15. Lev
15
LEV
R urik and I didn’t have a lot of time to walk around campus and watch the activity from the Petrov men. I lacked a chance to see this supposedly dead guard who’d come back to life, either.
Marcus called me, and seeing his name on my phone sent me into an immediate worrying mood.
“Lev,” he answered quickly before I could speak. Rough breaths puffed out after his greeting, like he was running. “She’s gone.”
“Fuck!” I whipped around to look at Rurik. He tensed, stopping short with me on this surveillance walk. “What the fuck do you mean?”
“Eva’s gone. I think she snuck out when I wasn’t looking.”
“That’s what you were there to do! To watch over her!”
Rurik furrowed his brow, likely deducing from my tone and stance that I was reacting to bad news about my assignment.
This was just my fucking luck. Just my goddamn shitty luck. I was pulled and torn between two motivations on this job, to protect her and seek out whatever Oleg apparently wanted me to spy on with the Petrovs, and this was what I got while I focused on one thing over her. I was supposed to be able to trust him. I was supposed to be able to rely on my brothers.
“And I think she took advantage of your not being here. I didn’t let her leave. But this fucked-up bullshit about a food delivery forced me out of the apartment. By the time I dealt with that downstairs, she was gone. I?—”
“No. No more fucking excuses.” I shook my head, watching as Rurik got his phone out and started tapping then scrolling on the screen. “No fucking excuses, Marcus. You failed. If you had to deal with some bullshit about food coming in, any other man I’ve placed near the building could have done that.”
“Yes, sir. I apologize, but?—”
“Got her.” Rurik glanced up. “I found Kelly’s location.”
I hung up on Marcus, not caring about ending the call first. Manners didn’t matter right now. “You think she’d be with her?”
“Of course,” he replied.
I swiped on my phone screen, hastily changing over to another app and checking the tracking on Eva’s phone. If she had any sense—not that she’d been using it to sneak out at all—she would’ve taken her phone with her.
She had.
Thank fuck.
A deep breath of relief rushed out of me.
The dot blinked clearly, showing that she wasn’t far from me. She was on campus. She’s snuck out to come here. “What’s in this area?” I abandoned all thoughts of following and spying on the Petrov men, running in the direction where Eva had gone without my supervision.
You little brat. You stubborn, insistent brat.
Rurik ran with me. “I think the frat houses are that way.”
“Fuck.” A frat house? It seemed the minx had gotten it in her mind to rebel and push back even more, risking it to go to one of the famed parties there. In other words, the orgies when drugs were exchanged freely. Many men and women in the Baranov Family were users. With the wealth they had, the loopholes to do whatever they wanted as rulers of the criminal world, it wasn’t surprising that many Mafia members did drugs. Eva very well could be one of them, too, but not on my watch.
We ran, sprinting the last leg of the journey there. Before we reached the loud, lit-up mansion, I texted a driver to have a car as close as possible.
Inside, we pushed through the crowds. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t hear. Sounds and too many bodies in a small space threatened to distract me, but I didn’t panic. Keeping a level head was the only way to infiltrate this scene, like a fucking war zone. All the details didn’t matter. I didn’t care who I pushed aside, what I knocked over, and if I trespassed in anyone’s personal space.
I was on a mission to retrieve Eva. Not because it was my job to keep her safe, but because I wanted her safe. I wanted her whole and well.
Scanning the faces in the crowds wasn’t easy, not with all the lights flashing in what appeared to be a makeshift dance area. I cut through the mass, searching for her expressive face. For a glimpse of her long brown locks. Of her glittering blue eyes.
But she wasn’t out here. Rurik yelled out that he was checking the rooms toward the east end of the house, and I focused on combing through every group of drunk or high partiers in every room and hallway I reached.
I kicked open doors. I surprised couples fucking in corners.
At the last door off the hallway from the kitchen where kegs lined the table and coke waited in parallel streaks on the counter, I found her.
Or I found him, the bastard who would cease to live.
I burst into the room just long enough to see him lower his hand and pull at her clothes. Her bare legs kicked as she bucked to get him off her, but her resistance didn’t work.
I did. I moved like a lethal machine, intent on killing this asshole for daring to touch her.
“Lev!” Her shout gave him a warning. Jerking his head back, he opened his mouth to yell.
“Fuck off. I’m not done with her yet.”
As far as I was concerned, he’d never have a chance to start, either. Gripping the back of his head, twining my fingers in his hair, I fastened a fist and used that as purchase to wrench him off her. Before he could fully roll into a crash of a landing against the door that had swung shut from my violent entrance, I was on him.
I held him in place to pummel my fist on his face. I kept him on the ground to kick and knee up into his body. Grunts left me, but his groans of pain and pleas for mercy goaded me to hit harder. To strike him faster. To render him so completely ruined with pain claiming his every cell that he’d never think about looking at a woman again.
Not Eva, at least.
I stood straight after what felt like an hour of vengeance delivered by my brutal attack. Panting to catch my breath, my chest heaving for air, I stared down at the man I’d reduced to a crumpled mess on the floor in a matter of a minute.
“Lev.”
I turned, narrowing my eyes at Eva as she smoothed her dress back down. Her throat strained with the struggle to swallow, but she maintained eye contact with me all the while. Her cool-blue gaze froze me, and all at once, I tried to decipher the emotions clashing on her face. Fear. Anger. Worry. Gratitude?
“Come on,” I ordered gruffly, too swayed by this need to punish her, to cherish her, to hold her at the same time I’d admonish her. I stepped over an unconscious woman on the floor, solely focused on reaching this woman, the troublemaker who defied and tempted me like no other ever had. And like no other ever would.
The second I wrapped my fingers around her wrist, I tugged her onto her feet. A squeak left her lips, and she stumbled. Colliding into my back, she kept her balance, but just barely. With how quickly I hauled her out of there, she was challenged to keep up.
I didn’t release her once, letting my anger and fury stream through my veins as I led her out of the house. Then all the way to the car. Only when she was seated in the passenger seat did I let her go. Slamming the door shut didn’t appease this dark anger controlling me. Speeding through the silence the whole way back to the apartment didn’t calm me, either.
Her presence was a catalyst to driving me insane because each time I thought back to the stark rage and fear that I felt when I saw another man touching her, I recalled the agony of tears on her cheeks.
She broke the ice as soon as we walked into the apartment. “Lev, I’m?—”
“No,” I roared. “No. I don’t want to fucking hear it.”
She pressed her lips together as I slammed the door.
“You happy now?” I taunted, so mad I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to breathe evenly again. “Are you satisfied that you snuck out and almost had that bastard rape you? Huh?”
“I just wanted?—”
“What?” I demanded walking up into her space until she backpedaled toward the living room. Tripping and slightly losing her stance as she backed into furniture, she frowned as she remained locked on my gaze.
“What? You wanted what , Eva?” I tore off my coat then tossed it to a chair as she reached the sofa. The backs of her knees hit the cushions, but she caught herself from falling down to them, still watching me.
“You wanted attention from some loser?” I closed in on her space, desperate and lost to the insane need of changing the facts of this night. I couldn’t stomach the memory of another man touching her. Of another man trying to take what wasn’t his.
Eva wasn’t mine either. But I couldn’t convince myself to believe that.
I wanted her.
I needed her to be mine, right fucking now. A feral streak of possessiveness claimed me as I got right up into her face and gripped the back of her neck.
Her brow creased as she narrowed her eyes, pouting and still sassy as I approached her. “You’re desperate for a man to pay attention to you? Fine.”
I crashed my lips down on hers, savoring the potent spark of forbidden contact between us. She gasped, shocked, but as I stole her breath and angled her to better submit under the pressure of my mouth on hers, my tongue alongside hers, moans followed. Hers. Moans and whimpers, especially when I reared back.
“Is that what you want? You want a man to pay attention to you?”
She gasped, glowering at me with such insistent hatred that I couldn’t stop myself from demanding more. I slammed my mouth back down on hers, drowning in pure lust from the feel of her breaths mixing with mine, her lips sliding and brushing over mine.
“Tell me!” I ordered when I broke for air again. Her hands came up to lay on my chest, and I lowered my arms. Locking her in a tight embrace, I gave her no chance to think of slipping away. Of pushing me away. “Tell me. Is this what you fucking want?”
“I want…” The need in her tone was my undoing. The desire damning me from her dreamy gaze pushed me past the point of return. But it was her reaching up to me, trying to kiss me again, that edged me into caving.
Kissing her harder, I lowered my hands to her ass. I clutched her, digging my fingers into the juicy globes. And she keened into my mouth like an animal in heat.
“You want a man to give it to you?” I growled, unable to stop escalating this anger-laced need that consumed me.
I ripped away from her wet lips. She pouted at the sudden stop to our kiss. As I pushed her shoulder, prompting her to fall to the couch, I kept my fingers on the edge of her panties.
She lowered to the cushions, but I remained standing with her panties—ripped at the seams and still in my hands.
“Is this what you’re acting out for?” I dropped to my knees, flicking her dress up and forcing her legs to widen apart. Making room for myself, I dipped my head toward her, ready to give her another lesson on discipline. “Huh?”
Her wide-open gaze locked on me as I stared up at her. Without delay, I moved my face to her pussy, open and bared just for me. Pausing an inch away, so she’d feel the warmth from my breath, I pushed her thighs further apart.
“You looking for a man to make you feel good?” I snarled, damning her to even think about doing so with anyone other than me .