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“If you looked a little less like an anal-retentive asshole, you might get laid every once in a while.”
“Glad to hear there’s some hope for me.” I rolled my eyes and turned my head to look out the window.
“They have a word for what you’ve described, Christian.” I paused, my hand on the doorknob. “Obsession.” A corner of my lips lifted as I stepped out of the room and shut the door behind me.
“Ames Clinical Center,” a deep voice read from the leaflet. “Why do I feel like you’d be right at home there?” My heart hitched, stopping my breath. The sun was heavy and hot, but it wasn’t why my skin suddenly ignited from the inside. He had my full attention, but I didn’t look at him yet. Simply because I didn’t think I could handle the shock of hearing him and seeing him at the same time. I flipped a page. “I’m not sure, Officer. Have you been there before?” I drew my gaze up to him, my eyes light with the knowledge of his OCD, his blood-stained hands, and trigger-happy finger. Broad
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“Yes. I tried to get over you with a makeover. Three years is just too long to wait for a phone call.” “Ah, I wondered how you were faring.”
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Legs crisscrossed on the lounge chair, I brought my gaze to the cloudless sky. Andromeda.
stfu
Nico headed to the door. “Goodbye, Ace!” I called. “So glad we could finally have a peaceful, uneventful night with the Abellis, aren’t you?” The expression he gave me said he wasn’t impressed with my joke.
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“I’ll keep that in mind.” He slipped his hands in his pockets and took a step toward me. With eyes narrowed, his voice was rough and demanding. “Why did you shut the door on me earlier?” My pulse fluttered, and I took a step back. “Your face triggers me.” Another step. “Why the drugs?” Another one back. “Why the fifty questions?” “Answer me.” I gritted my teeth. “Make me.” A shadow crossed his face as he walked toward me slowly, but I still saw the spark of anger in his eyes. “Do you want to know what I learned over the years?” I shook my head. “Interrogation. It takes about twenty minutes to
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“You know nothing of my past,” he growled. His words were different, rougher, than they should have been. It took me a moment to understand the significance while I was trying to catch my breath. And when I did, I stared at him, panting. The bastard was Russian.
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Her pulse beat quickly, expressing her fear—but her eyes, they were filled with defiance. Triumph. “Iowa, huh?” Bitter amusement filled me. She was put on this earth to aggravate me, to humble me. I didn’t know a single damn man who wished to be humbled. I tightened my grip. “I’m only going to say this once, sweetheart—don’t fuck with me. I promise you, next time, I’m not going to be so nice.” I would have killed anyone else who’d provoked me like she had. But somehow, the idea of her lifeless body made my stomach tighten in denial. I often wished she was a problem I could just make
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“Is that where you went to . . . that night? Russia?” she asked me as I reached the door. That night. She said it like she was disturbed by just the memory, while, even though I hated it, that night had fueled my obsession for her for years. I’d dreamed of it, fantasized of her, and fought a physical battle with myself not to go back to New York just to see her in the flesh.
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“If I didn’t already know you’re a fucked-up bastard and like pain, I’d be making your face a lot less pretty right now.”
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I laughed. “I don’t give a single fuck about you.” “Cut the shit. You’ve had a hard-on for pissing me off from day one.” “Sometimes an opportunity presents itself and I take it. It has nothing to do with you or my cock.” Unless it involves Gianna Marino, anyway.
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“Elena is mine, Allister.” I raised a brow. “Does she know?” “She will tomorrow.”
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“And what?” I said, amused. “Gonna see if they can do a quick switcharoo for the other sister . . . or something?”
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Over my dead body would I assign some limp-dicked analyst to watch Gianna twenty-four-seven.
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ago. Apparently, Ace couldn’t even wait one more week.
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“What if they never get to sex? Does foreplay count as one of the times?” The vision of his head between my legs and my fingers interlocked with his flashed through my mind. She chuckled. “I don’t know. Trying to figure out if you have two or three turns left?”
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I placed the light accent behind his voice. “Ah, a Colombian. Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Sebastian.” I held out my hand, but before Sebastian could shake it, Christian grabbed my wrist and pulled it to his side. “I’m—” “Married,” Christian finished, and then shot the Colombian a look I couldn’t decipher.
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A few laughs broke out. The Abelli’s face reddened. “I’d get more than that. I’ll tell you how her ass feels, Rus—” Without a look in the Abelli’s direction, Allister pulled a pistol from his jacket. Pop.
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“Ty samaya krasivaya zhenshchina kotoruyu ya kogda-libo videl.” “What did you say?” “You’re annoying.”
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“I’ve already made it Facebook official. I won’t change it back, Christian. The amount of jealousy coming in has brought me closer to world domination than I’ve ever been.”
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“Your view on an appropriate amount of clothes is obviously skewed.” His voice was strained. “What are you doing?” I frowned, looking down at my itty-bitty white bikini. “Is it not obvious?” “With you, nothing is.” “I can’t tell if that was a dumb-brunette joke or if I’m so unpredictable it excites you.” I pursed my lips, muttering, “Probably the former, considering you’re as excitable as Jack Frost.”
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“You look like a traffic cone,” he told me. As we passed a potted tree in the lobby, I pushed him into it. He hadn’t been expecting it—he actually took a step to the side. Satisfaction filled me at the giant leaf that had the audacity to smack him in the head.
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“Careful, Christian.” I pouted. “Keep saying sweet things to me, and I might think you like me.”
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“Never, malyshka.” It was soft and vehement. “Come here.”
“What are you afraid of?” “Everything,” I whispered, trailing my finger across the starched collar of his dress shirt. “You’re not afraid of me.” We were so close his cheek brushed my tear-streaked one when he rasped, “And, baby, I’m worse than the dark.”
“You’ve got to learn how to howl, malyshka. To tell your demons to fuck off. We all know you have it in you; you tell me to enough. And unlike your demons”—his voice darkened—“I can actually bite you.”
“What do I taste like?” His eyes drifted back up to mine. They were so deep and serious they held me captive. His next two words tugged at my heart, even though I didn’t know the meaning. “Kak moya.”
“Kak moya,” I said, smoothing the gloss on my lips and watching her in the mirror. “What does it mean?” She stopped at the door, assessing me with a look. “It means, like mine.”
“Good.” He pressed his hands against the wall on either side of me. “It should.” The rasp of his voice sent the hair on my arms on end, and I sucked in a breath as his lips skimmed up my neck. “I’ve always thought about you.” He pressed his next words against my ear. “More than your date tonight could ever think about you.”
“I’ve thought about you so much you’re mine now.” It was a growl that lowered into a threat. “You’re lucky you didn’t let him touch you, Gianna, because I really don’t like it when people touch my things.”
just as a knock sounded at the door. With a sigh, because I already knew who it was, I went to open it. Nico stood there, practically glowering at me. I grinned. “Oh, you made it just in time for the party! I was just about to let the male hooker out of the closet.” He rolled his eyes and walked past me toward his wife, who stood by the couch looking guilty.
“You’re asking me? Why, Ace, did you hit your head on the overhang on the way in?” “Sometimes feels like it,” I thought I heard him say, as he glanced at Elena with a volatile and vulnerable look in his eyes. I suddenly feared for anyone who dared to touch a hair on her head.
MY EYES NARROWED. “WHAT ARE you wearing?” Gianna looked down at her modest gray cocktail dress and short white heels while unsuccessfully trying to fix a tendril of hair that had escaped her French bun. Then, she looked me in the eye and said, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m trying to mold myself into a woman you could love.” I didn’t know why the sarcasm in her voice annoyed the hell out of me. “No.” She raised a brow. “No?” “That’s what I said, Gianna. Go put on something else.”
He chuckled. “That’s what I thought. We don’t need to discuss such . . . matters right now. Do you think Allister will marry you?” That amused her. “No. I don’t.” She sounded so fucking sure it made me want to drag her to the courthouse right now.
“That’s because you touched her.” I put my gun away and opened the door. “Every time you touch something that belongs to me, I’ll fuck up something of yours.”
My attention caught on something. I dropped my gaze to his grip on me, to the elastic band on his wrist. “What is . . .?” I trailed off when I realized what it was. And only because I’d worn the same wide-banded black hair ties since I could remember. My heart picked up as the memory came back, of him slipping that hair tie into his pocket while I was naked in his bed three years before.
“It’s mine now.” He’d kept it—worn it—for three years? I couldn’t figure out if it was slightly disturbing, or . . . hot.
Last night, as his hands had been working shampoo through my hair, I’d asked him if he had a weird hair fetish. His reply was, “Only for yours.” “Why?” I’d asked breathlessly. “I love your hair, malyshka. It’s the first part of you I saw—the back of your head at your wedding. And then you turned around and looked right at me. But you weren’t looking at me—you were looking past me, toward your new husband, with this infatuated glow in your eyes. The first woman I wanted to look at me was too busy staring at another man. That was when I started to hate him—and I still do, even though he is
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Gianna. I haven’t been able to think about anything else but you.
I asked him if he kissed all his neighbors or just me. He looked me in the eye and said, “You’re the only woman I’ve ever kissed, malyshka.”
How could I say every strand was mine any clearer than washing it every goddamn night?
When you’re obsessed with something for so long and finally obtain it? It feels like coming home to God. And nobody gives up their fucking spot in Heaven.
“You have never looked more beautiful than you do right now, malyshka.” I flushed, my heart growing ridiculously warm. “I’m trying to be annoyed with you, if you can’t tell.” He smiled. “Ah, my mistake.”
My frown deepened. “What if someone arrests me while you’re in the bathroom?” “I’d bail you out.” “If you couldn’t?” “I’d be locked up beside you.”
“There are plenty of women who could make you happier, Christian.” “You’re the only one I want.”
Soon after that exchange, I found him sitting on the couch with some papers on the coffee table before him. I ran my hands down his chest, flashing him my new sparkly crimson nails. “What do you think?” “I love them, malyshka.” He grabbed my hand and kissed it.
“Would you visit my grave if I died?” His eyes grew dark. “I’d die before you were ever in a grave, malyshka.” I loved his possessive side. And I loved his dark side, too.
Love is an obsession. Some would even say . . . the maddest obsession.”
