For a second I gathered my control, told my libido to take a back seat and stop being a greedy bitch. Then I looked at him and narrowed my eyes.
“Fucking me, Kostya, is something you won’t ever do.” And then I turned and went back to the bedroom, slamming the door shut and telling myself I didn’t want him coming after me.
I really didn’t. Right?
Chapter
Seventeen
Ruin
I’d waited until she’d gone to sleep before I left the house.
The entire day Anastasia had stayed in the room, only coming out when her hunger got too great. She wanted to hate me, but I could look in her eyes and see that she didn’t.
I felt it in the way she trembled right before she softened for me. I tasted it in the way she kissed me, heard it in the way she moaned as I obscenely ground my hard cock into her belly.
She didn’t hate me. She loved me, even if she’d never admit it, not even to herself.
But then I thought about her looking me in the eyes with all that fire burning around her, screaming that she hated me, and I felt my rage grow. I felt a pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It encompassed me.
I couldn’t bear for her to feel that way toward me. She was the only good thing in my miserable fucking life.
I didn’t want to leave her, but I had to find out what was being said about Ivan’s death and Anastasia disappearing.
So I forced myself to leave the house, making sure the security was all in place, the cameras up and working, and the sensors on so that if they were tripped I’d be notified instantly on my phone.
She thought it was to keep her prisoner, and maybe that was part of it… keeping her as mine. I did get sick satisfaction in knowing she was sleeping in my bed and wearing my clothes. But it was also about making sure she was safe.
Because if Vladimir got hold of her, he’d make sure she was taken far away and then sold off to the highest bidder.
Even after I left, I sat in my vehicle for a good ten minutes making sure she was well and truly asleep. Because my girl was smart and resilient. She was strong and would try to escape again despite the fact her feet were torn up to hell, and she was safest with me.
But I’d forced myself to leave and was now walking through Yama. If I was going to hear anything through the rumor mill it would be here, where the drinks never stopped flowing, the drugs were plenty, and everyone was fucking high from the fights happening underground.
People steered clear of me, the ones who sensed the menace that surrounded me, knowing by the look in my eyes that I got pleasure from hurting others. And the ones who didn’t know my reputation… well, they knew a predator when they saw one.
I curled my lip in disgust as I looked around the packed floor, smelling alcohol, the sweet tinge of cigar smoke in the air. I was sure deals were being made, drugs being sold, sex being bartered.
And underneath the upper level of Yama, I knew it was packed, sweating bodies gyrating and shouting, blood lust in their eyes as they stared at the erected cage and watched two men beat the ever-loving shit out of each other until one of them died.
That was my domain.
That was my home.
Or at least it had been for a very long time, a temporary solution to the emptiness I felt.
But that hollowness had faded the moment I brought Anastasia with me, slipped into my bed, and covered her with my blankets.
I shook my head, ridding my thoughts of her. She had no place in a piece-of-shit establishment like this, where she’d be eaten alive and tossed aside.
I saw all of these bodies as nothing but livestock, bags of flesh that meant absolutely nothing to me and were as disposable as throwing out the fucking trash.
I kept to the shadows, listening, watching, taking in everyone’s body language. When people drank, their mouths got loose and their arrogance rose.
“He’s going fucking ballistic. Taking anyone who was within a five-mile radius of her apartment that night.” One of them spoke in Russian.
I slowed as I overheard a group of men talking in one of the far corners, the Russian loud, arrogant, and definitely slurred from too much drink.
“It had to have been someone on the inside,” said one of the men who had the first few buttons of his shirt undone, his tie haphazardly crooked across his neck, and a willowy blonde sitting on top of his lap, who appeared to want to be anywhere else but there.
“Da. There’s no way someone could’ve gotten in unless they knew the ins and outs of Vladimir’s security.”