Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
I pressed my cheek into his left hand. “You’re stronger than that.”
“No.” His eyes darted to my mouth. “I think I’m lacking all strength and self-control when it comes to you, because all I want to do is get you out of this club and send you to a nunnery.”
I gaped. “You wouldn’t.”
His lips curled into an amused grin. “You clearly don’t realize how fucking selfish I am.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It means you don’t need to go grab your rosary.”
“Because I have one of those… in my go bag.” I leveled him with a glare.
His chuckle was low, sexy.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and lay against him. “Am I hurting you?”
“Immensely.”
I jerked away, but he held me against him so tight I could barely move. “I don’t want to lay here and let my stitches heal, I don’t want to touch you and not taste you, so yes this is hurting me. It may be more painful than last night, and I woke up with such a hoarse voice you’d think that I’d been at a rock concert.”
“Close, real close, more like your own torturing.” I shuddered. “Phoenix said something…”
He stilled. “What did Phoenix say?”
I was almost embarrassed. “That depends.”
“Don’t lose your nerve now, dorogaya.”
I smiled at his name for me, pulled away enough to look up into his crystal blue eyes. “I’m going to need you to keep me.”
He pressed his lips together and then our foreheads touched as he drew a finger down my jaw. “Is that what this is about? You think I’m the sort of man to see heaven in your arms and then just… toss you out?”
“Yes.” My voice broke. “Because you’ll want to keep me safe, and I know you don’t — I know that… I know it’s asking a lot, before it wasn’t real it was just to keep me safe and you don’t have to do that anymore.”
“You’re right. I don’t have to.” He was breaking my heart as he kissed my mouth softly. “I fucking want to.”
His mouth was hot.
He kissed me harder, his tongue struck slow and precise as his mouth molded against mine so effortlessly, I melted against him.
And then he said something in Russian. It sounded like he was speaking in tongues, it was the same thing he’d said to me our night together.
Only this time, when he was done, he held up something between us.
It was a ring with three bands interconnected and wrapped together like ivy, on each band was a small diamond. It looked like Rose Gold. I was too stunned to stay anything.
“In Russia, the tradition…,” He grabbed my right hand. “…is to put it on this hand. I would buy you something bigger, something that would scar Chases face if you decided to punch him, but it wasn’t you. It wasn’t us.” He slid the ring onto my right third finger as tears splashed from my face onto our joined hands. “I’m keeping you, dorogaya, and I am never letting you go. Please say yes, please say you’ll choose me even though I don’t deserve it.”
“That’s the thing, Andrei. You deserve everything. You just feel too guilty to take it. I came in here willing to seduce you to the best of my ability and use everything in my arsenal so you wouldn’t send me away.” I wiped my tears. “Because the thing is, I want to keep you too. Even though you called me a number, even though I think we may fight as much as we make love. I want to keep you because your darkness is what makes your light so incredible. I just want this.” I touched his chest. “So bad.”
“And I…” He pressed a kissed to my mouth again. “Want this.” His hands grazed the front of my shirt.
And then suddenly the shirt was off my body and his left hand was roaming across my skin.
I laughed. “You’re injured.”
“I’m Russian, I’ll be fine.”
“Italian too,” I pointed out.
He stiffened, and then we both looked down at his hand, where the tattoo was cut, where his past connected to his future. “I didn’t even want to be boss to one family.”
“And now you have two,” I pointed out. “It’s like having twins.”
His head jerked up, his eyes wide. “Twins.”
“Andrei?”
“Twins,” he repeated again as if I’d just announced I was pregnant.
And then he crushed his mouth against mine like the word twin was his new code word for get naked.
“Andrei.”
He kissed me harder so I couldn’t talk, had to breathe his air as he one handed, tugged my jeans open and slid his fingertips inside.
“Okay… as impressive, mmph…” He deepened the kiss. “That is…” Damn the man knew how to work his fingers. “Maybe just a few more… seconds…”
“Open for me.” He licked my lower lip, and then I was straddling his hurt body like the most selfish person on the planet as he teased me. “This is mine, all of this.”