Savage Vow (Ivanov Crime Family #1)

by Zoe Blake

I needed to stay focused around this woman. She may have looked innocent and sweet, but I now knew better. She was smart as a whip and cunning. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I found it arousing as hell. Damn, I loved this spirited side to her… even as I seduced it into submission. Still, I had made the mistake of thinking her biddable once and almost lost her. I wouldn’t be making that same mistake again. After shutting the door, I rapped my knuckles on the limo roof to signal to John, my driver for the night, to proceed. I had already given him instructions to under no circumstances lower the divider.

She still looked younger than her years. And vulnerable. Fear did that to a person.

I wondered if this was one of the reasons why she ran from me. Had someone given her the impression I wouldn’t support her art career? She probably thinks I’m a neanderthal who wants a woman chained to a stove. Well, I’m not. Chained to my bed… that was different.

“When you are my wife, I don’t care how you spend your days as long as you are in my bed with those beautiful legs spread waiting for me at night.”

There. Nobody’d ever know I’d spent the evening with a powerful criminal who 50 Shades of Grey’ed me to within an inch of my life.

If I wasn’t dangerous to Samara before, I sure as fuck am now. She had given the devil a taste of heaven.

I would swallow her innocence like a drug and get high off of knowing I was the one responsible for her inevitable corruption.

No one cared if you were dirty; they cared if the rest of the world knew you were dirty.

Samara I’m fucked. That is all I could think as I stared into his eyes. To be honest, it was too draining to think anything at all beyond that.

said, “I always take what I want, and I never let go of what is mine.”

Hated how dangerously sexy he looked in a suit. There was just something hot-as-hell about a man covered in ink wearing an expensive bespoke suit with a probably hundred-thousand-dollar watch on his wrist. It was just so billionaire gangster.

There I went, tumbling down the rabbit hole again as a feeling of pride rushed over me.

“It proves that you are not just a family name to me. I will admit that was the case at one time but hasn’t been so from the first moment I had you in my arms.”

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”

“Whether or not you want to acknowledge it, you are in danger, Samara. You don’t get to choose who saves you. You don’t get the hero; you get the monster. Nothing and no one is going to harm you on my watch. You are mine now, which means your problems are mine to solve.”

The man both infuriated and terrified me but there was something else there. He was just so big and strong and handsome. When he took me in his arms, the whole world just disappeared. It was hard not to be drawn into his dark energy, to submit to his will. It was everything I had been afraid of three years ago before I ran. This feeling of losing all sense of identity and self when around him. Now that it was happening, I was too caught up in his seductive web to care.

“Try me, malyshka. I don’t lie. That’s for cowards and the powerless of which I’m neither.

“Why? Why would you do that?” His gaze moved from my breasts to my lips to my eyes. “Because it’s something my wife wants, and I plan on giving her everything she wants.”

She was my possession… untouched and pure. The only innocent thing in my twisted fucked up life.

Since I knew her Russian was not as good as my own, I repeated Shakespeare’s Sonnet Number Forty in English as I teased her entrance with the tip of my finger. “By willful taste of what thyself refusest. I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty.”

I never understood poetry until this moment. There was something about having the most extraordinary creature in your arms that made everyday language seem impotent and wholly inadequate.

Unique women, like Samara, were the reason why men stared at stars, scratched words on paper, and wondered at...

I took no pride in walking around with bruised and cut knuckles to showcase the violence of my business. I had no need for such a superficial display. If I were handling myself correctly, a man should have been terrified regardless of whether I looked like I could throw and take a punch.

It was frightening to think how the idea of his protection made me feel safe and not as alone. It wasn’t just frightening. It was dangerous. And I had almost fallen for it. I had almost fallen for him. Fallen for the way his sexy, gravelly voice quoted Dracula and Shakespeare. For the way he talked about Impressionist art as if he loved it almost as much as I did. For the way his eyes seemed to devour me whenever we were together. For the intense way he focused on me and my needs… even the kinky needs I didn’t know I had. For the powerful way he took control.

Good lord, what that man could do with his tongue.

His body leaned into mine, pressing me harder against the wall. “Do what? Say that I love you? That I’ve been collecting your paintings to feel close to you?” “Stop,” I begged, but his lips muffled my protest. I turned my head to the side. He then bit my earlobe as he rasped, “Admit it, Samara. You love me too.” I groaned. “I don’t. I can’t. I can’t!” “You can’t what? Admit you’ve fallen in love with a monster?” His hips ground against mine, punctuating each word. “Admit you love the feel of my hands on you? Admit that despite three years apart you never let another man touch you?” He kissed the column of my neck. His hands wrapped around to my lower back and pulled me forward. I inhaled the familiar spicy scent of his Bleu de Chanel cologne as my fingers clawed at his shirt, unsure of whether I was trying to pull him closer or push him away. “You can’t love me. You barely know me. This is all just a game… a sick, twisted game.” “God dammit, malyshka,”

“Listen very carefully, you beautiful wild creature. I love you. For the last time, this is not a fucking game to me.” His gaze flicked down to the thin line of dried blood still visible on my neck from last night’s attack. “If I had lost you last night, I wouldn’t have gone on living. You are my salvation. I need to see the beauty in the world through your eyes or there is no point. Don’t you understand? You are the only light in my unrelentingly dark world.”

To be loved with such a savage violence and with such completion felt as if I were submerged in dark stormy waters and yet could still see the shafts of sunlight glimmering on the waves, cutting through the gloom.

“I have to go, and you have your surprise waiting for you outside.” “You know I hate surprises.” Gregor chuckled. “No one really hates surprises. They just hate bad surprises. Mine are good.”

“I guess I have my answer,” he rasped. “Those pretty green eyes of yours would cry for me if I died.”