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In the aftermath, unable to speak, unable to move, our panting breaths mingling between us, he smooths a hand over my leg and pulls me against him, tucking me right along his heart.
The heart that won’t lie, and with every frantic beat tells the truth of just how much he wants me too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KONSTANTIN
If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to lose my ever-loving mind. My sense of time gets lost here, but my watch tells me I’ve been at the mercy of my memories of last night for the better part of today. The dinner hour is rapidly approaching and fuck if I can spend another night like this. I don’t know what I’ll do.
She brought clothes with her alright. More dresses. And now I know what she wears under those dresses. A flimsy scrap of cotton that barely covers anything and reveals everything when she’s soaked and aching.
Come on Nikolaj.
The crypt is filled with her scent, my mind filled with her cries of pleasure, and my chest and arms ache with the way her nails carved my skin as she lashed out while riding my goddamn thigh.
She succumbed to deep sleep after, never once struggling in the darkness of the single longest night of my life.
But the obscurity I always appreciated at night escaped me entirely. Instead, I replayed every moment in my mind, over and over, resisting the urge to stroke my cock for relief, or worse, bury myself inside her.
Everything we brought into the light between us mocks me, and God help us both; I don’t think I’ll ever manage to put it safely away.
Danger hunts her every day. Do the reasons matter? What if we both left? What if—no. I can’t betray Nikolaj. He’s worked too hard. He’s been building his own empire to join with the one of his father. For years he’s nurtured relationships, cemented his place alongside the powerful, and I suspect he’s even joined a secret society here in New York, giving him an admirable foothold globally.
How do I walk away from the promise I made him before he has a chance to change the course of this family?
As long as he’s successful.
I shake away any doubt. He will be. There is no other option.
Now I’m cursed with the taste of her I stole from her fingers. That’s my punishment for taking what was never meant to be mine.
The sound of the foam crumbling draws our attention. Gun in hand, I keep her behind me and wait. When I glance over my shoulder and raise my fingers to my lip, she surprises me by pulling a knife from her bag.
Of course she has a knife.
Question is, does she know what to do with it or is it just one more thing that will get her hurt or worse?
The one thing I do know… she and I are going to have a talk about it.
With a shove and a final scrape, the door breaks free and Dmitri makes his way in and nods. “Boss.”
“What’s Nikolaj’s status?” Grigori stands outside the crypt, his back to us, no doubt keeping an eye out. Not that anyone would be down here. Restorations have kept the crypts closed to the public for two weeks or so now. The church above is closed to the public for one more night as they address a plumbing issue that may or may not have something to do with us tapping into the system. Not that it matters, Nikolaj compensates well for the inconvenience of the web of tunnels he's building that snake their way under the entire city.
“He lands in an hour. He’ll be here an hour or so after.”
“With reinforcements?”
“Oh yeah. The minute he found out she was here and not in Paris, he called in everybody.”
“Good.”
“There’s more.” His gaze darts over my shoulder to Nikoletta.
I glance back at her and damn that pride in her that has her shoulders pulled back, her chin jutting in the air, just daring me to shut her out.
“Whatever you have to say to me, you can say to her as well.”
He nods. “Vlad also left Paris. He touched down for a brief stop in Madrid. We don’t know where he was off to after that. At least not yet.”
