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Burn, baby, burn.
Just as I turned my back, something pulled at my hair. My scalp burned from how he tugged at it as he angled my head back.
With a thud, I landed on Kristoff’s lap. Broad arms encompassed my sides, keeping me immobile. His rock-hard chest pressed against my back. He felt like a furnace. His eyes weren’t the only things on fire.
I trembled when he nipped at my earlobe.
“I don’t know what gave you the idea you could challenge me and leave unscathed. Let me enlighten you. You can’t,” Kristoff hissed into my ear. “For the record,Iam not forever material. I am darkness, I am vengeance, I’m the one who will bring down California’s number one asshole. I can’t be both that and what you need.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “I know.” He’d told me this before, but never with such passion, as if admitting it had torn something inside him.
His nip turned into a bite. I winced at the pain.
“As for you dating…Never make the mistake of flaunting another man in front of me. You wouldn’t be playing with fire, Ekaterina. You’d be messing with dynamite.”
My pulse spiked. The second his arms around me loosened, I jumped up and rushed out of the gym. I didn’t care that he’d consider this a defeat. Didn’t care that it was worse than that. It was surrender. No matter how much I tried to forget about him, my body didn’t listen. His mere touch ignited a fire inside me. Loving Kristoff was messy. It was heartbreak. Worse, I feared it was everlasting.
The walls of the house came at me. How long could I stay here pretending like I belonged here and hope that one day he would choose me? How long would it take before Kristoff put a ring on a Bratva wife? I couldn’t leave, but I couldn’t stay either.
I passed the kitchen and noticed Vicky sitting in a chair at the long wooden table. Her arms cradled her legs, and she looked forlorn. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about her mom. Never mind the fact that Viking would consider it a betrayal. Poor Elena, held captive by a man who was engaged to another woman. A man who only wanted to keep her to torment her.
A fire started in my belly. My pulse sped.
Fuck Vory law.
21
KATYA
I’d avoided Sokolov for three days, but the next morning when I turned a corner in the hallway we came face-to-face. It felt like a collision course, a trajectory I couldn’t have prevented no matter how much I’d tried, and try I had.
His icy eyes roamed over me, not in a sexual or predatory way, but calculating. Judging by the fact that he’d turned the corner going toward my bedroom, I figured it wasn’t a coincidence that we had crossed paths. This man wanted to be alone with me, though I didn’t know why. A tendril of fear snaked down my spine.
We stood there for a beat, sizing each other up. His lip curled into a sneer, as if he saw something distasteful. I saw a vision of what Kristoff would look like in another decade. Sokolov was a silver fox with the body of a man who noticeably worked out. He must have been somewhere in his mid-forties, though the deadness in his eyes spoke of a man who had seen more than most people did in an entire lifetime. Disdain with a hint of hatred lurked in his gaze, which caught me off guard. I couldn’t fathom what I’d done to deserve that.
“Mr. Sokolov.” I greeted him to end the awkward silence that hung between us.
“Ekaterina.” His voice was smooth, yet there was something unsettling about the way he said my name. “How are the wedding preparations going?”
“They’re going well. I’m sure everything will be ready by tonight.”
He nodded and for a second stared into the distance. “Marriage is important. It turns people into family. It separates the significant people in your life from the common strays who appear on your doorstep.”
It was the second time this week someone told me I wasn’t staying here for much longer.
“You’re not very subtle, are you?”
He cocked a brow. “You don’t beat around the bush, either. I can appreciate that.”
I bet he did. “Is this the moment where you tell me I have no importance in Kristoff’s life? That he only took me in because of a blood vow?” The cautious part of my brain blared alarm bells and went into overdrive. It scorned me for mouthing off to apakhan. A guy who could have me disappear with the flick of a finger.
A laugh boomed from his broad chest, taking me by surprise.
“I’m glad you’re smart enough to see things for what they are.”
This was the moment I should shut my trap, excuse myself, and move along.
“Oh, I see things for what they are all right. You made a boy whose mother was murdered believe that you saved him. Now the boy has turned into a man and thinks he owes you. Instead of helping him to let the past go, you fuel the torch of vengeance that burns in his chest.”
