Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“If she’s selling the same shit she did back then, she’s full of crap, драгоценный.” When my glare almost knocks him on his ass, his back molars smash together before he corrects, “Ana.” He steps closer, bringing my defenses down with an honest pair of eyes. “I never touched her. Not once.”
“Your numerous confessions never seem to stop the rumors.”
“I don’t give a fuck about rumors.” He blocks me from entering the tiny bathroom by grabbing the tops of my arms before he silently demands my focus. When he gets it, albeit hesitantly, he repeats, “I don’t give a fuck about rumors as long as you don’t believe them.” I fight not to sway into him when he says, “Whatever she told you was a lie, and considering what you’d just been through, that was a fucking shitty thing to do.”
His last sentence reminds me of why we separated, and I spent several boring years abroad trying to forget every magnificent thing about him.
He hurt me—badly—and I refuse to stick around for round two.
“I need to get my things. It’s that time of the month. I don’t want your sheets getting ruined.”
An ordinary man would balk at woman talk.
Not Alek.
He simply steps back with a jerk of his chin, unwillingly edging toward my trap.
3
ALEK
“Come on, Ana. My nuts are about to freeze off.”
That’s a lie. This place is an icebox since the heating doesn’t seem to work, but it’s been four years since my eyes have taken in her tight, fit body, so there’s plenty of warm blood pumping through my veins. It just needs to stop pooling in the region I’m sure Anastasia would like to rip off with her teeth if given half a chance.
We didn’t start things amicably, and they certainly didn’t end that way, either.
The air between us is stale, and I hate that even more than her so-called friends forever starting shit between us. Stace is a bitch with abandonment issues. Every kid on this block and ten over faced the same problems she did, but she was the only one who had sex with every Tom, Dick, and Harry without protection in the hope she’d get pregnant.
On the rare occasion her plan worked, it also backfired.
I won’t lie. I felt fucking bad for her when one of her johns took the news similar to Kirill a month back. He stomped on her, causing an internal hemorrhage that almost got her killed, but she was straight back on that bike the following month, riding down the same demented path.
“Ana?” I call out again.
I’m not a patient man. Waiting around is for guys with nothing better to do. I have a hundred things to do, and every single one of them involves Anastasia’s body in some way.
Fuck me. My cock is acting as if no time has passed. It wants to sink into her, and it wants it yesterday.
“I’m coming in.”
I cuss to myself when I push open Ana’s bathroom door to find an empty space that’s as icy as a freezer since the window that opens onto the landing outside is pulled all the way back.
“Goddammit, Ana!”
While rambling like an insane man, I race out of Anastasia’s apartment and gallop down the stairs before making a beeline for my car, narrowly missing Sleazy Pete on my way.
As suspected, it isn’t where I parked it. It is speeding down the isolated road at a million miles an hour, and a feisty blonde who always kept me on my toes is behind the steering wheel, flipping me the bird.
I’d be pissed if I wasn’t so goddamn turned on.
Anastasia’s spunk is her third most attractive feature. Her stroke-worthy face is equally as enticing as her rocking body. It is the challenge to calm her wild that every man wanted to conquer when I tracked her down after an early release from my first case of grand theft auto adult addition. I was the only one who failed to register as a participant since she was so damn young. I fought my attraction for months, merely looking out for her since no one else was.
She caught me off guard one morning when the deadbeat running the local women’s shelter tried to make her pay for a roof over her head. He didn’t want money. Ana ran like she did from every shelter I took her to, but that time around, it was the middle of winter, and the first time I didn’t want to spend the icy months behind bars.
I let her bunk with me for a couple of days while organizing a new place for her to stay.
She ended up in my bed her first night there.
I fought and won that battle, but the odds were stacked against me on her sixteenth birthday. She used my jealousy against me, and when I’m jealous, I act like a fuckwit.