Chapter 14
EVGENY
Something shifted at the sandwich shop on the beach, monumental and world-shaking, like an earthquake. I can still feel her fingers threaded through mine, the weight of her hand, the warmth and the promise.
We had been headed there, tectonic plates shifting and grinding, pressure building until it broke in a great wave that turned my world on end.
But what does it mean?
The reason Eva is in my home hasn’t changed. At least, not on paper. And yet, as Ivan saw, she is so far under my skin now I have no idea how to get her out.
Worse yet, I don’t want to.
I’m in dangerous territory. Extremely dangerous for me, but also for her. If anyone discovers I have feelings for Eva, she will become a target. My mother found that out far too late, and my father was never the same, no matter what Ivan said. I have never been the same.
And I don’t know what my feelings are. Is it lust? Interest? Something more? I’m not even sure I’m capable of something more.
I don’t want to care for Eva the way I fear, deep down, I’m beginning to.
The kitchen is dark when I come upstairs, and I’m grateful. The last thing I want is to see her. But that goes out the window when I spot faint light spilling from the theater room.
It would be easy to ignore it. I should walk away, go to my room, take a cold shower, and go to sleep. If I can’t, I have plenty of work to do. Dmitri is at the club tonight, and pounding music and darkness might be just the distraction I need.
I could find another woman who can’t see my face in the shadows, someone I could take into the back office and fuck until she can barely walk. She’ll run once I turn on the light, and I won’t have to worry about pesky emotions.
Except when I think of the club, I think of Eva. And I don’t want just any woman. I want her.
Ivan’s warning not to let the good slip through my fingers has been circling in my head all day.
Almost of their own accord, my feet take me not to my room but toward the theater.
And there is Eva, curled up on the couch with popcorn, watching a movie.
She’s wearing nothing but a skimpy tank top and shorts that leave very little of her body to the imagination.
Had Dmitri really thought she needed those things when I’d ordered him to buy her some clothes?
Must she go around the house in them where any of my men can see her?
The thought sends a wave of possessiveness and desire through me, and my imagination doesn’t need much help. I can see in my mind’s eye the curve of her hip where it meets her waist, the hip bones I could trace down to the place between her thighs. I’m suddenly desperate to sink into her.
When her eyes meet mine, all I can do is stand there, torn by indecision. Something might have shifted between us yesterday, but there’s still time to walk away and pretend nothing happened, that what I feel for Eva doesn’t matter.
Instead, I crook my finger at her. She rises slowly, revealing even more of her curvy body, the fullness of her breasts painfully visible through the thin fabric of the tank top. It doesn’t look like she’s wearing a bra.
“Come here.”
My heartbeat skitters faster, pumping blood to the places I’ll need in a minute. I rise to the occasion, and my pants grow uncomfortably tight.
When Eva hesitates, I crook my finger again. “Come here.”
My voice is gravel in my throat, all I can manage as my blood surges with need and desire.
She crosses the room slowly, giving me an incredible view. Expertly swaying her hips, producing a light bounce in the way her breasts move. She runs her tongue over her lips as if she’s craving me.
The feeling is mutual. I jerk her into me the moment she’s within reach. Eva doesn’t seem to mind the roughness and her eyes never leave mine, as if she’s issuing a challenge.
I lift her onto the credenza, knocking over a lamp, which crashes to the floor. She gasps at the suddenness of it, but the move has also ignited the fire in her dark eyes, and all I can think about is claiming that passion for myself.
Who knew I could get addicted to the bright spirit raging within her? I might be the Kucherov Demon, but Eva is a wildcat, all fire and enthusiasm.
Skimpy as they are, I easily grasp her shorts and underwear in one go and yank them down, flinging them aside as soon as they’re over her feet.
“Evgeny—” she starts, but I’ve already hooked an arm around her waist and dragged her to the credenza’s edge. Her words stop as soon as I sink a finger into her pussy, and I’m pleased to find it already dripping.
“Wet, are you? Wet for me?” I lean forward and murmur the words into her ear, gratified when she shivers as they skim across her skin.
“Yes.” She moans the word as I wiggle my finger, lightly tracing it across the soft folds. “So wet for you.”
“Good. I’m the only one you’re wet for. Do you understand me?”
Eva can only nod, her eyes closed as a second finger joins the first, and she thrusts against me, taking in as much as she can. When I stop my movements, she groans and pushes harder.
“Do you understand?” I ask again, more forcefully, withholding the pleasure until she answers. “No one else. No one else in the house or outside of it.”
I don’t like the way my subordinate looked at Eva yesterday, like he craved her. Nor do I like the idea that Vasya is talking to Ivan about her. I’ve seen them laughing and talking together, and the way he sneaks glances at her when he thinks I’m not looking makes my blood boil.
She moans, wriggling on my fingers, and I withdraw them. Her big brown eyes snap open.
“Say it,” I growl.
“Only you. Only you can fuck me.”
“No one else!”
“No one else. I swear!”
I can hear the desperation in Eva’s dirty words, and it’s more than enough to satisfy me and give her a little reward.
Instead of sliding my fingers back inside her, I bend down and lick her from top to bottom, taking in her scent and taste for the first time.
Eva squeals, her body shaking, her hands burying themselves in my hair as I continue to eat her out, licking and nibbling her swollen clit, until the credenza rattles with the desperate, jerky movements of her hips.
I add a finger, and she comes with a scream that reverberates through my ears.
When I stand, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, Eva is breathing hard, her head thrown back, and her eyes still closed as she savors her post-orgasm glow.
“My turn.”
Eva’s eyes open again, and she watches me take my pants off hungrily, her tongue darting out to lick her lips again. I don’t even worry about my shirt, overcome by the need for the woman in front of me who has my dick hard as a flagpole.
I pull her off the credenza in the next heartbeat, our mouths slamming together, ravaging each other, as I carry her to the couch. Popcorn spills all over the floor as I sweep the bowl off the seat and set Eva on the couch, her stomach pressed into the cushions.
She sticks her ass out in invitation, and I plunge into her without a second thought. All semblance of control goes out the window, and I pump furiously, driven onward by the sight of her tight ass and the sound of her impassioned cries.
I reach forward, taking her tits in my hands, rubbing and kneading them until Eva begins to shake and I feel her tighten around me.
Half of me frantically wishes for release, but the rest is not ready to let go yet. When I pull out, Eva’s cries turn to outrage. She flips over to glare at me, her eyes on fire and clouded with lust.
“What the fuck?” she demands, and her eyes follow me down to the couch.
“Ride me.”
It’s an order, but Eva doesn’t resist. She eagerly straddles my lap and sinks down. But instead of sitting all the way, she teases the head of my dick. I can’t help it, the feeling is overwhelming, and I let my head fall back as I moan.
“Fuck.” I draw the word out, reveling in the feel of her warm, wet folds teasing me until my cock is painfully ready to burst.
But I’m only going to come when her wet pussy is pulsing around me while she screams her release. That’s the only ending to this.
“Fuck me.” Another order.
Eva bends toward me, still teasing me, her fingers working at first the knot of my tie, then the buttons of my shirt. “I’m not done yet.”
“I said,” I growl, grabbing her hair in one hand and yanking. “Fuck me.”
Eva gasps at the tingle in her scalp. I tug on the hair tie that keeps it in a messy bun, and her dark, heavy, wavy hair tumbles around her shoulders and down her back.
The sight of Eva on top of me, naked, her hair wild around her face, is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
She pouts. “Fine.” The teasing light in her eyes stays. “Have it your way.”
And she sinks, taking me to the hilt, and we both cry out. My hands encircle her hips as she begins to rock.
Eva is incredible at working me up, and soon our cries of pleasure mingle in the air. Our sweat-slicked bodies slam together as my hips rise to meet hers, her nails raking down my chest, my hands gripping her hips for dear life.
I feel the moment her pussy constricts, squeezing me so that every nerve feels like it’s on fire, before she stiffens and screams, her back arching. It’s all the encouragement I need.
My orgasm hits like a bomb going off, and the world goes white for a moment. I only hear my bellow as an echo in my head.
When I come back to myself, waves of my climax still washing over me, Eva meets my eyes. She looks triumphant. Satisfied.
Then she collapses forward, and I can feel the still-wild beats of her heart against mine.
I don’t push her off to clean myself up and get on with my night. Instead, I remain where I am and wrap my arms around her, holding her against me.
She doesn’t pull away either. She settles, her body relaxing as though she’s right where she wants to be.
When I enter the kitchen the next morning, Eva is perched on a stool at the island. A plate of food sits uneaten in front of her, and her smile, when she sees me, is as tight as the worry lines around her eyes. Even her “good morning” is stilted.
“Dobroye utro.” Alona hands me my triple espresso and a furrowed look I don’t understand.
I answer my housekeeper with the same “good morning,” as we have since I was a child.
“I’ll be out all day today,” I tell them both. “No one in or out without my say-so. Do you understand?”
Alona likes to pretend she doesn’t understand English, but she nods with a scowl when I eye her.
Eva nods too, but I catch a quiver at her mouth and a suspicious shine in her eyes. I ignore it and turn toward my office, lifting the cup to my lips.
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to care. I try to tell myself that Eva and I are only enjoying one another’s bodies. That’s all.
Except, despite myself, I stop, turn back, and pin her with a stare.
Reading my intentions, Eva swipes the back of her hand across her eyes and sniffs. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
Was she expecting me to ask her to stay? To come back to my room for the night?
She notices I’m still looking at her and adds, “Really, it’s not your problem. It’s mine.”
Behind Eva, Alona meets my eyes and tips her head down. I follow her gaze to the burner phone I gave Eva, clutched in her white-knuckled hands.
As we all stand there, her phone rings, piercing the silence. Eva looks down at it and sends it to voicemail, her cheeks red and her jaw clenched so tightly I can see the veins in her neck.
So it’s not about me.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
My look brooks no argument, and Eva finally gives up with a deep sigh that lifts her shoulders expressively.
“It’s my brother, Jordan. He’s in trouble again, and he’s barely been home.
My father keeps calling, asking me to find him and drag him back to take care of whatever trouble he’s in, and Marco told me Jordan stole money out of his wallet the other day.
Marco is also having trouble with a professor who isn’t treating him fairly, and even complaining to the dean hasn’t fixed anything.
Even worse, tuition is going up next semester, Katie is crying about missing me, and my father barely made any money this month. ”
The truth comes out in a tumbled rush, each word bumping into the next.
By the end of it, I can hear the tears in her voice again, though she swallows hard to keep them back.
But the lines at the corners of her eyes have deepened, and from how red and puffy her eyes are, Eva was crying more than she’s let on.
Alona catches my eye again and nods, letting me know I have the story now and understand the unspoken.
Eva is right. None of this is my problem. She’s not with her family because she fucked with the Kucherov Bratva, and this is her punishment.
Even if she had done it to save her father’s bookstore. To keep her family together.
“Vasya will take you to them today. You can visit, but you will return at the end of the day. Vasya will make sure of it, so don’t try anything. My warnings still stand. Is that understood?”
I skewer her not just with a promise but with a warning in my glare. Eva doesn’t seem to notice.
“What?” she finally chokes out.
“I said you can visit your family, take care of things. But open your mouth about the reality of your situation, try to get away, and Vasya will tell me. You will come back.”
“I—”
I don’t give her time to finish her thought or express her disbelief. Instead, I turn on my heel and flee, wondering what the hell has gotten into me.