Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Otherwise…
Dammit. It was just like my selfish sister to leave behind such a twisted, fucked-up mess for me to handle.
She had never loved Solovyov. Just like she had never loved Kostya.
I wasn’t even sure Veronika was capable of love.
But Kostya was the only thing we had ever fought about.
I had begged her to be a good wife. To respect him.
She had been given something most women in our world would kill for.
Not an old, graying man with a gut and a violent temper. Not a drunken brute who would beat his wife into submission.
No.
She had been given him.
Handsome. Powerful. Dangerous in all the ways that made my blood heat.
Still, it wasn’t the life she wanted, and she had always been so brash, so impulsive, that when I heard she had moved out of Kostya’s home and was staying with someone else, I wasn’t surprised.
I was mad; I told her she was being silly, but honestly, I was just upset that she was wasting an opportunity to have one of the most gorgeous men I had ever seen in her bed.
It wasn’t as if she could have just passed him up and I could take him instead.
No, he was bratva and high enough that his position required the connections that only Veronika had from her birth mother’s family.
He would have given her everything her imperfect and vain heart wanted. Wealth, children, a home her friends envied, social position. And she had thrown it away.
It had made me furious.
Not just because she had walked away from him.
But because I couldn’t take her place.
Kostya wasn’t for me.
I was too soft. Too immature and unsophisticated. Too wrong.
He’d needed Veronika’s statuesque, ice-blonde perfection.
Not me.
Never me.
But when he stepped into my room now, closing the distance between us in three long, unhurried strides, none of that mattered.
I was caged.
He braced his hands on the wall, trapping me between his strong arms, his body radiating heat, overwhelming me with his presence.
I hated how my body reacted.
How my breath stuttered.
How warmth coiled low in my belly.
Kostya hadn’t even touched me.
He was trying to intimidate me. Trying to scare me.
And yet—
The thudding of my pulse had nothing to do with fear.
My thighs pressed together as that terrible, forbidden ache built between them.
I hated him.
I hated myself more.
“I am many things, moy zaichonok.” His voice dropped lower, became rougher. “A liar is not one of them. And if you suggest otherwise again, I will bend you over my knee and spank you like the brat you’re being.”
Heat licked down my spine, hot and humiliating.
My traitorous body responded to the threat.
Kostya saw it.
Of course he did.
His mouth curved slightly, but there was no humor in it, only satisfaction.
“I still don’t believe you.” The words came out breathless, weak.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he murmured, inching closer, his scent invading my lungs, sending shivers over my skin. “You just have to obey me.”
“Never.”
It was barely more than a whisper.
My gaze dropped to his lips, full and firm, and I bit my own.
I could feel his breath against my skin, warm and steady, and my knees almost buckled.
I didn’t know who moved first.
Did he lean down? Did I push up onto my toes?
I couldn’t be sure.
All I knew was that his lips crashed against mine in a searing kiss.
Not gentle. Not coaxing.
Possessive. Claiming. Demanding.
And God help me, I kissed him back.
CHAPTER 7
KOSTYA
If I had known Marina tasted like candied cranberries and spiced oranges, I never would have been able to keep my hands off her.
The temptation would have ruined me.
Her hands landed on my shoulders, and for a brief, agonizing second, I thought she was going to pull me closer. Instead, she tried to push me away.
That was not going to happen.
I saw the look in her eyes, the way her pulse fluttered at her throat, the way her pupils dilated, dark and wide with need.
She felt this, too.
I refused to be denied any longer.
I had spent months chasing her. Years denying my attraction to her.
I was never letting her go.
Ever.
It had been too long. Too long since I had been bound to a cold, cruel woman.
I deserved this.
I deserved her.
I had hunted her down.
And caught her.
By right, she was mine.
Finders keepers.
My fingers tangled in her hair, tightening at the base of her neck as I tilted her head back and thrust my tongue past her lips, deepening the kiss, taking what I needed.
She could push at my shoulders all she wanted.
It didn’t change the fact that at first, before her mind caught up with her body, she had melted into it.
A tiny voice in the back of my head rattled off all the reasons this was wrong.
She was too young. She was Veronika’s sister.
But Veronika had never been faithful. She had become my wife in name only.
And now, she was dead.
I had promised to protect Marina from Solovyov.