The Hollow (Preacher Brothers 4)

When we broke away, she was breathing hard, but the pleasurable hum that left her made me feel satisfied. I made her feel this way. I stared at her face, loving that her cheeks were blushed, her eyes half-lidded, and her lips glossy and swollen.

She looked like this, because I made her feel good.

“I love you too,” she whispered and looked into my eyes.

I heard this strange note in her voice after she said that, almost this sad quality. I didn’t delve into that, just wanting to enjoy this moment.

I didn’t know how long this would last, didn’t know if we’d get another chance to be this bare and open and vulnerable to each other for a long while if her father had anything to do with it, so right now, I just wanted to hold her.

And so I kissed her again, telling myself there would never be another woman for me. Nadja owned my heart fully.

3

Nadja

I shut the door as silently as I could and leaned against it, closing my eyes and feeling a smile spread across my face. My entire body hummed, the soreness between my legs, the stickiness from Frankie’s seed soaking through my panties and sticking to my inner thighs. It was a filthy thought, but one I found highly arousing.

I had no doubt my father knew where I was tonight. Even if Frankie had done a stuntman kind of escape to try to lose the trail. But my father always had his men following me, not just because of who he was in the bratva and that in turn put me in danger, but because my father was controlling.

I wasn’t just his daughter. I was more of a pawn in a very dangerous game with very evil men.

I was a bargaining chip.

The house was silent, the sound of the grandfather clock down the hallway ticking down the seconds seeming obscenely loud. It was eerily silent, and not just because it was the middle of the night.

It was the kind of silence that was loud.

My father was dangerous, but still I pushed against the bounds of his strength and authority. Not many people did that with Petrov Romonoff, fear keeping them in check. I was one of those people, but with Frankie, I felt this strength build inside me. I should have been smarter, not just for me but for him.

But I was selfish. I loved Frankie and couldn’t stop the addiction I had to him.

I rested my head back in the heavy, hard oak door and closed my eyes. I wished so many times I was someone else, that I lived a different life. To be anonymous, a nobody amongst everyone, free to love who I wanted, be with whomever I desired, was nothing more than a fantasy in my world.

I opened my eyes and pushed away from the door, and although my stomach cramped from hunger, I just wanted to go to bed. I wanted to lie under my covers and close my eyes, dream about Frankie and what we’d done. I’d given him my virginity, and I wanted to give him every single part of me for the rest of my life.

We might not have been together very long in the grand scheme of things, but that time with Frankie had been consuming, and there was nothing that had ever made me feel more alive.

Being with him was this explosion inside me, fireworks moving throughout every synapsis in my body, coating everything, igniting every nerve ending. I could look at him and feel safe, like the outside world would never touch me. He didn’t think he was a good man, didn’t think he was good enough for me. He was so very wrong.

I wasn’t good enough for him.

I was about to take the steps up to my room when the scent of my father’s cigar smoke had my step faltering for a second. I should’ve known he’d be up despite the late hour. He hardly slept.

“Nadja,” he called out for me in his raspy, thick voice. “Come,” he ordered. Despite his tone being even, I knew it was not to be disobeyed.

I turned from the stairs and headed into his study, knowing he’d be sitting in his oversized leather chair, the fire blazing in the hearth in front of him, even if it was far too hot this time of year for one. He’d have a glass of scotch in his hand, his cigar in his other.

I stopped in the doorway, the night before me exactly how I knew it would be. The fire licked across the logs, his chair poised in front of the mantle, the shadows in the room covering him and making him seem extra sinister.

After my mother died—rumored under very suspicious circumstances for those brave enough to speak of it—my father had risen in the ranks of the Russian bratva.