But I wasn’t going to reveal my deficiencies to him. The last thing I needed was to give him more ammunition.
“No license,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Kotenok, I don’t think I need to remind you that we kill for a living. Driving without a license is the least of your concerns.”
I said nothing.
His head tilted, his gaze honing in on my tightly crossed legs. “Unless you don’t know how to drive. In that case, there’sso much I could teach you.”
My breath caught at the implication in his words.
Despite all those reminders I’d repeated to myself on the way here, Dmitri was destroying all coherent thoughts in my head. It was like everything outside of him and this car ceased to exist when his intensity was centered on me. When his gaze skimmed over the waistband of my pants, it was apparent my body had forgotten that this man had promised to break me.
No, it yearned for it.
My fingernails bit into my palms. He saw that, too.
Of course, he did.
I swallowed, trying to steady myself. Without taking his eyes off me, Dmitri silently shifted his lethal body into the driver's seat.
The engine purred to life, and my entire body with it.
“Come here, kotenok,” he said, patting his huge leg. “Let me teach you.”
My body yearned to crawl over the seat, and curl up on his leg like the kitten he thought I was.
My brother’s last rasping breaths echoed in my mind, and it felt like a bucket of freezing water had plunged over my hypersensitive body.
“I’m not interested,” I bit out, moving my attention to the window.
Dmitri raised a disbelieving eyebrow, but just eased the car into reverse.
When my heart rate steadied, I mentally berated myself for my reaction. As he maneuvered down the road, all I could hear was Natalya’s words about sleeping with him, so I could get a better position. And the whispers of others who already thought I was sleeping my way to the top.
Dmitri probably had every woman in the Bratva throwing themselves at him. The fucked up part was that his reputation wasn’t negatively affected by it.
No, the women who participated were the ones looked down upon. Look how rumors had been weaponized against me when I’d never so much as touched a man within the Bratva.
But when Dmitri’s finger skillfully flicked up the turn signal, my core couldn’t help tightening.
Chapter eighteen
Dmitri
My kitten tried to keep her face disinterested as I drove us to our location. Every time she’d sneak a glance at me, I lightly lifted my foot off the accelerator to give her a chance to act on what she obviously wanted.
Her mouth remained tightly shut.
But I didn’t miss the way her thighs clenched together the moment she averted her eyes.
When we pulled up to the wrought-iron gate, I couldn’t help a laugh at the way her breath released from her lungs, like she’d won something by holding onto control.
Didn’t she know she was just depriving herself?
I’d savor the expression on her face when she finally lost that tightly held control. My grip on the wheel tightened as I imagined her opening those pretty pink lips, and begging the very person who’d murdered her brother to release all that tension.
Despite my raging hard on–that’d been aching each time she stole a glance at me–I forced my attention back on our assignment.
