But like she’s weighing a truth she never meant to say out loud.
“And what if I do?” she whispers.
My fingers curl around her hand, dragging her a fraction closer. Her perfume hits me—warm, soft, nothing like the ice she pretends to be.
“Then,” I murmur, “you’re more dangerous than you think.”
And before she can breathe—before I can talk myself out of it—I’m kissing her. Not the calculated, punishing kind I’ve used to scare her.
This is different.
Rough, consuming.
A hunger I’ve tried to bury under vodka and anger and the ghost of her father’s crimes.
Her fingers curl into my shirt, and that’s all it takes.
I lift her off the ground without breaking the kiss. Her gasp slips into my mouth as her legs lock around my waist—instinct, not thought—and I’m already walking, carrying her down the hall.
Every step feels like losing a war I never agreed to fight.
Her hands slide up my neck, into my hair. I bite back a groan.
This isn’t revenge.
It isn’t strategy.
It isn’t control.
It’s obsession.
Plain. Violent. Undeniable.
I push into the bedroom and kick the door shut behind us.
Her back hits the wall, and I kiss her harder, deeper, like I can drown the last twenty-four hours in her mouth.
“Dimitri…” she breathes, half-warning, half-need.
I drag my lips down her throat.
“Tell me to stop,” I rasp, even though I already know she won’t. “Like you did last night.”
She shivers against me—answer enough.
“No.”
I claim her lips again, pushing away from the wall and laying her on the bed. My instincts to be rough and brutal nicks at me, but there’s something about her little moans, the way she holds me that demands that I be soft with her today.
So I surrender.
Little by little, I take off her clothes, one after the other, giving her time to pull away at any moment, and also kissing all over her body to let her know that I’ll die if she tells me to stop right now.
She doesn’t.
I kiss her lips, then trail my mouth down her neck, across her chest, and down to her breasts. I suck her nipple into my mouth, rolling it between my teeth and lapping with my tongue. She sighs against me, arching her back to push deeper into my mouth.
Fuck, she’s sexy.
