Chapter 24
“This is new.”I trace my fingertips over the tattoo along the side of Logan Rhodes’ head, the bold colors obscured a bit by his short-cropped hair. He barely resembles the man I remember from three years ago.
Then, he was an All-American golden boy with a clean-shaven face, baby-blue eyes, and a smile that could charm the panties off a nun.
But the man holding me now, he’s none of those things. His hair is neat, a little longer on top, but slicked off to the side, neat and clean, the way he’d always worn it, but that’s where the similarities end.
His baby blues, now ice-cold, narrow a bit more when he looks at you. New creases bracket his mouth, disappearing behind the short beard and mustache dotted with premature gray. He’s harder. Edgier. The tattoos are only the beginning of the changes.
He glides his thumb along my cheek, the gesture loaded with a sweet affection that has me leaning into him for a reprieve from the constant tension of being under Konstantin’s watchful eye. He smiles down at me, a hint of easy laughter in his voice. “Not quite the clean-cut guy you remember, huh?”
“Oh, I think he’s still there. He’s just on the inside now. What made you get the ink?” I tip my head to where the butterfly and grenade tattoo disappear under his collar. “A ton of ink, by the looks.”
Dancing with Logan is exactly what I need right now. I know the eligible men here are my best option, but they’re all leaving me bored, with emptiness gnawing away in the pit of my stomach. The life looming before me with any of them is so stunningly sterile. Every move and countermove for appearances. A life sentenced to empty pretenses.
The victory I thought I’d feel making Konstantin watch me move on without him is elusive and hollow.
“It makes it easier to slide in and out of dangerous places, if you know what I mean. Tattoos used to make people leery. Now, and in this society, not having them has the same effect.”
I squeeze him a bit harder and lean my head on his chest. “People leery of you, no way.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. And your brother has me going on a special assignment. Clean-cut won’t cut it.”
He takes me into his embrace; the way we’re dancing is almost improper in its intimacy, but right now, not that I’d ever admit it, I just need a hug and this is as close as I’ll get.
How did I live like this for years? Living a glittering, yet anesthetized existence.
“So tell me, Nik, you haven’t been settling for mediocre, right?”
Konstantin’s name burns on my skin. Fury sweeps through me at the reckless move, a last burst of feeling igniting this insatiable yearning to live boldly.
The handful of kisses, the one time he’d been inside of me, just scratch the surface of the man’s capabilities. God help me, I yearn to discover every layer of him. I agonize every moment of what we could be if there was a way through everything dividing us. This hum of energy buzzing between us draws us in despite every deadly reason we should stay away. Every minute, every second, pulsing with the undiscovered euphoria of two damaged pieces who defy all logic to make one perfectly imperfect whole.
If I could just heal the heart he broke. Even if I can, what if he breaks it again? The pain would be insurmountable a second time around.
“I haven’t been settling, but then, it looks like I will be now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re all too polished. Too practiced at saying just the right thing. Their actions are less about what they’re actually doing and more about how they look doing it. I’m finding polished men with money and power bore me to tears.”
His arms tighten around me for the briefest second. “I told him you’d never find someone who could do you justice here. But the alternative…”
“I know. I know it’s the smart thing to do. I just… if I’m going to make this work, I have to bury the woman I’ve become.” My breath hitches. “And I kind of like her. For once, I like her. She’s not a product of what others want her to be. She’s just… me. I’m losing me to be me—I don’t know, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He hooks his finger around a lock of hair brushing my eyebrow and sweeps it away before it can get in my eyes. “Pretend you can have anyone you want. Petrov isn’t hovering on the fringes waiting to assuage his pride. Maksim and Vlad, they’re never leaving Russia again… and Nikolaj is not preparing to go to war with them for control over New York City. Who’s the guy?”
I can’t help the way my eyes search for Konstantin. Even though he’s the only man who truly ever hurt me, although he’s suffocating me, the powerful connection between us draws me to him at every turn.
My secrets bubble discreetly to the tip of my tongue. I step into Logan until my mouth is just a couple inches from his ear and paint my strikingly abstract masterpiece in the barest whisper. “He’s unpolished and mysterious. I know everything about him, yet nothing at all. He’s ruled by an infectious, inexhaustible passion I can’t help but be drawn to until I’m addicted to his chaos.”
Konstantin’s molten glare carves a path over my skin from where he stands with my brother.
“He’s action and reaction incarnate. Every look sets me on fire. I want to kill him almost as much as I madly love him. He doesn’t let me get away with any of my rich bitch, princess bullshit.”
The cords in his neck flex while barely banked rage rolls off him in agonizing waves as he watches us.
“He doesn’t care about appropriateness and decency or some inane protocol as to how I’m supposed to be touched. He doesn’t revere me like this goddamned work of art, on display, untouchable, collecting dust and withering in solitude. He wants to break me… and break right along with me. He’s pleasure and pain to the point of blissful exhaustion.”
His knuckles turn white with the force of his grip on the glass, making me wonder how the crystal manages to not fracture into thousands of razor-sharp shards in his violent hands.
“He’s a brutal picture of anger. Bold cutting slashes of red crisscrossing on the canvas. He’ll lash at me, leaving a sting that takes my breath away. And when I’m pulsing with agony, he loves it away. When he touches me, he’s gold. Shimmering and warm, he soothes every ache.”
“Nik,” Logan whispers as he pulls back and cups my face, “He’s real, isn’t he?”
My heart lodges in my throat, choking me. All I can do is stare at him while I harness every bit of my willpower to keep from confirming what Logan just guessed.
“I’m so sorry.” Bringing his forehead to mine, he sways with me. For just a moment, it’s just my wordless non-confession, but confession all the same. Shared with maybe the only person alive who can understand how impossibly fair it is.
I grip his wrists and squeeze, battling tears, so many fucking tears. “Make me laugh, Logan. If I don’t laugh right this minute, I’m going to lose it.”
“Did I ever tell you about that time your brother got his dick stuck in his zipper?”
“Oh my God!” I let out an unladylike messy snort, my eyes still burning from the unattainable image of Konstantin and me I painted for Logan.
“Yup, broke skin and everything. Had to rub Neosporin into his knob daily. He was late to first period every single day that week…”
With his every horrifying word, my misery slips away and the ground under me solidifies once more with purpose. “Oh, gross.”
“Listen, once you’ve activated the launch sequence, you have to run with it.”
“Thank you, Logan. Seriously. I needed this. Now I feel like I can get through another hour… maybe.”
He whips me away, spins me, and ends on a dip that has my head spinning and the first real smile of the night spreading across my face. “You’ll need another dose of me in an hour, got it.”
“Make it a half hour. I like you.”
He smiles down at me and winks. “I like you too.” Bringing me back into his arms, in a more socially acceptable hold, his eyes trail over my shoulder and he winces. “We’re being watched.”
I glance over my shoulder and meet Konstantin’s thundering gaze. “It’s nothing.” The lie falls from my lips so easily and I hate it. “He’s probably still mad that I called him a boomer.”
Logan throws his head back and laughs. “Boomer? Ouch. That would do it. Although, if the last year is any indication, he’s only just coming into his prime.”
I stumble, but Logan’s firm grip keeps me upright. “Why? What happened in the last year?”
My fingers tremble on Logan’s shoulder, and my stomach flutters with anticipation. Despite all the reasons I definitely shouldn’t care, I want to know how he reacted to my disappearing. I pathetically want him to care.
“He made it his mission to find you and left a lot of bodies in his wake. At least when I go on this little assignment for Nikolaj, I won’t be cleaning up the bloodshed.”
“He didn’t… he doesn’t…” Konstantin has never shied away from violence, away from doing what needs to be done, but he never needlessly killed people and certainly not in some uncontrolled slaughter the way Logan makes it sound. “But he wouldn’t expose Nikolaj like that. He’s too cautious.”
He shakes head. “Not in the last year, he wasn’t. He was a man possessed. God help anyone who stood in his way.”
“Konstantin?”
“Yeah. I don’t think Nikolaj was even a blip on his radar in the past year. Konstantin had one goal. Finding you.”
I glance over at the man in question, trying to see the man Logan is describing, to find he’s reading something on his phone. Something that has him ditching his drink and typing in rapid reply. “He’s never been quick to violence. He’s methodical, with the patience of a damn saint.”
“Not anymore, he’s not. When he wasn’t searching or killing, when he had no leads or needed rest, he spent most of his time underground. The crypt is the one place we haven’t modernized down there. He won’t let us touch it.”
The crypt, where we kissed for the first time. Where he gave me an orgasm that created a goddamn addiction I can’t satiate. Where I finally got to spend the night sleeping in his arms, one torturous time.
“When it comes to you, Nik, Malikov has one setting… scorched Earth,” he says before spinning me again.
Damn you, Konstantin. No.
He does not get to coil his way around my heart like this. By being this fucking beast who only exists in fairy tales, tearing the world to the ground to find me. By being the tortured soul suffering in the place where we began.
My back collides with an unyielding, warm body. Konstantin’s familiar scent winds around me, tapping at all the fresh bruises left from my conversation with Logan.
His possessive arm locks around my waist, his hand firmly settling over my belly where I’m sure he can feel the fireworks detonating under my skin.
“Mind if I cut in?”
His breath dances over my ear and my skin burns with a rush of blood, followed by goosebumps marching over my skin to the roots of my hair.
Yes, I mind.
My heart can’t take this. Not tonight. Not after stupidly ripping myself open in a weak moment.
Logan shakes his head. “Not at all. I’ll find you in a bit and we’ll pick up where we left off.”
When he leans in and kisses my cheek, I want to sink my nails into his forearm and force him to stay with me, but then he’ll know. He’ll know the man I spoke of was none other than my godfather and the fallout? I couldn’t even think about the fallout.
Logan disappears into the crowd right as Konstantin gives my hand a firm tug and spins me in his arms.
His eyebrows are nothing more than heavy slashes over dark, livid eyes. His palm burns where he caresses my back, pulling me in so tight and hard, his hard cock drives into my belly, short-circuiting my every defense.
He clasps my chin, the warmth of his fingertips seeping into my skin, and for just a second my eyes sink closed and I absorb him. I don’t have to hate him here. In fact, it’s best if I don’t. Keep up the appearance of adoring goddaughter with endless affection for her godfather, but not so much so that he thinks he’ll ever hold my heart again. And if during the process I pretend for just a minute, just long enough to ease the ache lancing my heart, then so be it.
“Husband hunting, are we?”
The mocking snarl in his words has my eyes shooting open, daggers aiming right at him.
This is the part where everything I do to break free of him earns a lashing from his whip. Where he toys with my splintered heart and shows me all the ways any future without him will be lacking. This is the man I saw in him when he crashed into the commune. The very one who recognized his match as he circled me.
He won’t be merciful. He won’t hold back.
This is where he makes me bleed.
But I won’t bleed alone.
“You want to shop for a husband, I’ll let you get away with it… for tonight, but you’ll be doing it with my cum leaking out of my tight little pussy.”
I squeeze my thighs at his words, everything in me from head to toe winding so tight I’m on the verge of snapping. Before I realize what I’m doing, my tongue swipes my bottom lip, drawing his possessive gaze to my mouth.
He leans in, dangerously—indecently close, his every word branding me.
“You’ll do it, with my cum drenching my supple thighs, keeping those mouthwatering legs glued firmly shut.”