Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
I can’t and I won’t. It’ll never happen, and I need to accept it.
His BMW pulls out and leaves. I watch it go, my heart breaking.
But I get myself together, wipe my eyes, and buy Mira her Pepsi. I march back into the bunk room and hand it over.
She grins up at me, looking sleepy. “What took you so long, girly? You get lost in the parking lot? Or maybe you ran into my Prince Charming.”
I shake my head and curl up against her.
“No Prince Charmings for us,” I say, nuzzling her side. “Only demons and devils and bastards.”
“Oh, my,” she says, and twists open her drink.
Chapter 7
Maxim
Siena’s words play through my mind, again and again. A sickening, horrible flash of angry, needless prodding. She sets the rates. I just spread my legs.
Jealousy, hot and intense, burns me to pieces, mixed with an angry longing. She thinks I’d go there just to buy her? I don’t pay for women. I don’t need to own her like that, not through money and not against her will. I saw the way she looked at me with a rabid need deep in the gleam of her eyes, and her lips looked perfect slightly parted and reflecting the moonlight, and all I wanted to do was wrap my fist in her luscious hair and pull it back until her throat was exposed enough to kiss, but she pulled away. She closed herself off, and I don’t fully understand why.
It’s that place. The Velvet Rope. She acted like she’s one of the whores—but I don’t think that’s true. I saw her cleaning the floors like a maid, and she wasn’t dressed like any of the other women that hung around that place. Her clothes weren’t particularly nice—jean shorts and a tank top—but they weren’t the revealing come-fuck-me garb of a woman looking to draw in clients.
The thought of her lying on one of those beds with strange men rips my stomach into pieces.
Why does she do this to me?
That’s the real question. I don’t know why I give a damn. We had one night, one incredible night, but that’s all it was. I tasted her, took her virginity, and that should be the end of our story.
Yet I can’t stop thinking about her. Something is bothering me and I can’t figure out what. That night was strange, especially in hindsight. Where did she get the clothes? The black card? Why did she give her virginity to me?
What was she doing in that bar?
I need to understand it. It’s a burning heat in my core. Even as I sit down to dinner the next night in the dining room of the Kremlin, the long table set with decent plates and several bottles of vodka, my siblings all taunting and laughing with each other, even then I can’t get her out of my mind.
“You look distracted tonight,” Jasha says, holding up his glass of vodka. He scrunches his eyes and smirks as he takes a long sip. Legally speaking, he’s not twenty-one yet and shouldn’t be allowed to drink, but Father insists nobody is too young for vodka.
Besides, we’re bratva. We have more to worry about than underage drinking.
“Thinking about work,” I say as I pour my second drink. I clink the ice across the glass. Father sits to my right, ignoring my conversation as he speaks quietly with Mother, her blonde hair piled up on her head, her eyes crinkled in amusement at something he said.
“You’re always thinking about work,” Jasha says. “Even Feliks takes a break sometime. Don’t you have a life outside of the family?”
“You know I don’t.”
He laughs. “I respect that. At least you’re honest.”
“He’s not honest,” Emiliya says from across the table. “Maxim’s got a rich social life.”
“Oh, real rich,” Galina says, my other sister. She’s the spitting image of Mother, except her hair is auburn and wavy. “It consists of cursing at other people in traffic and thinking about breaking kneecaps.”
“I like breaking kneecaps,” I say, trying not to smile.
“Go easy on him, Galina,” Jasha says. “You don’t want to awaken the big, scary Russian bear.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s very true. I am extremely scary.”
“Yeah, right, I’m terrified.” Galina grins at me and brandishes a fork. A bit of pirozhki—a baked puff pastry stuffed with potatoes, ground beef, cabbage, and cheese— falls down onto her plate. “I’m supposed to be scared of a guy with no life and no girlfriend.”
“I don’t need a girlfriend,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “And when the hell did this dinner become about my personal life?”
“Your personal life, which does not exist, is very much a topic of interest to this family,” Emiliya says. “I’m sorry, big brother, but it’s the truth. You work too hard.”
“You make the rest of us look bad,” Feliks says, but he’s not smiling. I feel his glare, but I don’t return it.