Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
“She’s alive.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Your body language was all over the place, interested, closed off, then embarrassed that you were actually curious.” He still wasn’t looking at me.
I reared back.
“And now you’re wondering how much I’ve noticed up until now. Did you want me to read you, or is it too early in our marriage for that?” Again, he didn’t look up.
I glared. “We’re not married.
“Until you’re safe, you say, ‘why yes husband, I would love to know more fascinating details about my body language and blatant curiosity when you put your hands on me, tell me more.’”
I almost threw my milkshake in his face.
He grinned down at his phone. “Don’t throw it, I like this shirt.”
“I don’t.”
“You stared two seconds longer than normal this morning, then another ten seconds this afternoon before you approached me, you didn’t take a picture, then again you didn’t really need to, did you dorogaya?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe I was thinking of all the ways I could escape from you.”
“Doubtful.” He finally set his phone down and placed his forearms on the table, they were strong, muscle on top of muscle, with smooth skin. “You know the consequences if you run. I won’t hesitate to kill you before they do. They’d torture you. I’d put you out of your misery.”
I shuddered and looked away. “Is that where I say, ‘thank you for your mercy’?”
“No. I just don’t feel the need to lie to you about everything. The truth may be more painful, but it’s more real, and I think you need real as much as I do.”
“Now you open up? After two days with me? Are you sampling the drugs you sell at the club now?”
His eyes flashed. “I don’t do drugs, nor do I sell them.” He shrugged. “I may move them here or there, but that’s only because someone has to do it, and I’d rather be that someone than one of the cartels.”
Our food came.
He’d ordered giant burgers for both of us and started immediately setting out ketchup, fry sauce, and mayo.
I watched in fascination as he dipped a fry into each and then ate it.
It occurred to me then, I’d never seen him do anything so human.
He was eating and I noticed that I hadn’t seen him really devour his food like this in front of me before.
It felt strange, watching him do something I imagined he never took part of, what did I think? He drank people’s blood.
“Watching me eat can’t be that entertaining,” he said between bites. “Unless you just like watching my mouth and imaging what it would feel like sucking one of your—”
I threw a fry at him.
Then froze. Literally held my breath.
He didn’t reach for his gun.
He didn’t move either.
Slowly, he lifted his head and tilted it to the side in a graceful catlike manner, his face hard as stone. And then he picked up the offending fry and very leisurely dipped it in ketchup.
I felt my body heat in all the wrong places as he held it in front of his lips, his eyes at half-mast as his tongue slid out and licked the bottom of the fry.
I gripped the edge of my wooden barstool, unable to look away as he twisted the fry in his mouth, his tongue swirling around it, and then his lips sucking so perfectly that it was a crime. An actual crime, his mouth. He shoved the fry in and licked his lips then went about licking his thumb slowly, then his forefinger.
“Do that again and I’m not using a fry.”
“’Kay.” And I meant it.
I wouldn’t survive his touch.
I wouldn’t even know how to.
And I’d hate myself, wouldn’t I?
If I gave in.
If I let him touch me that way.
I’d be exactly what my brother and dad called me.
What he’d called me at dinner.
Not his wife.
His whore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Andrei
I was either suffering a mental breakdown.
Or I needed to take up a hobby.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
It was driving me insane.
I had to work that night. I worked every night, but I had to play my part, and I wouldn’t be able to see her innocent reactions to things like sucking a french fry.
I laughed at that as I tucked my half-open black linen shirt into my low-slung leather pants. I grabbed my family crest, placing it firmly on my right hand. A sickle with three bleeding stars hanging over it.
The Petrov Dynasty.
Broken.
Bleeding.
The last remaining star.
That’s what I was.
That’s what it represented.
I’d been the smaller star because I was the youngest heir, and now? Now the only one left. I couldn’t count Maya, Nikolai Blazik’s wife. She was a half-sister and that was it, and she wanted nothing to do with the Petrov name.
Not that I could blame her.
I should probably update the good doctor about the happenings in the club, and the mysterious arrival of Elena.