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CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
BIANCA
The club is dark,loud, and filled with beautiful people dancing, talking, posing, and trying to get the attention of other beautiful people. I’m high above it all, watching in fascination from the open balcony of Stereo’s VIP area. I’ve never been to a nightclub like this, and I’ve never been on a girls’ night like I am now with Kira, Georgia, Alyona, and Rowan.
It’s a night for firsts.Yeah, first time partying in the name of pumping my new family for info.I hate myself a little bit for it, but what choice do I have? I’ve planted two of the bugs in the penthouse—one behind a bookshelf in the study where Daniil often nurses a late-night whisky and another under a lampshade in his bedroom. A room I have yet to be invited into.
Truth is, bugging his penthouse is useless. Daniil is barely home, and even when he is, I sense he’s careful to never utter a word of bratva business within the penthouse walls. Maybe his car would be a promising spot, but even that he rotates regularly, so I never know which vehicle he’ll be in. And perhaps he talks freely in the casino office, but it doesn’t seem like I’m getting an invitation back there anytime soon.
With limited choices, and Deidre breathing down my neck, Kira’s invitation may be my best bet at learning something—anything—that I could feed to the feds. God knows alcohol loosens lips sufficiently.
“Tequila time, bitches!”
I turn away from the balcony to find Kira approaching with a tray of shots that she lowers onto our table. The plan is for all of us to get stupid forget-your-worries drunk… except that’s not what I’ll be doing. I need to keep my wits about me, and to do that, I need to be sober, but I don’t see how I can turn down the first shot of the night without seeming like a total stick-in-the-mud.
As we crowd around our table, Kira raises her glass and locks eyes with me. “To Bianca becoming a Kozlov and finding a man that I hope makes you happy. Even though he’s my brother and it’s gross, I hope you are having a lot of amazing newlywed sex.”
I nearly choke as cheers erupt, and the girls do the ritual lick, sip, suck. If she only knew. Not only have we not had sex, but Daniil hasn’t touched me in a week, not since our date. He’s gone back to treating me like a guest in his house. I thought we were past him freezing me out, but apparently not.
Well, screw him. I made sure to buy the teeniest, tiniest, most risqué dress I could find, spending his money like it’s going out of style, like I’d promised I would the day I moved to New York. Not that he’ll blink at the twenty-thousand-dollar charge but seeing me all done up and ready to hit the club sure made him do a double take.
Triumph slams into my gut recalling how his eyes darkened to a shade of onyx, his jaw held so tight I thought it would break when he opened the door to the penthouse tonight as I applied a deadly shade of red lipstick in the front hallway mirror. I’d put a short Burberry trench over it, so all he saw was my fishnet-stocking-covered legs and four-inch red Louboutins.
As he’d stood in the doorway with a beastly presence, his words came out low but with an edge of danger. “You need to change.”
My eyes cut to his in the mirror. “I don’t think so,” I replied breezily, purposely applying another layer on to my parted lips, moving in slow-mo. A thrill cut through me as his hands balled into fists. He eyed my coat like he had X-ray vision and could see what was underneath.
Dropping my lipstick into my clutch, I turned towards the doorway he was blocking with his considerable frame. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get through,” I hissed.
“By all means.” He moved over an inch, giving me maybe half a foot to squeeze by him. Fucker. But this was my opening, and I was going to take it. Facing him, I pressed my back to the doorway in an attempt to squeeze through, but a brutal hand shot out to grip my hip and his powerful leg pressed up between my thighs, halting my progression. My breath caught in my throat. He was watching me, just as I was watching him.
“What do you have on under there?” he growled against my racing pulse.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
My snappy response earned me his leg pressed tighter into my core, setting my blood to steam, not in anger, in pure lust. The trench, along with my dress, was now hitched up around my waist, and I was riding his thigh. Not by choice, but he had me trapped.
My spine went rigid against the frame as something sizzling and needy filled the space between my legs. My clit throbbed with the pressure his leg provided, and I moaned against my will. His lips twisted, and a smile like sin grew on his handsome face. Slowly, so slowly, he raised his leg further, rubbing it firmly between my thighs, threatening to crack my resolve.
But he doesn’t get to play hot and cold with me. My mother always told me to never chase a man, to let him come running after me. So I forced myself back down to earth. “Fuck off,” I hissed.
For the briefest of moments, I thought Daniil might keep me trapped there until I took my orgasm on his leg, but the ding of the elevator and Mikhail’s presence in the hallway seemed to stir him awake.
I pushed off his leg, and twisted from his grasp, eyes trained straight ahead on my escape. As I looked past Mikhail, I busied myself by smoothing down my dress, praying that my makeup was thick enough to hide the deep blush I was sure must be straining my skin.
Before I could put any proper distance between us, Daniil’s giant hand reached out and collared my wrist. I stopped in place but didn’t turn to make eye contact. He could say whatever to my back. “Be careful tonight. Don’t go anywhere without Mikhail.”
I hadn’t bothered acknowledging his words before stomping into the elevator, my heart beating an unsteady rhythm.
Kira’s voice in my ear brings me back down to earth. She sits beside me, half shouting over the thumping electronic music. “I haven’t known my brother that long, but seriously, I never really took him as the marrying type. It’s nice to see him, you know, settle down.”
“Right, you mentioned that the morning we met,” I say, although that morning in Daniil’s penthouse feels like a lifetime ago. “What’s the story there?
Kira tilts her head my way. “Daniil didn’t tell you our family history?”
“No,” I mumble, feeling foolish. I’m grateful the others are too wrapped up in their own conversation to overhear. “We haven’t had much time to discuss family history.”
“Shit, right.” Kira brushes a hand through her hair and raises her voice over the thumping beat. “My brothers and I share a mother. My biological father—I’ll call himthe seedbecause that’s the only recognition he deserves—was actually a rival of the Kozlovs. He seduced our mother and got her pregnant with me. When I was born, he sent me to Europe where I was raised by my aunt or in boarding schools. Anyhow, it’s a long and fucked-up history. I didn’t even know I had siblings… but when Andrei, Daniil, and Leo found out they had a half sister, they went searching for me. Didn’t give up until they found me.”
