Chapter 28
I’m goingto fucking kill her myself.
Popping into the fray like she’s watching the fucking opera and not bursting out into the open with bullets flying.
Like one didn’t just miss her by fucking inches.
She hovers over the fucker under my shoe, her blade glinting in the moonlight, not a single flicker of understanding on her livid face as to just how close she came to dying tonight.
My head pounds, the adrenaline beginning its retreat, leaving my muscles twitching and my hands shaking. Or maybe that’s the fury and the instinct to wrap my fingers around her slim little neck and shake the fuck out of her pulsing through me.
The minute I step back, the man at my feet loses consciousness. “Take them all to the den. Keep them alive. No one touches them. They’re mine.”
“And mine.” Her silky voice drips with cold malice.
If it were any other night, if the target had been anyone but her, it would be comical to see twin looks of shock on their faces as their gazes snap to hers.
But right now, none of this is funny. It’s stupid, reckless, absolute insolence and tonight she will fucking learn to listen.
I crouch, and with one swipe of my arm, she’s draped over my shoulder. “We’ll be back.”
“Put me down, asshole!” She pounds on my back, the hilt of her knife connecting with my kidney, earning her nothing more than a grunt for her effort.
Grigori shakes his head as I turn away. Marching through row after row of the dead, I delve deeper into the darkness, tearing up the cold damp grass as I stomp past endless gravestones. Most who likely died in old age, but not all, dammit. The young rest here too. Lives snuffed out far too soon. They’d gone to their graves with the barest taste of life on their tongues.
Tonight, she’d almost become one of them.
I smack her ass, putting every bit of force I can muster into my swing, knowing it still won’t be enough to make me feel one bit better.
“Shut the fuck up!” I bellow the words, the sound a deep combination of every emotion she brings out in me. Rage, helplessness, regret, longing, jealousy, obsession, pride, hurt, and love.
So much love I’m drowning in it. Making stupid fucking mistakes. Mistakes with the highest price tag—her life.
The sudden need to see her face, to reassure myself she’s okay, sweeps over me and before I know what I’m doing, I dump her on her feet in front of a tall cross. I raise her arms, settling her hands on each side of the granite. “Don’t move.”
As I frantically search over her skin, her face softens from furious indignation to quiet understanding. It slices through me, leaving me raw and bleeding because she looks so damn much like she did when she looked up to me, adored me, and loved me. Like when she chose me—out of everyone—she chose me.
I thought I’d felt the worst of the pain from that loss, but I was wrong. So very wrong. Seeing this side of her again—it resurrects possibilities. Possibilities she almost snuffed out with her recklessness.
A new wave of terror sears my gut and I’m suddenly so fucking livid again, I take a step back and clench my fists to keep my hands off her. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Bringing a knife to a gunfight?”
The soft smile slips from her lips and her face slides right back into the fierce little killer I know her to be now. Only she’s inexperienced and impulsive and is likely to get dead before she ever reaches her full potential.
She looks me up and down, one eyebrow shooting up. “Oh, and you’re bulletproof?”
“Actually, yes, you little shit.”
Her eyes narrow to slits with the words ‘you little shit’ and now it’s all I want to call her.
I rip open the top half of my shirt, revealing the Kevlar vest beneath. “All the vital organs are protected.”
She aims her knife at the zipper of my pants. “So this organ is expendable then… good to know. Her arm snakes out in a flash. When she draws her hand back, moonlight glints on steel, illuminating my blood streaking the blade.
I wrench open my pants and peel them partway down my hips, staring unblinking at the line she sliced into my skin now welling with blood.
The sting throbs to life, a sharp bite in the skin between my thigh and groin.
Our eyes lock as everything around us goes utterly still. Betrayal hovers on the fringes of love and hunger between us.
Euphoria is our reward, but only after we pay for it in pain and blood.
Before she can even blink, I’m on her. My arms loop around her legs and drag them around my waist.
Scrambling for balance, she clutches the cross tight, but never lets go of the knife.
I go still and take her in, imagining a rendering of her like this on canvas. Her defiant smirk under her intense, unblinking gaze. My snarling, vicious little sacrifice suspended there.
I’d hang her fury in the foyer as a warning to anyone who graces our door.
“You’re all doe-eyed adoration one minute and vengeance the next.” I graze her proud little chin with my knuckles. “Which of you will destroy me, Pcholka?”
“Vengeance.” The word is a growl of warning delivered by her sharp tongue as I tip her up higher. Because of her obscenely high slit, her dress falls around her waist, baring her to me.
A blessing and a curse.
As is always the way with her.
“I hate this dress.” The very first touch of my fingers brushing over her clit leaves the breath whooshing from her lungs. Her eyes turn glassy as I begin to tame her in the smallest of increments.
“I hate you.” She spits the words at me like a snarling little viper. With a regal tip to her chin, she bucks in my hands, her legs hooking around me and pulling me in.
Her arousal slickens the pad of my thumb. I continue stroking in lazy swipes over her clit. First along the left, then over the top, taking in every single reaction. Looking for the place that will plummet her over the edge. When I brush along the tight little bud on the right, she bucks in my hands, her eyes rolling back and eyelids sliding shut.
Ahhhh, there’s the spot.
Now I’ve got you.
Her hair tumbles around her face in wild waves. She’s pale. The blood hasn’t completely returned to the skin’s surface, except the angry flush of scarlet in her cheeks.
I can work with that.
“The only part of you that hates me is your vicious tongue, but I bet the minute I slide my cock in your mouth and fuck your throat, she’ll fall for me too.”
Fire burns in her glare, but her hips buck, silently begging me to take her even as she condemns me for it.
Bringing my thumb to my mouth, I suck her arousal from my skin, savoring her taste bursting on my tongue.
“When you learn to fucking do as you’re told, I might just have to reward you with my mouth on this tight little pussy and not come up for hours.”
She opens her mouth to snarl at me, and I take full advantage. Slanting my mouth over hers, I swallow her barbs. Her spiteful little tongue wars with mine as she strains closer, all mewling whimpers and sharp teeth sinking into my bottom lip.
Warm, wet, and wild, I take until I’m swallowing her moans where they mingle with mine, and we’re both a tangle of heaving breaths devouring one another.
Tearing myself from the distraction of her mouth, I take satisfaction in her swollen, wet lips. Resting my hand low on her belly, I swipe her tender flesh with my thumb once again and tease that tight bundle of nerves until her legs tremble.
Finally, the anger in her expression slips away and she surrenders to the pleasure. Her eyes dart around frantically as the release she yearns for hovers so close—I yank my hand away and smack my palm down on her pussy—yet so far away.
Her eyes shoot open and narrow.
“That’s for cutting me, you little shit.” I tug my achingly hard cock from my pants and drag the head along her hot slit I wrecked earlier, already glistening for me. With zero finesse and giving zero fucks whether I cause her pain after the way she scared the life out of me, I slam inside her wet heat.
Pain is living.
I’ll be the man to make sure she’s utterly destroyed, while overflowing with life.
Buried to the hilt, I have to wonder how I ever lived without this. How I could ever live without this. “You tell me, Pcholka… does this organ feel expendable?”
Her lips break apart in a gasp, her back bows, moonlight illuminating her skin as her head falls back against the stone, stretching out her vulnerable neck before me. Her heart riots out of control, her pulse hammering just under the delicate skin at the base of her throat.
Brushing that vulnerable, sweet spot alongside her clit becomes my absolute favorite thing to do as I watch her soften under the attention. Drawing out of her, the cool air hits my wet cock. A hiss slips from between my teeth.
Gliding my thumb in tandem as I fuck her, she coils tight, her neck flexing as she gulps back a sob.
I slap her pussy again and drive into her. “Can you live without me wrecking you with this cock every chance I get?”
The way she’s draped on the cross like a sacrifice is blasphemous. The blatant disrespect to the grave only adds to my mountain of sins, each one shackling to me, ready to drag me to hell.
But it won’t be tonight.
I curl over her and sink my teeth into the firm flesh on the inside curve of her breast. “Do you think you can live without me?”
Gliding most of the way out of her, I bury myself to the hilt once again, prompting her choked satisfying cry. She pulses around me, squeezing, drawing me impossibly deep, and my chest swells with a renewed purpose.
Submission.
Victory.
“Would your pussy weep for anyone else’s cock the way it does for mine?” My gaze lands on my blood, now smeared along one creamy thigh and my name scrawled across the other.
Both stake my claim, but they’re not enough. I want her words.
I grab her chin and turn her defiant face to mine as I thrust harder into her until I reach a maddening pace, only backing off when she gets close to release. I torture myself along with her by tethering my urge to let go and violently take her. “Who do you belong to?”
She yanks her head back and forth, but I don’t let her slip from my grip. Leaning in so close her desperate pants flutter over my skin, I growl down at her. “Say it!”
“No one.” The words drip with stubborn rebellion before she clamps her lips shut.
I rear back and smack her pussy again, the contact splitting the air with the satisfying crack of my palm against her tender flesh. “The fuck you don’t. Who. Do. You. Belong. To?”
The answer I want so desperately lingers in her eyes, but she keeps the words trapped in her throat. Admission is surrender, and she’s spent a lifetime belonging to everyone except herself.
Any other man would succumb to their wounded pride and force the words from her, but they’d be meaningless.
Could I live with doubt if I forced them from her? Is this how I want either of us to remember the first time she confesses out loud to what we both already know?
Caressing the valley between her breasts, I slow my pace, rocking deep, drawing whimpers of rising pleasure from her throat. Every glide is absolute torture, resisting the high only exploding inside of her can bring.
I want her freely.
I want her to look at me the way she used to.
I want her to ask me who I belong to. Because if she asks, it means the answer matters. It tells me that somewhere, there’s a way back. She’s been screaming for freedom in a thousand little ways, but no one listened. I didn’t listen.
She’s been pleading for autonomy. For power.
She already has it… the year I couldn’t find her confirmed one thing, if nothing else… she’s always had absolute power over me.
My gaze roams over every inch of her, everywhere but her eyes. Seeing what I can’t have is too much and we both need relief. Adjusting my grip on her ass, I pull her in tighter and thrust harder, chasing the high. I tease her swollen clit, anxiously waiting as she climbs to her own release, so I can see her so very alive and flying apart around me.
The burn rises in the base of my spine, and I gasp. My balls draw up tight as her walls begin to spasm around me. Despite my determination, I can’t resist. I have to look at her.
I need to look into those eyes that haunt me every second as she comes apart.
There’s a softness there now. A blissfulness with the wave of release building within her.
This is enough. It has to be enough. I grasp at the sentiment, but I’m not sure I believe it.
“Kostya?” she whispers, and my eyes snap to hers. She traces her finger over my jaw, and my lungs seize on a glimmer of hope. “Who do you belong to?”
Tension I’ve been carrying for more than a year suddenly drains from my body, magnifying the bone-melting ecstasy of release.
Her walls clamp down on me, milking me, her unfocused eyes locked on mine as every ounce of fear choking me tonight dissipates in this moment as I pour everything into her.
And surrender.
“You.”