Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 64993 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64993 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
My dick gets hard knowing Natasha will be getting off that elevator and knocking at my door in just a minute, her beautiful face doing crazy things to my resolve. I step inside my room and lean my forehead against the door.
The elevator dings. I try to get my thoughts out of the gutter.
I hate that she’s a mobile massage therapist—she brings her table to other people’s houses. It’s dangerous as hell. She told me she doesn’t see anyone she doesn’t know personally or who hasn’t been personally recommended, and she also told me she doesn’t see men, but I know that’s bullshit, since she’s given me two massages and will be up here shortly to give me another.
I made her promise if anyone ever messed with her she’d tell me. I may not be huge and able to snap necks with one hand like Oleg, our enforcer, but I’d damn well be lethal if anyone hurt that girl.
Not that she’s mine to protect. As much as I enjoy stalking Natasha, that’s all I will do.
Booking the massages—that was a mistake. A huge one.
It was Nikolai’s fault. My asshole twin must’ve noted my, er, dedication to keeping tabs on her, so he threatened to book a massage, himself, if I wouldn’t. And there was no way I’d let Nikolai be naked in the same room as Natasha.
No fucking way.
So now I have to suffer through me being naked in the same room as Natasha and having those sweet hands touch me everywhere—well, almost everywhere—and not have my dick in my fist. Gospodi, I’m harder than marble the entire hour, and it’s the worst kind of torture. Especially when she flirts with me.
I’m not usually the guy women are attracted to. Nikolai gets them with his charm and general air of danger. Pavel, Ravil, Oleg, and Maxim—the other guys in our bratva cell—they all have women throwing panties their way—or at least they did before they claimed their current partners.
Me, though?
I’m the computer geek. The hacker.
I’m not charming because I don’t even try. I’m the guy behind the curtain, manipulating the scenes from a computer screen.
But for some reason, Natasha seems to like me. Maybe she can sense my attraction to her—women are intuitive that way. She looks up at me with big sea green eyes like I’m someone worth having, and it shreds me from the inside.
Because I’m not.
I’m definitely not worth having.
And more than that, I’m not available.
Natasha
I use a keycard in the gleaming elevator to get to the top floor of the Kremlin, the high rise on Lake Michigan that houses most of the Russians who live in Chicago, including myself. Like every time I come to the top floor, my pulse quickens. Before the doors open, I put on fresh lip gloss and fluff my hair. Today I’m on a mission.
I shouldn’t have access to the penthouse floor, but Dima gave me this card when he booked his first massage with me. I thought it meant something at the time. The tattooed bratva member had been so attentive every time I’d been in his suite, working for his boss.
But then he rescheduled. And rescheduled again.
Four times.
And then the two times I gave him a massage, he acted stiff and stand-offish. So yeah, my hopes for something happening between me and the hot bad boy on the top floor have gradually dwindled to nothing.
I roll my massage table out of the elevator and stand in front of his door now, lifting my hand to knock. He opens it before my knuckles hit the wood. “Amerikanka.”
He calls me American. It seems like a friendly-enough moniker, but I’m not sure. It could be a dig. I think it’s a joke because I’ve fully integrated into American society. I worked hard to expunge the Russian accent from my speech. No one who met me would know I didn’t move here until I was nine.
“Hi.” Butterflies flap their wings in my tummy at the sight of him. He’s tall, lanky and blond. His black-framed glasses and friendly face make him look more GQ than street thug.
But he is a street thug, as my mother just reminded me by phone before I came up here. None of these men are safe, and they are definitely not for me, according to her rules.
Dima wears a worn Matrix t-shirt and a faded pair of jeans. His hair is rumpled, like he’s been shoving his fingers through it. He’s not beefy, but he has lowkey muscles, despite being a computer geek. IT Specialist is the official title, but I’d bet my last penny on him being a hacker. One of Russia’s finest, no doubt. The guy is always at a computer, and he seems hella smart.
“Hey.” He scowls at the massage table like it’s an unruly dog. Snatching it out of my grasp, he carries it in.