Page 24 of Violent Pawn

Her lids flutter before she’s pinning me with eyes that look nearly black in the low light. “Dance, Nero. This is what you wanted.”

This is not what I wanted. This is cruelty when I promised to leave her alone. This is sweet torment wrapped in a lithe body that ties my tongue in so many knots, I’ll never be able to drink again.

There’s no denying that Anastasia Petrov is sexy. But it’s more than her beauty that calls to me—has called to me since that first meeting in a back hallway when I should have been kidnapping her. Instead, I was lured by her siren abilities and drowned by her bravery that day. She could have taken my knife and stabbed me in my heart herself, so long as the angelic version of her met me up in heaven.

“Or do you need help?”

She spins, linking one hand around my neck and does this little shimmy thing women seem to master at some point in their life that rubs her ass not once, not twice, but three goddamn times against my cock, which is increasingly difficult to conceal.

As she straightens, her head falls onto my chest, leaving zero space between us. Her eyes flutter shut, she sighs, and that’s what does it for me. The little moan of happiness I long to swallow, to ensure no one else ever hears it. Pleasure she has for me and is only mine.

I grip her hips but don’t take over, leaving control with her while pretending to fall straight into her web. My fingers slide over her skin again, but this time, they hook into the waistband of her pants. She stiffens for a second but then seems to mentally shrug it off. Her shoulders lower again, and she doesn’t push me away.

“He’s figuring it out.” The music drowns out her murmur, but I read it from her lips.

My head lowers into the space between her shoulder and ear, breathing in a scent bound to haunt me after today. “Consider me entrapped by you. I was unable to help myself.”

“Sap.”

“Since the moment we met.” If that isn’t the truth, I don’t know what is.

Something moves in my chest. Maybe it’s simply strands of her hair against my shirt, but it feels deeper—inside me.

“After Sera’s engagement or as teenagers?”

“Both.” My finger slips around the front of her hips, thumbs pressing into her hipbones until I hear what I crave—the little intake of breath as she loses the position of distant dominance. “We work, don’t you think?”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t know me.”

“So let me know you.”

Since she’s yet to throw me off her, I continue, nipping the tip of her ear with my teeth until her breathing is ragged, words stuttered as she manages, “I’m not sleeping with you.”

Her skin makes me want to groan, but I won’t give her that power. But fuck, she smells delicious and tastes better. For the first time since deboarding the plane earlier, I’m not thinking about getting a drink.

She is all the intoxication required, and that…that’s dangerous. This little slip of a ballerina whose life I once saved can’t replace the liquor that chases my guilt. I won’t allow it to because that’d be depressingly ironic.

“I’m not asking you to. Just to let me know you. I want to learn who Anastasia Petrov is.” Ana. Mio angelo from eleven years ago. My tempting little ballerina.

Although I’m remiss to slide one hand away from her waist, I trail it up her side, over the curve of her breast, to reach her collarbone. Her skin is something I could very well get used to touching forever; a substance as heady as liquor.

Her throat moves, urging me to wrap my hand around it. “Impress me first.”

“Why do I feel you won’t make impressing you an easy task?”

“Because you’re smart enough to know I won’t.” Her dark eyes glint as a spotlight passes over us.

I return my lips to her neck to nip her pulse. “Unfortunately for you, I’ve always loved a challenge. Game on, Petrov.”

15

ANASTASIA

“When he touches you, you say…?”

“More.”

“When he’s finished, you say…?”