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This was getting ridiculous.
Three nights in a row, as soon as Matteo finished up with his work and the sun went down, I hauled my ass into my SUV and to the apartment building Butterfly called home. She was two stories up, not in the penthouse like I would have expected of someone with her wealth. The building was clean and well maintained, but far from the luxury she could have afforded.
I couldn’t seem to stay away, even knowing I would only catch a glimpse of her when she passed by the windows in her living room or kitchen. Something about those brief moments reassured me she was okay.
I spent most of the night in the SUV, watching her apartment and making sure she was safe. Her wellbeing had become an obsession I couldn’t shake. An addiction that was every bit as toxic as the heroin and coke that had destroyed my entire family.
It had to stop.
I shook my head, prepared to go back to my room at the Bellandi Estate and lie awake in my bed—wondering if she was okay but unwilling to drive myself back to the apartment and see for myself.
I had a much better understanding why the others had packed their women up and moved them in with them. Irina wasn’t even mine and I felt like this, so I couldn’t imagine what it was to have a woman you were willing to claim as yours and be apart from her.
To worry that way sounded agonizing.
Irina stepped in front of the window, the hour late and approaching the time when she would close the blinds and turn the lights off for bed. Instead, she stopped in front of the glass, the light behind her illuminating her silhouette perfectly.
She lifted a hand to her hair, releasing the clip that held it up while she worked, so that the long raven layers fell over her shoulders and spine. She turned her side to the window, twisting an arm behind her back and sliding the zipper of her dress down.
The navy fabric gaped at the back, loosening around her torso until she lifted a hand to her shoulder and brushed the straps off.
Fury rose in me, absolute rage that she would be so careless as to endanger herself. My heart raced with the rushing of blood through my body, but I couldn’t seem to move, rooted to the spot and staring at her bare breasts.
The dress caught at her hips, and she gave a little shimmy to push it down the last few inches until it fell into a puddle at her feet. She lifted her feet, one at a time, to pull the heels off, finally, after being home for hours, showing just how comfortable she’d gotten with wearing them.
With only a thin scrap of fabric covering her pussy, she raised her hands above her head and shook out her hair until it hung tousled. Turning to face the window, she touched her hands to the sill and leaned forward until her breasts nearly brushed against the glass.
She looked right at my SUV and smiled. Then the cruel little thing fucking waved, closing her blinds finally and disappearing behind them. I jabbed my finger into the button to power off the car, then exited, slamming the door behind me. I’d been paralyzed by the sight of her, ensnared in the trap she’d deliberately set for me, but with her body shielded from view, my body could finally fucking function again.
I shoved my way past a person exiting her building, heading straight for the stairs that would take me less time than the elevator. I raced up them two at a time, emerging onto the second floor and pausing for a moment to get my bearings and find her apartment.
By the time I made it to her door, she’d flung it open and stared at me in defiance. Her body was barely covered by a silk robe that hung from her slender shoulders. “Are you fucking stupid?” I growled. “You’re going to tempt some kind of predator.”
“That was kind of the point,” she murmured, leaning her shoulder on the door frame and staring up at me as if she could challenge me and convince me to do something I had no business doing, with just that look alone.
Mischief danced in her green eyes, drawing me closer before my brain could connect with what my body already knew.
This woman would ruin me. She already had.
“Fuck it,” I groaned, charging forward and closing the distance between us. My mouth slammed down on hers, my hands enveloping her head in an unyielding grip as she moaned into my lips. There was no finesse on my end, only inexperienced, driving desire to taste every inch of her mouth as I plundered her.
I knew it would be our only kiss. The only time I could let myself slip like this. Already panic seized my lungs, memories long buried trying to rear up and take this from me, too.
To steal this one good moment that I would never have again.
I pulled back as quickly as I’d attacked her, sucking back lungfuls of air and trying to keep my face neutral despite the storm raging inside me. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks flushed.
I wanted nothing more than to push through my aversion to being touched and take her inside.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t and she deserved someone who could love her.
“That can’t happen again,” I muttered, turning to walk back down the hallway toward the elevator this time. I’d walk away for real, leave her and never even allow myself to think of the green-eyed girl who made me do stupid things.
Until she spoke and proved that Irina-fucking-Ryan was just a little messed up like me.
“I know you’ve been following me,” she called.
I spun, finding her face smoothed back into the careful mask she wore when she knew people were watching. Staring back at her, I waited for her to condemn me for it. But that never happened.
“I think I like it,” she said, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. “That probably makes me just as twisted as you are.”
“You like being stalked?” I asked, feeling like a rock settled in my gut. To think that she wanted to be violated, to be abused in that way, by just anyone…
“I like it when you stalk me,” she corrected, shaking her head and following me into the hall. My eyes dropped to where the silk fell open at her chest, revealing a thin line of cleavage between her breasts, knowing with a single pull I could bare her entire body.
With one tug, I could witness absolute perfection.
“You shouldn’t,” I growled.
“Are you planning on hurting me? Or are you following me to keep me safe?” she asked, closing the last of the gap between us until she stared up into my face with a challenge in the set of her jaw. “Your intentions change everything in this situation.”
“What you do is important. Someone needs to protect you for the sake of those kids,” I said, forcing the words to come. I’d thought them countless times, tried to convince myself that it was the truth of my obsession and why it was so right to follow her home at night every chance I got. But I watched her face fall, the rejection landing with a harsh sting.
I’d disappointed her. I’d hurt her, and shame immediately flooded my body with heat.
I never wanted to hurt her. This was why I needed to stay away.
She rebuilt her walls, the sadness melting off her stunning face until only that careful mask remained. Watching the transition, witnessing the absolute mastery of how quickly she composed herself and hid every trace of emotion, that was the first real glimpse I had into Irina Ryan’s head.
The person who lived inside her head was vastly different from the facade everyone saw daily, and somewhere in there, pain lurked and waited to spring.
“Is that all it is?” she asked, reaching down to touch my hand. She moved slowly, the tips of her fingers barely grazing my skin as she watched my face for a reaction. She waited for that moment when I would explode into chaos, only applying more pressure when I didn’t react.
She wrapped delicate fingers around my hand, holding it with gentle ease as she walked backward toward her apartment door. I followed, fully caught in the trap of the siren as she guided me inside and closed the door behind us.
The apartment was clean, but there was nothing noteworthy about it as she took me toward the living room area. Raising the hand she held clutched in hers, she shifted her grip to avoid touching me as she pressed my own hand against my thigh next to the fly of my slacks.
“Butterfly,” I warned, my voice catching as she slid her fingers along my forearm and grabbed me by the elbow. She shifted my hand toward my zipper, brushing against the rigid length contained by my suit pants. I swallowed, watching as she pulled her own hand away and backed toward the sofa. Her eyes never left the spot where I touched myself, my hand seeming to move of its own will to make tiny, teasing strokes along my length.
Exactly the way I imagined she would touch me.
“I think it’s more than that,” she said, her tongue running over the top edge of her perfect bottom teeth. “I think you want to touch me, but you can’t.”
“I’m too dirty for you,” I said, the words slipping out before I could catch myself. They were an admission, a confirmation of all the things she didn’t need to know.
A woman like Butterfly would slip inside what remained of my soul, making her home there until I didn’t know where I ended and she began.
She wouldn’t do it intentionally, wouldn’t understand the consequences of caring for me until it was too late. She was just...mine.
In a way that she couldn’t be.
“Whatever it is you think you’ve done, it doesn’t matter to me,” she said, raising an eyebrow and lifting her hands to the ties on her robe. She unknotted it slowly, letting the front fall open to reveal every inch of her smooth, light brown skin to my gaze. The tiny slip of fabric that had covered her pussy in the window was gone, and the silk pooled at her feet as she slipped the robe off her shoulders.
I’d never seen a woman completely naked in person. Never wanted that kind of vulnerability from someone when I couldn’t give it back. But looking at Irina, I was suddenly glad for it.
No onewould have ever been as perfect as she was.
My hand moved faster against my cock, overcome with the urge to unzip my fly. The barrier of the fabric between the contact was too much, too hot, too stifling. But just as I had never seen another woman naked, none had ever seen that part of me.
I froze when she trailed manicured nails through her cleavage, coasting over her flat stomach and to the trimmed hair between her thighs. My breathing quickened, my fingers fumbling for the button at the top of my pants with all thoughts of embarrassment fleeing my mind.
Her hand brushed against a white line on her upper thigh, drawing my attention to the cluster of them and away from the place where she slid her fingers over herself. She glanced up at my face when my hand stilled, her own fingers following suit as her piercing green eyes landed on mine.
