Page 40 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

I did well too, staying busy, keeping myself away from her.

And one night of dinner has brought it back so consumingly I almost didn’t walk away.

The next year of my life is going to be torture, I can already tell.

Then the door opens and I turn to see her tiptoe out into the moonlight, hands at her sides, large wide eyes staring at me.

It’s wrong to shout her down and bark orders at her to leave me alone. She’s a guest in my home and she’s been isolated thanks to Akim’s fears. But she shouldn’t be here.

“You should be resting,” I grumble, taking another drag. “It’s late, and it’s cold, and neither one is good for you right now.”

“I don’t want to sleep, Bastian.” She sighs, moving closer. “I don’t like being alone.”

“Then Ingrid can sit with you until you fall asleep.” My hand is already moving, reaching for my phone as she interrupts me with a protest.

“I don’t want Ingrid.” There’s a hurt in tone that makes me look up at her. “I wanted to talk to you. You’re never here anymore. You’re gone for days and no one tells me where you’ve gone or when you’re coming back. Akim took my phone weeks ago and I still don’t have it back. I can’t call Lada.”

“You have Ingrid,” I say. “She’s good company, and she’s fond of you. If it’s conversation you want, she’ll give you all of it you can stand.” Even I realize how cold I sound as I dismiss her loneliness and push her off on someone else. My mother would be ashamed of me for that. I have made Raina’s life nothing but solitude and boredom.

“I don’t want Ingrid’s conversation.” She takes a step closer. “I want yours.”

“You don’t know what you want,” I tell her. “You’re just lonely and pregnant. Hormones can⁠—”

“Don’t do that.” She cuts me off and my justification falls flat. “Don’t tell me what I feel. I know exactly what I feel, and I think the problem is that you feel it too, and it scares you.”

“Ingrid will⁠—”

“Bastian,” she snips, walking toward me until she stops right beside me, fanning away the smoke that trails up from my cigar. “I’m not going to just walk away and I think you already know that.”

I sigh, dousing the flame under my boot and pushing the cigar away as she slides onto my lap and rests one hand on my shoulder.

I watch her throat work, and I watch her eyes drop to my lips. “I want you.”

“The agreement was⁠—”

“Screw the agreement, Bastian.” Raina is bold tonight, demanding and pushy, and my god if she were just a hair more defiant I’d never be able to even resist. This side of her pulls on fantasies I’ve had since I was a teen.

Her hand slides down my chest to my groin where the instant she touches me it becomes painfully obvious how easily I’m losing the battle to my craving.

“You have fulfilled your end of the bargain. You’re already pregnant. We don’t have to⁠—”

“So you’ll lock me up then?” she asks, squeezing and grinding on me. “Take away my access to the world, take my phone so I can’t even look up a smutty video. And you’ll leave me helpless and alone?” Her lips purse, then she licks them. “But I have needs, and you’re keeping me here locked up. The least you could do is take care of me.”

The instant she touched me I was done.

I can’t turn this back now. I’m going to hate myself tomorrow, but I want her too, and I don’t want to do the smart thing or the safe thing.

I want to do her.

14

RAINA

“Bastian, please,” I say as my hand slides down his chest and I open his fly. I wrap my fingers around him and start stroking, feeling him get harder by the second.

God, I want him so bad.

It’s been weeks of solitude and sleepless nights, and I’m sick of it. “Don’t shut me out anymore. I can’t take it.”