The wish to kill that’s been clotting my veins the past three hours clears away when Justine spots my stalk from the corner of the living room. Just as quickly as her angelic face calms my unease, my devilish one erases the worry lining hers.
I watch her move through the throng of people separating us with revered silence. Since her professional look has been switched for a more casual ensemble, she fits into my crew remarkably well. They don’t touch her, and none of the men doped out on crack are stupid enough to mistake her for a whore, but they’re quick to offer her a drink, and for her to sit on the three-seater couch across from me.
“Thank you,” Justine whispers to Gavril when he hands her what she assumes is a glass of water.
Although her words are crisp, I’m real suspect that Dok slipped her another two Xanax when I wasn’t looking. Her eyes are almost too bright for the dullness of her cheeks. Her face replicates the one women wear when they leave my bed, and the one men crave when sampling my drugs. She’s here, just not entirely.
I hide my snicker with my glass when Justine’s big gulp of her drink causes her nose to screw up. She just made a liar out of those people who say you can’t taste or smell vodka. She’s acting if as her throat is on fire, and it has my tongue wishing it could soothe the burn.
The inevitable is unavoidable. She will be mine. I just need to practice patience while my crew lay out some well-placed traps.
Sadly.
Justine and I sit across from each other for the next twenty minutes. The tension is as thick as it was when we rode in the sheriff’s van last night, but for once, the stiffness doesn’t have me craving a bloodbath. Her face alone ensures me the storm in my gut will only be tamed by her lips, body, and the scent I’m sucking in like her panties are an inch from my nose.
I’d give anything to bend her over her couch and devour her sweet little cunt like a man starved of taste, but since Vladimir is already questioning why there’s a ten-minute gap in the footage from the surveillance cameras planted around Justine’s apartment, I stay on my side of the living room, watching her like a creep.
Justine doesn’t seem to mind. She maintains my eye contact while squirming like she did last night. The pressing of her thighs is as dangerous to my mind as her erotic scent. It makes me so reckless, I have no hesitation in saying torture will never bend my knees, but I bet Justine can.
We stare at each other for several cock-thickening minutes, our connection only lost when Alyna and Luyca slot into the minute gap each side of Justine’s thigh. They fiddle with her hair, and touch her face as my hands are itching to, hopeful she’ll share the secret on how they can regain my interest.
Justine hates their attention, but she’ll never tell them that—not even when they drag her into the bathroom with a promise of a makeover. I don’t want them to change her, she’s fucking perfect the way she is, but since Satan is walking the gallows, I must maintain my watch from afar.
It looks like I’m working on a weaponry trade that will net the Popov entity two point four million dollars, but not once do my eyes leave Justine. She handles Alyna and Luyca applying a heavy dose of makeup to her face without so much as a flinch, but the instant they move for her hair, she clams up. They want it high and off her face, but Justine doesn’t want to give up her shield just yet, proving Roman’s concerns were warranted. She’s strong… until someone tries to remove her armor.
Justine gives off the shyness of a mouse, but Alyna and Luyca learn otherwise not even ten minutes later. Over their ploy of acting friendly with the hope of slipping between my sheets, Justine thanks them for their advice, scrubs the gunk off her face with a washer, then returns to the living room. While taking in the party-like atmosphere with wide, untainted eyes, she glides past the cabinet housing a range of board games, floats by the men playingNardfor an impressive amount of coin before she returns to the seat directly across from me.
I slant my head to hide my cocky grin. She’s safer being surrounded by my men than being alone with me, but I fucking love that she thinks she isn’t.
When the joining of her knees can’t weaken her body’s response to my stare, Justine downs vodka as if it is water. She tosses them back as regularly as me, only stopping when I place my hand over her glass before Gavril can refill it for the fourth time.
When her eyes slit, a soundless laugh rumbles in my chest. She’s more upset about being left out of the festivities than she is about her apartment being treated as ifs it an underground nightclub on the strip.
I told you there are devilish thoughts in the most angelic minds.
“Do you want to dance on the table with Renata and Sophie,Ahren? Because if you continue drinking at the rate you are, that’s where you’ll end up.”
She looks disappointed I know the names of the topless women using her coffee table as if it’s the stage at Clichés. Or is it pride? With her pupils the size of marbles, I’m having a hard time reading her.
Heat treks through my veins when she mutters, “Would you be bothered if I did?”
“Not at all.” With surveillance forgotten, and my cock as hard as a stone, I balance on the edge of my chair. “But I’ll clear the room first. Request a private show. I like my men, but I’ll kill them all if even one of them sees you naked.”
Her next set of words come out with a slur, but I’m skeptical alcohol is the cause of her stammered words. She’s turned-on by my warning, and loving my jealousy. “Who said I’d dance naked?”
She joins me in balancing on the edge of her chair. We’ve downed the same amount of alcohol, but her movements aren’t as stable as mine since her veins are tackling both anti-anxiety pills and alcohol.
“You can be sexy with your clothes on. You just need to be inventive.” Her face goes from playful to serious in under a second. “Is that why you stare at me like you do? Because you’re being inventive?” She stumbles over her last word. “Or are you scared?”
“Nothing scares me,Ahren.”Except the look you’re giving me now.
She wants to forget just for a night, but I’m stopping her from doing that.
I’m avyperdusch.
Even if Vladimir is watching, there’s no reason she can’t enjoy the festivities. He’ll be less skeptical if she acts on the devilish thoughts in her head instead of the saintly ones.
The fine hairs on Justine’s arms bristle when I lean over to fill her empty glass with the top-shelf vodka I’m drinking. It spills over the rim from the shudder that roll down her spine when I say, “Keep your clothes on, or the death of every man in this room will be on your shoulders.”
