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“My wife just told you what you're going to do,” I growl. Cora clenches around me. “So sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.”
She deserves this. She’s a fucking queen waiting to be crowned. She just has to be willing to see it—and accept it.
“How did that feel?” I ask, nipping at her ear. “To show her who you belong to?”
“Good,” she moans. “It felt… It feels so damn good.”
Nothing exists beyond this woman and the way she feels in my hands.
The bride I never asked for. The queen I never saw coming.
But the attraction is real. I know my brother well enough to know that you are every bit his type.”
That’s precisely the fucking problem. I do enjoy being around her. Too much, actually.
Cora is a lot more than a waitress. She’s loyal to her friends and willing to sacrifice to protect the people she cares about. She’s fierce in everything she does. In kindness and fury and fucking.
“Doesn’t she look nice? Tell her she looks nice. Tell her. Say it. Say it now.”
I love my sister. But right now, I want to strangle her.
Every time she moans, I clench my teeth. My body locks up purely so I don’t do something I’d regret.
I guess I should have known after the first night we spent together: being with Cora is easy.
She’s asking me what I want, but surely she already knows. Surely it’s obvious.
I’m about to tell Cora exactly what I want—and where and when I want it—when
“I told you I’d take care of you. So do as I say and let me.”
I won’t put her in harm’s way again.
Reality is a lot uglier.
It matters to me because I got a hit of Ivan Pushkin. All I want now is more.
“Do it again,” Ivan growls. “I want to watch.”
“I came to check on you,” he whispers against my neck. “I heard my name.”
I’ve seen him kill before. I watched him pull the trigger. Now, he’s here, covered in blood… and all I want is to lick him clean. Fuck, I’m sick.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,”
“Are you as dangerous as everyone says?”
“No.” He turns and kisses my throat before his lips move to my ear. “I’m worse.”
“Ivan?”
“Fuck me. Please.”
“My pleasure.”
I bought her the toys to use, but when I walked in the bathroom and saw it in her hand as she moaned my name, I’ve never wanted to snap a device in half more in my life. It should have been me.
I can’t have her. I can’t want her. But fuck me, she is the only thing I want. Everything else can burn to ashes. I want her.
Her body tightens like a vice around me and, when that happens, I don’t stand a fucking chance. I spill into her. The leash on my self-control is gone, missing, destroyed—if it ever even existed in the first place. I grip the base of her throat, bite her shoulder, palm her breasts. I explore every remaining inch of her body, milking every possible second of this moment for all its worth.
Considering what we just did, it shouldn’t send such awareness through me. But it does. Every side of Cora is something new, something I want to collage and keep for myself. Cora in my suit jacket. Cora in a dress for date night. Cora in the shower. Cora in a towel. Every single image is seared into my retinas. When will I finally have enough of her?
I need the rest of your life to be spent at my side, doing what we just did again and again.
As I settle Cora into the mattress and pull the blankets under her pointed chin, I tell myself this is over. I can’t afford to lose control. I can’t afford to be distracted. I can’t afford to have anything that means too much to me. Anything someone else can take away.
I remember the way she grabbed my hand as I put her in the backseat of the car. Be careful. No one aside from Anya and Yasha has ever said that to me. No one has ever cared. Then she sat up at home waiting for me…
Cora softened me in all the right ways, making me approachable, desirable. She also made me sound like the luckiest fucker in the world for having a woman like her on my arm. I could call her up and thank her. It would be the right thing to do after ghosting her for the last two days.
It’s been so long since I’ve had time to read a book or contemplate my relationship with a man. Even having a relationship with a man to contemplate, fraudulent and temporary as it may be, was a luxury before all of this.
“I relate to problematic parents,
Sure, I could have said that Cora is different. That she brings color to the monotone drudgery that is my day-to-day life. That my pulse quickens when she enters a room and when she leaves it. That I fucking dream of her.
The worst part is, all I want to do is go back to sleep. Back into my dream.
Before I can stop myself, I bend low and scoop her into my arms. I haul her against my chest and hold her so I can feel every breath. So I can feel the warmth of her skin and hear her every exhale. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
I need her in my bed. In my room. Where I can see her and watch over her.
The gnawing ache in my chest doesn’t feel pretend, though. The yearning I have to burn the world down just to see her open her eyes isn’t casual or temporary or fake.
The way she looks in my t-shirt, between my sheets… It’s not something I’ll forget anytime soon.
“Ivan cares more than anyone knows. More than he shows.”
“If he reveals even a drop of emotion to you, there’s an ocean of feeling where that came from.”
“The only thing you need to know,” he says, “is that I’ll die before I let someone hurt you again.”
“What I know,” I say softly, “is that you are a good man, Ivan Pushkin. No matter what anyone says.”
“What are you doing?”
“You spend a lot of time talking about what everyone else needs. I want to talk about what you need.”
