His hands moved from the lower end of my back to the top, and I swallowed hard on my saliva. “You'll have to be careful while you do that.”
“Why?”
“Because if you touch me again, I'm afraid you won't be able to stop.”
Our eyes locked in for a moment. The air tensed between us. His breath was fresh and a little bit cold. My eyes darted to his lips for a split second, and somehow, I found myself trying hard not to focus on his face, yet his face was the only thing I saw.
He kept moving his hands behind me, and my breathing became heavy. Roman’s hands weren't ordinary. They were seductive, and although I found it hard to admit, I liked it. I liked the way he touched me, and I didn't want him to stop. The more we stared at each other, the more electrifying it was. I felt like a teenager all over again. It was like the moments before prom when you'd stand with your date. I didn't think I'd ever experience this side of Roman, but now that I have, I don't want this addiction to end.
Chapter Seven
Roman's POV
It shouldn’t go like this.
I shouldn’t feel this way.
But even someone who didn’t know anything about me could tell that I wasn’t unaffected. Anyone with eyes could clearly see how my eyes lingered on her after every retort and how my hands sought something to do just to keep from touching her.
I was too honest with myself to deny the fact that Liza Markova was doing something to me that I never had the time to plan against. It was like her quick mouth and short temper were a solvent that permeated a brick and made it crumble—and I, or a part of me, was the fucking brick.
From the moment I spontaneously spun the engagement story and asked her to act along, she had proven to be good at doing the exact opposite of whatever I expected. Even at the onset of the whole charade, I hadn’t expected her to calmly accept the idea of getting married to a guy she knew next to nothing about, a guy who technically just had her kidnapped. Although she gave me a promise in the form of a threat, she didn’t yell as I’d expected. Neither did she get angry at the prospect of getting engaged; her ‘anger’ was pretty chill in my books.
I had absolutely no reason to have her wardrobe delivered to my penthouse in Manhattan. But I did it, anyway. While I could tell my men, Liza herself, and anyone else that I did it so she wouldn’t have any reason to talk my ears off, the real reason was the simple fact that I wanted to give her what she wanted, to make what she deemed important happen.
Now, how do I explain this when the woman in question was someone I hadn’t spoken to until a couple of hours ago?
The thought of what just happened replayed in my mind as I walked away from the makeshift fitting room. How could I not think about it? I had expected her to recoil the moment my skin touched hers through the smooth fabric of the dress—and she didn’t. Moving away from my touch would have painted a typical picture: that of a captor threatening the captive, and the latter fighting for the tiniest bit of personal space by pulling back. Instead, Liza remained in her position, unknowingly stripping the perfect picture of its colors and leaving a silhouette which revealed the hole in the narrative—my real reason.
Although I was thankful about not having to give up my real reason in her presence, I couldn’t avoid thinking about it. My hands itched to touch her the second I saw her. The tailor was zipping her up, and her eyes were on the mirror, oblivious to my presence. Even before the zipper got to her upper back, the dress flared around the wide curve of her hips, and I could picture all eyes being on her wherever she went. Combined with the fact that she opted for a different color from what I’d selected, the audacity she always embodied was clear. It should have annoyed or even disgusted me, but it did the opposite.
I trained my men to be audacious and even punished them for acting like brainless sheep, but when it came to women, it was a different ball game. I had been around enough ladies to know that what women prized as audacity was mostly unearned entitlement. They believed they should be treated in a certain way because their parents spoiled them, and some gullible men told them they were one-in-a-million. While I tended to smile charmingly at donors and patrons who fell under this category, I had no reason to maintain the smiling cover in personal meetings outside business.
With Liza, however, it felt different. There was none of that‘I’ll have my way just because’bullshit. From the way she talked to the way she moved, it showed that she was a womanwho had value and knew it. How could that not turn me on? Besides, her curvy body, adorned with that beautiful not-so-pale skin and full reddish-pink lips, was to die for. Nothing about her was regular.
But ours wasn’t a real engagement; it was a chance meeting. Our engagement wasn’t about getting drawn to or finding out about each other; it was about revenge and the necessary cover.
Elizaveta is my leverage, not my lover.
I should keep my distance.
Regardless of how hard it might prove to be, I had to stay away from her. It didn’t matter if the thought of her name was so beautiful and so full of character; I had to take a step back. Scratch that, several steps back.
“Boss,” Stepan greeted, rising to his feet as I stepped back into my office.
“The guys just sent the footage of that night,” he informed as I went around the table to my leather chair.
“And was the Ruslan guy at the club that night?”
“He was, boss. Just like you said,” he answered, sliding the dark pictures to me. “It got even clearer when I printed them out. It wasn’t so clear in the email, but the timestamp made it possible for me to track the time gaps in his initial alibi with the time a hooded guy came in and out of the club. It was him.” He pointed at a picture where the back of the hoodie was zoomed in on, revealing a logo of some sort. “This logo is for a brand that makes vegan reproductions of stock costumes. They are a small brand, so I asked Brad to hack into their website, and his address matched a purchase of the hoodie that was made last year.”
“He was just too detailed. You don’t dress like that unless you have something to hide,” I mused. “Good work, anyway. Call the NYPD guy and share these findings with him.”
The guy in question was a suspect in a felony, and he was reportedly sighted at one of my clubs after the crime before he went to his residence that night. But he had denied stepping into the club on that night when the police brought him in for questioning. To verify the truth, the police department had reached out to the club’s security department. I had personally stepped in and promised the police to send them the footage of that night, whether or not it incriminated the guy.
On the part of the police department, it was unusually cooperative and even civil of me to offer. Most club owners often fought tooth and nail to protect their company name and customers, and that included tampering with the footage or claiming the surveillance cameras weren’t in operation. On my part, however, it was nothing because my men’s surveillance on the guy showed that he was a nobody—he had no ties with anyone who was anyone. My cooperation with the police in the name of zero tolerance for crime was like throwing a bone out of a dog’s immediate reach to drive it further away.
“Again, we’re in the law’s good graces,” he remarked.
