The Double

But I didn’t know the steps. I couldn’t match him, couldn’t fight him the way Christina must have. I realized too late that with her, this would have been a violent clash, a battle for dominance that he always won. I just melted. And that made him stop and break the kiss, frowning at me from just a few inches away. He ran his thumb over my lips, looking confused, and I was lost between oh God, I’ve blown it and please please kiss me again.

His lips came down on mine again and this time he was the teacher and I was the pupil. He led me, toyed with me, showed me what he liked and then rewarded me when I got it right. My hands found his shoulders and clung on, my legs weakening. Oh God it was amazing, that hard upper lip plundering me but the softness of the lower one stroking mine so gently. He was so confident, he knew so well how to pleasure me, how to hold me tight and kiss me deeply, how to tease my tongue with his. And yet each time I responded, however timidly, he gave a groan of lust that vibrated right to my core. I was different to Christina... and he liked it.

I was only dimly aware of his hand sliding up my thigh and pushing the dress even higher. Then he squeezed my ass through my panties and I started wondering how much the guards could see. When his fingers hooked under the side of my panties, my eyes sprang open and I broke the kiss, panting hard. “I—”

My protest was cut off by him skimming his fingertips up over the lips of my sex. I could feel them swell under his touch, knew he could feel the slickness between them. “Konstantin—” I croaked.

He didn’t answer, but with his other hand he grabbed the shoulder strap of my dress and wrenched it down over my arm. The neck stretched and, since the bra was built in, my breast was revealed, almost down to the nipple. I gave a strangled groan of horror: the hand between my thighs was sort of hidden by our bodies, but I was about to flash the guards. “They’re watching,” I panted.

His voice was a heavy rasp, his eyes hooded. “You never minded an audience before.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he chose that moment to plunge two fingers up into me and I arched my back and moaned—

Running footsteps, then an apologetic cough from behind him. Konstantin twisted around with a sound that was almost a snarl. But he didn’t yell at the man who’d run into the room, just waited, his massive chest rising and falling as he panted.

The man said just three words. “It’s Ralavich. Here.”

Konstantin just stared at him in disbelief. As he took it in, his face turned...bleak. Haunted in a way that made me want to wrap my arms around him.

Then his jaw tightened and his eyes went so mercilessly, bitterly cold I drew in my breath and pressed my back against the banister. I’d glimpsed a warmer side to him but this was the opposite. This was him filled with raw, jagged hate. Ralavich. I knew that name.

“I need to deal with this,” muttered Konstantin. And he wheeled around and stalked out. I raced to pull my dress back into place before any of the guards got a good look at my bare breast and hiked-up skirt but I needn’t have worried: when I looked around, every one of them had their eyes averted. They didn’t dare look.

Except one. Grigory was muttering orders to the other guards but his eyes were still on me, his expression unreadable. I swallowed and hooked my shoulder strap back into place, then smoothed the hem down. I told the guards I was going upstairs to unpack and started to climb the staircase, but I could feel Grigory’s eyes burning into my back. My stomach was in knots. I must have made a mistake. Because somehow, he knows.

15

Konstantin

Ralavich. I’d heard his name and suddenly I’d been twenty years in the past, watching everything I cared about being torn away from me.

And I’d frozen. Weak. So weak. I couldn’t afford to freeze or hesitate, not even for an instant. Now the rage was thundering through me, the need to find him and destroy him making my hands clench into fists. I’d tried to have that bastard killed many times, over the last two decades. But he was as well-protected as I was. If he was really here in New York, maybe I’d have the chance to do it myself.

But he can’t be here. It made no sense. Every scrap of New York was taken by me, Luka or Angelo. Soon, it would all be mine. Ralavich wouldn’t be able to gain a toehold in this city... unless there was something I was missing.