“Isabella was a part she was playing. The real woman is a fuck ton more complicated. I’m not sure your brother would want that, anyway.”
Her eyes narrow to angry slits. “Don’t pretend like you know my brother.”
“But I do know your brother, Olivia,” I tell her. “I know him better than he knows himself. You don’t think that I was in contact with Jennifer every step of the way while she was playing Isabella?”
She cringes back at that. “You’ve been watching me that long?”
I shake my head. “You? No. She gave me reports on Robert and that was all. I never needed to get more involved until shit went to hell a year after I pulled her out. The first time I laid eyes on you was in that airport.”
She blinks up at me. “Rob deserves to know. She owes him an explanation.”
“She doesn’t have time for explanations. She’s out there risking her life every day.”
“For you.”
“Not for me. For the Bratva.”
She shakes her head. “Why would any sane woman sacrifice her life and her happiness for that?”
“Because there’s someone out there who’s trying to take me down. Trying to pin their own crimes on me. They’re counting on your brother to come after me, and if he hesitates or pulls back… that stops. Abruptly and violently.”
“He’ll go after Rob, too?” she says, her eyes going wide with panic. “Fuck. Fuck. My family…”
“Your family is under my protection,” I tell her. “They’re safe so long as I’m around.”
She frowns, as though she’s genuinely confused by that statement. “Why would you protect them?”
“Because they’re your family. And you are my wife.”
I see her gulp as nerves and uncertainty drive out the anger from her body. “I’m not really, though, am I?”
“You certainly do a good job of acting like it,” I point out with a wry smirk. “Nagging, jealousy, the works.”
“I… I don’t…”
“Jennifer and I are not together,” I tell her, cutting through to the heart of the question she can’t bring herself to ask. “We never have been. We’re too much alike.”
“But she… suits you.”
I shrug. “Lately, I’ve been partial to brunettes.”
She’s not expecting that, either. Her cheeks flush with color, but she tries to control her expression. “Have you been with other women since I’ve been in the house?”
The way she says the question—like it hurts her, like it’s been festering inside for God knows how long—tells me everything I need to know about what the little kiska is feeling.
And the way I answer tells me everything I’ve been unwilling to see about what I’m feeling.
“I haven’t so much as looked at another woman in that way since I saw you in that airport,” I rasp. “Not a single one.”
“Oh.”
She blinks as she tries to absorb that. It’s torturous to watch—mostly because my cock is screaming for attention.
I take the time to drink in the sight of her. Her lips are full and swollen from constant gnawing. I remember her taste. That sweetness, that ripeness. Youth, innocence, and beneath it all, the heady scent of desire.
The mark of a woman who’s spent her whole life being careful and is finally ready to throw caution to the wind.
“I didn’t fuck other women because I didn’t want to, Olivia,” I tell her, running my thumb over her lips. They part slowly, and I can see her lust glistening through. “Because I couldn’t. Because the thought of a single other soul besides you made me sick to my fucking stomach.”
Her throat rides up and down with the force of her swallow. Like she’s tasting this truth. It’s raw, it’s sharp-edged—but it’s honest.
“And you… you didn’t actually abduct anyone? Or kill anyone?”
“I have killed people in the past. Many, in fact,” I tell her unapologetically. “But never a woman. Never an innocent. And never without a reason.”
She seems to accept that. Or at least, the answer doesn’t frighten her the way it might have at the beginning of this forced cohabitation.
I see hope in her eyes when she meets mine. Then—and I don’t even think she’s aware she’s doing this—she runs a tongue along her lip where I just touched her.
Tasting me, this time.
Saying with her body what she’s too afraid to say with her words.
“You’re playing with fire now, Olivia,” I growl.
“Everyone’s always telling me I’m playing it too safe,” she whispers in a rasping voice that doesn’t sound like it belongs to her. “Maybe it’s about time to get burned.”
She reaches out. One pale, fragile little hand crossing all that space to graze against the buckle of my belt.
The fact that she does it?
That she takes the risk, the action, the impulse, instead of retreating to the safe world of her fantasies?
That’s what unleashes the storm.
I’m on her in an instant, devouring her lips with mine, pressing my whole body up against hers and grinding my aching hard cock into the space between her thighs. I haven’t been this out of control since I was a horny teen.
She mewls beneath me like the little kitten she is. Claws at my back, nips at my ear whenever I release her from the kiss to lick down the curve of her throat.
I rip her pants and shirt off quickly, leaving her in just her underwear. She’s already dripping wet, absolutely soaked right through her panties.
And me? I’m quivering like I could erupt right fucking now.
One day, I’ll bury my cock past those sweet lips and give her all of me to feed on.
But right now, I need to be inside her the same way I need to breathe.
I reach down, take a fistful of her panties, and rip them away like a scrap of paper.
“Why do you hide beneath all these layers?” I pant down to her from above as I hold them fluttering in my fist. “Don’t you know how beautiful you are? Don’t you know what the sight of you does to me?”
Her nipples are fat and juicy when I tear off her bra. I fall forward and settle my weight on top of her, length to length, eye to eye.
She’s shaking, but I can see that it isn’t with fear. Her nerves are overpowered by pure carnal need now.
She’s not about to stop me. I could do anything to her.
And more to the point…
That’s exactly what she wants.
I grind the head of my cock against her wet slit as I suck a nipple into my mouth. She cries out, her hand twisting into the knots of my hair.
“Oh, Aleks,” she moans.
And then I can’t hold off any longer. No one says my name like she does. I push myself inside her.
She stretches, her warmth enveloping me. “Fuck,” she cries. “Fuck, you’re so big…”
“Take it, little lamb,” I growl. “You can take all of it.”
I grab her wrists and hold them down as I start pounding into her. She whimpers every time my hips meet hers. Her mouth forms a silent O and tension strains across her face.
Then she closes her eyes and surrenders to it.