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To live.
A lot was riding on this meet up.
Her life. My life. Our life together, if that was in the cards. Goddamn but I wanted that to be in the cards.
Hell, everything was riding on it.
We hadn’t risked reaching out ourselves. Trace had. He’d set up a meet time but not told them the place in advance. We knew the location, as did the guys Cain had assembled as backup. It was public but not too public. Trace had eyes on us, with a drone that was already in the air. Some of the Untouchables were already waiting in the trees and an abandoned building near the spot.
When we were ready, he would tell the Aslanov brothers the location.
We were on top of this. We had to be. We needed every fucking advantage we could get.
She recited the plan word for word, then stuck her tongue out at me. I growled at her. I couldn’t help it. How dare she be so adorable and bratty when both our futures were on the line?
“I’ve a good mind to put you over my knee,” I warned.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me, Princess.”
Her big, beautiful eyes got even bigger and then she laughed. She clearly thought I was joking. I wasn’t.
I turned away. The thought of her soft round bottom under my palm had been more than enough to send blood pumping straight to my shaft, filling and hardening it in a heartbeat.
Even now. Even when my mind was whirling with potentials and plans. When my blood was full of adrenaline.
She finished eating and dutifully brought her dishes to the sink.
“Leave them,” I said gruffly as she started to wash them. I wanted them there to remind me of her if things went wrong. And I wanted to hold her.
“Come here,” I commanded and she obeyed, walking into my arms without a second thought. My arms enfolded her like it was the most natural thing in the world. I held her tightly, like it was the last time. Hell, it might be the last time.
But if they tried to take her, they would have to take me out to do it.
I gripped her chin gently and tilted her head back. I stared down at her gorgeous face. Our eyes met and then drifted lower. There was no stopping the attraction between us. I took her lips in a drugging kiss, one that seemed to go on forever. I tasted her lips before delving my tongue inside and taking what I wanted. Taking everything I wanted.
Everything I wanted that you could do with your clothes on, anyway.
When I finally forced myself to stop kissing her, she looked dazed. I almost hated to bring her back to reality. But I had to.
“You ready?”
She inhaled and gave me a quick nod. She looked nervous. But not afraid.
Not for herself, anyway.
I picked up my phone and texted Trace. He told me everyone else was in place, other than her cousins. Once he had eyes on us he would give them the coordinates. It was time. We grabbed our gear and went out to the car. We were both silent as we drove to the parking lot at the edge of town.
Game face on. Keep the girl safe, at all costs.
My own life was secondary. She was all that mattered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Anastasia
“You seeing this bullshit?”
The sound of my cousin Antoine’s crisp, faintly accented voice rang out like a shot. I didn’t flinch. But I wanted to.
For just a split second, I had been glad to see my handsome cousins.
“Get your hand off of her, svolach,” Alexei said and spat on the ground.
I stepped closer to Vice and gripped his arm. All three of my cousins practically growled. Vice slid his arm around my back and my cousins lunged forward. But we weren’t alone.
“Stay where you are,” a voice came from the woods and the Aslanov boys cursed a blue streak. That was what my papa used to call them. Although they were far from ‘boys’ now.
And I hadn’t called my father ‘papa’ in a decade or more.
In fact, I had barely spoken to him at all.
I pressed my side into my protector, my savior, glaring at my cousins. They were tall and broad, standing shoulder to shoulder, wearing custom suits, their handsome faces masks of fury. They looked nearly identical, other than their coloring. They covered the spectrum from dark haired to so blond it was almost white.
Dark hair and piercing dark eyes for Alexei. Hazelnut hair and warm green eyes for Anton. And the youngest, Andrei, had the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen. With his blond hair, he looked like an angel, but he was anything but.
Rumor had it, my uncle had chosen three beautiful women to impregnate, then promptly paid the women off and send them far, far away. The brothers had no mothers. As a result, they were nearly the same age, and harder, even crueler, than most men.
