I picture my knife skating across his jugular when his eyes drop to Justine’s scars. He glares at them as if they are imperfections, as if she is maimed with hate instead of the badges of courage I see every time I look at her.
My hand stops seeking my knife when Justine retaliates, “Nikolai isnothinglike them.” As the woman I forever see in her eyes awakens, a rod hardens her back. “And my scars are a part of who I am. I’m sorry if they make you uncomfortable, but I’llneverbe ashamed of them.”
Remorse floods Sebastian’s eyes so fast, not an ounce of hostility can be seen, but it does nothing to harness Justine’s campaign. The fire inside of her is roaring, resurrecting my queen from the shallow hole she’s been hiding in the past four days.
“Just like I’ll never side with a team that doesn’t have Nikolai at the helm. I love him, Sebastian. More than you could ever comprehend.”
When she chokes on her words, my first thoughts are to go to her. I nearly do, but Sebastian’s quick snag and yank routine keep my feet planted on the ground. His whispered apologies save him from being tortured as painfully as Justine’s pledge scarred my heart.
I’d never ask her to pick me over her family, but her reply proves I never had any reason to fear her decision. For years, anything I loved, Vladimir took, but even he can’t take this away from me. Love doesn’t die when you do. It’s only at risk of being extinguished when the fear of being unloved suffocates it.
I won’t let that happen to Justine and me.
Whether innate or taught through years of misguidance, hate weaves through your veins so hard and fast, you’ll barely recognize yourself in a matter of months. Over the past year, Justine has proven love has the same toxic effect.
She has softened me, as Dimitri said, but not in a bad, villainous way. She has me seeing both sides of the coin, the good and the bad. I want to be a better man for her, which in turn will make me a better leader to my crew.
I’ll never stop being the man I was born to be. Justine understands it is a part of who I am. She accepts all of me—annoyingly frustrating points and all—just as I do her.
Certain I’m making the right decision, I pivot on my heels and return to my station at the end of the porch. I trust that Justine has a firm hold on the ropes. My queen never does anything with half a heart. Even when she is up against a fiercer foe than any man she’s ever met, she doesn’t back down without a fight.
The way she removed my knife from Vladimir’s chest proves this without a doubt.
13
I’m barelythrough my second cigarette when a scent I’ll never forget overtakes the smell of burning tobacco. From the corner of my eye, I watch Justine’s brisk pace slow. She’s spotted my watch through lowered lashes. Her throat works hard to swallow, fearful I overheard her conversation with her brother but incapable of hiding her excitement at seeing me again. Even annoyed, she can’t deny her attraction to me. I am her addiction as much as she is mine.
After dragging her eyes down my body, her lips purse as she fights desires greater than us both. They want to be kissed—to be bitten. She just can’t work out how to fill the gap between us without feeling as if she’s giving in. She doesn’t want to win, but she doesn’t want to lose either.
A tiny vein in her neck flutters when I bridge the gap between us. She seems shocked I’m making the first move, as if I wouldn’t shift mountains to reach her. I hate that. I promised her the world, and I intend to keep my promise—for once.
“No distance will ever be too great for me to travel to you,Ahren.Water divides land, but nothing can separate souls destined to be together.”
Justine’s eyes grow wide as she sucks in much-needed air for her overworked lungs. She looks seconds from crying, but instead, she pushes off her feet, reaching me in less than three heart beats.
With the determination of a tigress, she snatches the half-smoked cigarette from my lips. Orange embers float in the humid night air when she flicks it off the porch before attaching her mouth to mine. My lips part when she drags her silky-smooth tongue along the seam of my mouth.
Her eagerness leads to us crashing into the railing my men spend hours guarding like castle walls. She takes all the control, demonstrating that she’d move more than mountains to keep us together.
As her tongue duels with mine, her hand slips under my shirt to trace the fine hairs above the bulge in my jeans. I had wondered if hormones were at play when she demanded we leave the confines of her family home to accept Rico’s invitation for dinner. Now I’m wondering if her eagerness was just an excuse for some alone time. She’s practically stroking me through my jeans, awakening a beast no amount of armor could contain.
If she isn’t careful, I’ll bend her over the railing and take her in front of my men. A dragon can be calmed with a sword to his chest, but a snake can never be subdued. No matter how long you feed, love, and take care of a snake, you should always anticipate its bite.
The most poisonous people in my life learned that the hard way. They were weeded out by my venom. Only one person has survived the wrath of my bite: myahren, my slice of heaven in a hot and temperamental place.
After kissing me until nothing but having her beneath me is on my mind, Justine withdraws from our embrace. Her lips are swollen from our kiss, and the scent of her needy cunt is lingering in the air, but it is the ownership in her eyes I’m paying the most attention to. They’re holding the same possessiveness they held when she told her brother she’ll never be on any team I’m not the captain of.
They also expose without a doubt that she’ll fight for me as fiercely as I will her. That I am hers as much as she is mine. That the only thing between us right now are the values of a misguided man and the damaged boy he left behind to pick up the pieces.
Vladimir may have raised me, but Justine raises me up. Those are two uniquely different things that deserve equally distinct responses.
The free-flowing white dress Justine is wearing swishes around her knees when I grasp her hand in mind before hightailing it inside. She giggles like a schoolgirl when we race through each room of the lower level of her house. We only stop weaving through the numerous highly decorated rooms when we reach the man I’m hunting as aggressively as I did the men who bid on Justine.
I’m not seeking a member of my crew or Roman. I’m after the man who will be incapable of denying me my greatest wish when he sees the devotion in his daughter’s eyes. It is her father. The only man I plan to triumph over without my blade.
I lower myself onto my knees in front of Justine’s parents before raising my eyes to my ultimate gift. When Justine mumbles something about it only needing to be one knee, my brow arches in silent question.
She slices her hand in the air, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “It’s nothing. It’s fine. Please continue.”
