his harsh breathing—he must be going at his top speed as well—and then his hand closes around my left upper arm, spinning me around and yanking me into his hard body.

The impact stuns me for a moment, knocking the breath out of my lungs, but my body reacts on autopilot, my self-defense training kicking in. Instead of attempting to pull away, I drop down like a stone, trying to pull Julian off-balance. At the same time, my knee comes up, aiming for his balls, and my right fist flies straight at his chin.

Anticipating my move, he twists at the last moment, turning so that my fist misses his face and my knee connects with his thigh instead. Before I get a chance to try anything else, he drops me, letting my back hit the grass, and immediately pins me down with his full weight, using his legs to control mine and catching my wrists to stretch my arms up above my head.

I’m now completely incapacitated, as helpless as ever, and Julian knows it.

A soft chuckle escapes his throat as he meets my furious gaze. “Dangerous little thing, aren’t you?” he murmurs, settling more comfortably on top of me. To my annoyance, his breathing is already beginning to return to normal, and his blue eyes are glowing with unconcealed amusement and delight. “You know, if I hadn’t been the one to teach you that move, my pet, it might’ve actually worked.”

My chest heaving, I glare up at him, seething with an urge to do something violent to him. The fact that he’s enjoying this only intensifies my fury, and I buck upward with all my strength, trying to throw him off me. It’s futile, of course; he’s more than twice my size, every inch of his powerful body packed with steely muscle. All I succeed in doing is amusing him further.

Well, that, and arousing him—as evidenced by the hardening bulge against my leg.

“Let go of me,” I hiss between clenched teeth, sharply cognizant of my body’s automatic response to that hardness—to his body pressing against me this way. Being held down like this is something I associate with sex these days, and I hate that I’m turned on right now, my core pulsing with heated need despite my anger and resentment. It’s yet another thing I have no control over; my body is conditioned to respond to Julian’s dominance no matter what.

His sensuous lips curl into a satisfied half-smile. The bastard is undoubtedly aware of my involuntary arousal. “Or what, my pet?” he breathes, staring at me as he pries my tense legs apart with his knees. “What are you going to do?”