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A smile, then she leans in for a kiss. Her lips are a millimeter from mine—when, by instinct, I flinch away. As she blinks at me in confusion, I shake my head, set my drink on the table, and stand.
“So, really—why are you here?” The honest answer is that I don’t fucking know. One moment, I was at a club with my brothers, getting fucked up with plenty of easy pussy circulating around. The next, I wanted nothing more than to get the fuck out of there. And go where? Here? Why is a very good question indeed.
I pin her chest to the floor with the flat of my palm. My other hand still has a vise grip on her forearm. She’s straining to free it, but I won’t let it go.
this should be "pressed her BACK to the floor" how do you expect to be kissing someone if their chest is to the floor and you are stratling them? DUMB
I guess part of me hoped that somehow, something would come up. They’d find another mafia bride, the whole family would die in a shoot-out, something like that. No such luck.
“If you cry, you’ll ruin your makeup.” I almost laugh. This has never been about me. This has always been about their perfect little bridal doll.
Fuck you. Fuck you for looking like you want this. Like you mean it.
We are the Nikolaevs. Your betters, your masters, your conquerors. We are the Nikolaevs, and you do not want us as your enemies.
Let her resist me. Let her try. I am a Nikolaev, I am the don, I am her husband, and she will do as I say.
I hold her tight against me, her breathing ragged against my chest. I turn her around so that I’m fucking her from behind, knees on the carpet, face pressed into the mattress.
this does not flow at all.. first, she is face down on the bed getting spanked then he is inside her, then suddenly he turns her over so he can do her from behind.
But the logistics are wrong.. his first entry WAS with her bent over THEN he turned her so now she should be facing him
I pull out, shove her down to her ass on the floor. Her face is slack and dazed with pleasure. All the fight’s gone out of it, replaced with want. Her hazel eyes are half-lidded with it, her full pink lips pouted with it. I run my cock over her lips, before gliding it down her body, hoisting her legs over my shoulders,
okay so the author is really just lazy then... okay
LOGISTICS.. work on them!
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she demands, on the verge of tears. “On the contrary, I’d be more than happy to.” The words are brutally sharp, ruthlessly cold. “This was enough for me. Enough to remind you of who is in charge. Everything that follows means nothing.”
That’s the way things work with the Nikolaevs, I have to remind myself. Anything they give, they want back tenfold.
“A non-issue. All I want from her is an heir. Once that’s done, I won’t have to see her for nine months. I’m counting down the days.” “That’s the spirit. Love is in the air…”
Gavriil points out. “Just have to find out by who.” “Whom,” says Bastien. “What?” “By whom. Not by ‘who.’” “Are you actually fucking correcting—"
Any Bratva man’s death is one too many.
Gavriil is a stone-cold killer, just like the rest of us. The smile is merely his disguise.
“Fine,” Vicki sighs. “Besides, things with my cop man are actually going pretty decent. Maybe I’ll bring him along on our coffee shop double date, whenever that actually happens.”
this has something to do with Rafael
“Promise. We’ve been friends for fifteen years, V. I’m not stopping now.” “Ugh, don’t say it like that. Our friendship is almost old enough to drive,” Vicki cackles.
“I might not be the husband you hoped for, but I’m the one you have. And as long as that’s true, no other man lays a finger on you,” he growls. “Never.”
My husband basically just told the Attorney General of the whole damn state to go fuck himself—then walked away like it meant nothing.
“How has she… seemed to you?” I find myself asking. “Generally speaking.” “Unhappy,” he suggests with a shrug of his wide shoulders. “Upset. Less so as time goes on.”
“You could be killed for what you just did.” “Do it then!” she cries. “It’d be better than being married to a monster! To a man who’s fucking using me, treating me like some cheap fucking mistress!” “I’m not touching anyone else,” I growl. “There is no one else but you.”
“You live for this. Admit it,” he rumbles, eyes half-lidded with pleasure. “You admit it, motherfucker,” I rasp back in a hoarse whisper.
“A pretty little doll of a wife. Does she know?” “Shut the fuck up, Rafael,” I snarl, digging the gun in deeper. I don’t know what he’s talking about, and I don’t care. He needs to shut his filthy mouth. He has no right to say a single fucking word about her.
I think Dmitry's father kidnapped Shannon and her parents are alive and well thinking she is most likely dead
It’s a miracle none of Rafael’s men have opened fire. Almost like they knew all this was going to happen. Almost like they’re waiting for what’s coming next.
The cop Vickie is seeing is pulling Rafael's strings, AND he's the one that gave Vickie the info about a stolen Shannon. I think he might work for her birth family, or he is her family (brother or cousin)
“Now, what about dessert?” “Didn’t you already demolish a whole plate of rugelach?” Bastien asks. “That was before the meal. Ergo, it was not dessert. Dessert comes post-meal, oh brother of mine.”
“Go catch up with each other or rough-house or talk business. Whatever men do in their alone time. Shannon and I have our own things to discuss.”
26 SHANNON The Dmitry in the backseat of the car beside me looks different than the relaxed man who sat cracking jokes with his brothers at the dinner table. Sterner, darker, more brooding. I want the carefree version back. “Can’t believe how fat you were as a toddler,” I whisper before I can stop myself. “Like a little marshmallow.”
His words feel like a slap in the face. Maybe because he keeps taunting me with the idea, the naïve but undying hope that there’s a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. That something good might come of all this badness. That we might stumble our way into a happy future. So when he rips that away from me, it hurts. Worse and worse every time.
The thought that goes through my head as the car flips isn’t fear, or anger, or anything like that. It’s amazement. Amazement that what’s happening between Shannon and me is real now. It’s not forced. It’s not fake. It exists on its own, a living, breathing connection that has both of us ensnared in it.
Shannon looks up at me from the footwell. “Dmitry?” she says tentatively. Her hazel eyes are wide with a sheen of tears and she’s bitten her lip bloody. My chest clenches hard. She deserves better than this nightmare, this fear, this cowardly bullshit.
“Give me a gun, Dmitry. I won’t die as a damsel in distress.” Her voice is fierce, but it’s the look in her eyes that stops me: the ferocity of a lioness. Shannon has the soul of a Bratva queen, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.
“You’re doing good,” I tell her, running my hand along her head to smooth and stroke her hair. I can just barely see her smile in the darkness. “Really?” “Anything that isn’t screaming loud enough to deafen me is good at this point,” I say with a grim chuckle.
I’m not going to rest until every single one of them is hunted down. Even if I have to do it my damn self. You don’t kill my father, threaten my life, threaten my wife, and live to tell about it. Not as long as I am the don.
I start firing as soon as I see the crack of night sky. Die, motherfuckers, die.
I thought he said his driver was the only one with a gun because his is in the glovebox that is unopenable because of the crash. He gave that gun to Shannon.. so what is he shooting with?
He’s big and strong, with prison tattoos up and down the neck my hands are wrapped around. But there’s something he doesn’t have: a wife he’s sworn to protect.
“Forget it, Shannon,” Dmitry says quietly. “Just know that I love you.” “No!” I snap. “Don’t you dare, Dmitry Nikolaev. Don’t you fucking dare. Kill this freak. Kill this motherfucker.”
Dmitry has told me again and again that I’m his queen, that I’m made for him, but he’s wrong. I’m not made for this. I don’t belong here. And I can’t kill. Not even to save myself.
“But I lied when I told you will killed them, Shannon. They are still living in Boston. Both of them are alive. That is why our marriage actually meant something: because you are still the princess of the reigning Irish clan.”
“Was that part of the deal? Did your father make them…” He shakes his head. “No. Of course not. That wasn’t… Father would never…” His eyes are closing and his voice is growing weaker by the second. “It was their idea. Their choice. They didn’t want anything to do with a daughter who would be a Bratva wife.”
That one “It’s you” tells me more than I could ever want about Daddy dearest, about my family. It’s the “you” you say to a telemarketer that just won’t quit, your ex who cheated on you, that unwanted rat in the basement that just won’t die.
“You didn’t give up yourselves to save me. You gave me up to save yourselves. Your own daughter.”
“No role,” he says smugly. “Zero. You’re just a pawn, utterly disposable. We killed Andrushka to destabilize the Russians. You’re not worth the bullet it would take to end you.”
I can only look at him. At my husband. My captor. This strange man I still don’t know half as well as I want to. This man I hate. This man I love.
“Good work, Dmitry,” he says to me, powerful tan hairy hand on my shoulder. “You are a man of deliberate action, and it shows. You offer help when needed and for that, I commend you.”
“Ah, Gavriil. Racing into action without a thought in the world. I think you know what you need to work on.” “Thinking things through,” Gavriil answers, chastened. “Although your bravery got you through,” Father points out. “Never doubt it.”
“As always, Bastien, very measured in your decisions. Very careful. You will give sage advice to your brother when you are older, I can see. However, don’t refrain from asking your brothers for help when need be, either. No man is an island.”
Abruptly, Father lunges for him and starts wrestling him. “And don’t forget to have fun, my serious son!” Bastien bursts out laughing as Gavriil and I dogpile them both. We roll and fight until all of us flop on our backs on the grass, chests rising and falling.
I kiss the moon of freckles on her lower back as she nibbles my ear.
how is this even physically possible.. wtf
I hate this place. The vomit-colored plastic chairs are giving me a backache. The too-bright fluorescent lights overhead are giving me a headache. The waiting itself is giving me a heartache.
