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“Konstantin Ivanov. Katya, the woman your brother has kidnaped and locked up, is my sister,” he said quietly.
The words didn’t compute for several seconds. Kat’s stunning icy-blond good looks and Slavic features fit perfectly with Konstantin’s. Siblings made sense.
I prepared to ask a question I was afraid of the answer to. “Why did you plan to kidnap Jae’s sister? What were you going to do to her?”
Kon’s full lips stretched in a humorless grin. “Don’t you mean – whatamI going to do toyou, Cinderella?”
I held his gaze, looking for a hint of the warm fire from last night in his eyes. There was nothing there. Today, he looked like a stranger.
“You aren’t going to do anything to me,” I stated, oddly certain, regardless of the front he was putting on. If I had to guess which was the real Konstantin Ivanov, between last night and today, I was pinning all my hopes on last night.
“How can you be so sure?” he murmured, shifting closer to me. His hand reached out for a hanging lock of hair, the same one he’d tucked behind my ear last night. Now, he wound it around his finger, trapping me in place. “I’m a bad guy, Hana, didn’t your family tell you that?”
“They don’t really know you. People change,” I countered lamely. What else could I say?Was last night enough to change you, like it changed me?
“Not people like me. I’m the villain in every single version of our story, there’s no way around it,” he muttered, leaning in. My breath caught at his closeness. I could smell him, that exotic scent that sent me right back to the tangled sheets of the bed in the apartment over the club. Cool spice, refreshing and addictive at the same time. I inhaled deeply, as he leaned in and ran his face down my cheek, his nose, pressing into the nook between my shoulder and ear. “Did you shower? Does that mean you don’t smell like me anymore?” His murmur was hot against my skin.
“I – I -.” Being speechless was sexy, right? I took a deep breath and confessed in a rush. “I can’t think when you’re so close.”
He pulled back, his eyes roaming my face. “Likewise. Seeing you here like this, all clean, like last night never happened, makes me want to drag you back to my bed, and fuck you so deep, so often, that no amount of showering will wash me off you.”
“Kon,” I gasped, turned on and embarrassed by his words at the same time.
“Yes, my little Cinderella?” He was leaning back in, heading for a kiss. I already knew it was a touch that would consume me. I wanted him even more than last night, now I knew what it felt like when we were together.
“Is this normal – the way it feels between us when we… touch? Is that what all lovers feel?” I wondered. An academic to the end, I had to understand how to categorize this feeling in me. The heat beneath my skin, the pull toward his touch, like he had become the new center of gravity around which I turned.
“Not for me. It’s not normal. Not even slightly normal,” he murmured, cupping my jaw.
“Are you going to let me go?” The next question burst out, and I couldn’t stop it. He froze, his fingers still holding my face tilted toward his, his lips only inches from mine. “Please. Let me go before Jae finds out. He’ll hurt you,” I pleaded quietly.
Kon was quiet for a long moment, unmoving. Then slowly, he slid back, the loss of his intoxicating presence felt like a blow. “He’ll hurt me? Hana, you have no idea who I am.”
“I think you don’t want to hurt your sister. She’s caught in the crossfire.”
“I have no idea if she’s hurt or not already. Your brother won’t let me see her,” he ground out.
I frowned, as a slither of understanding lit up the apprehension brewing in me.
“Is that the only reason you’re doing this? You’re worried about her?”
“Despite what your brother might have told you about me, I’m not a monster Hana. I care about my sister. She’s the only family I have in the world.”
“She likes Jae Han. I saw her. I saw them together. They like each other. He won’t hurt her. He might have a bad reputation, but he has honor. If he says he’ll take care of her, he means it.”
Kon stared at me, tilting his head to the side, considering. “If you think the boss of the Song family has a bad reputation, I’d hate to know what you’ll think of mine, once you find out.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat and shrugged. “I don’t care. You’ve been good to me, kidnapping notwithstanding. Anyway, if people went by my reputation, I’d be a stay-at-home bookish shut-in without a single want of her own, who only loves rules, and facts.”
“Well, we both know that isn’t true, Hana. You’re the most startlingly original, adventurous woman I’ve ever met, and I don’t think I’d mind being the one thing you’ve ever wanted enough to break your rules for.”
His eyes stared warmly into mine.
I’d heard a little about the unpredictable, dangerous loose-canon Konstantin Ivanov. I got it. Kon had a vibrant, unsettling energy about him. I could only imagine what it felt like when he directed that power toward mayhem. As it was, he directed all the whirling intensity toward me, and it had been like lightning. He had scorched my soul and imprinted his name on my bones, and I’d never be the same.
“Bratan.” A knock sounded on the door outside.
“Da,”Kon called, reaching out to tug the neckline of my robe higher, concealing me up to the chin. The door opened and a carnival-looking thug entered in a battered leather jacket and shit-stomping boots. They spoke in Russian quietly, before the guy turned and left.
