“You love this, don’t you? Now you know you really do own me.”
I tilted my head. “The thought occurred to me.”
Her eyes narrowed as she glared at me. Pretty girl, so filled with rage. I wondered how she’d survived for so long.
“What’s your game, you asshole? What are you getting out of all this?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
She snorted dismissively. “You said you were brought up by Evgeni. He’s the leader of your family, right? You don’t seem like the kind of man that would betray your father figure over nothing. So why the hell are you doing all this? What do you want from me?”
I stepped closer, thinking back to the night she kissed me, back to the feeling of her pussy slick with arousal, the moans that wrenched themselves from her throat as she came in incredible ecstasy, and I wanted to explain how that moment was revelatory for me, how I still thought about it and felt my cock stiffen almost instantly, how ever since tasting her, I couldn’t get her from my mind.
But she’d never believe it.
And I couldn’t blame her.
I was a killer, a thug, a beast—and she knew my type.
She was smart enough to think I was full of shit.
Except for once in my life, I wasn’t, and I didn’t know how I could make her see it.
And I didn’t know if I should.
Everyone that’d ever been important to me ended up dead. My mother, my father. Friends from the early days in the family, dead on the street. Corpses stretched back for years.
Corpses, bodies, blood and worse.
Men begging for their lives. Women pleading for one more chance.
And all of them gone.
Ruthless and wrong.
Why the hell was I helping her?
“You know what I want from you.” I stared at her and felt the hunger roil in my chest. I felt it force my cock to strain against my boxer briefs.
“You can’t have that.” She whispered the words like they hurt. She forced them out like puking on a cold tile floor. “Maybe you own me, but you can’t have me. Don’t you get it? There’s nothing to have.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Now come on, we shouldn’t linger on the street. There’s no telling who’s watching.”
I turned away and began to walk back to the truck. After a moment, she hurried and caught up. Her arms wrapped around her, hugging tight, and we didn’t speak as we drove back to my place.
8
Mack
The rough buzzing of my phone on the nightstand yanked me from a black sleep. No dreams, no nothing. One moment, I was staring up at the ceiling—and the next, I grabbed my phone and answered it, throat thick with sleep.
“What do you want?”
It was German, and he didn’t sound happy. “Pakhan wants to speak with you.”
That woke me up.
“Right now?” I checked the clock and cursed. It was quarter past five in the morning.
“He’ll be at his usual breakfast spot at six. I hope you can make it.” German hung up before I could reply.
I sighed and leaned back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
One room over, Fiona was swaddled in her covers, probably with one hand between her legs thinking about my lips against her throat.
I could walk in there right now, tear the sheets away, and stare down at her smooth, creamy white skin. Her lips would open, her voice would tremble, and maybe she’d ask me to stop—
I wasn’t sure that I’d listen.
Which was the problem.
The girl woke something up in me that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time—it was a longing and a hunger.
I wanted her body, her delicious lips, her round hips and tight ass, her legs wrapped around my waist as I plunged my cock deep inside her, but I also needed her approval.
I craved that look in her eyes—needed her to stare at me like I was worth something.
Very few people in this world ever looked at me like I was anything more than a weapon.
Definitely not Evgeni Morozov, Pakhan of the Morozov Bratva, my mentor and ersatz father.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. All those years living under his roof, and I still didn’t feel like I knew Evgeni at all. He was a mystery, a black figure on the periphery of my memory.
He was the fight in my stomach, the fire that fueled me. He was my rage and my killer instinct. He taught me how to take a life and how to close down my emotions before they overwhelmed me.
Before him, I was a regular boy. But he put ice in my veins.
He turned me into a knife.
I squeezed my eyes shut and reached up toward my shoulder. The scar was still there—perfectly round puckered flesh from where Evgeni put his cigar out on my skin. You think this hurts, boy? Imagine getting shot. Imagine getting stabbed. You still have to fight, even when it hurts.