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I hadn’t hesitated stepping forward when the uniformed police officers showed up at the apartment. I ignored Edmund’s roar of protest and offered them my wrists. My father hadn’t stopped me, nor had my mother or Lavena. All three stood and watched as I was marched from the building. Edmund was the only one who had started after me, panic wild in his blue eyes.
“What are you doing?” he’d cried, grabbing the back of my top. “I was—”
“You’re going to call Howard,” I cut him off sharply, yanking out of his grip and looking past him to where Dad stood, jaw tight. “Let me go.”
The last time I saw my brother’s face was as the elevator doors slid closed between us. There was fear in his eyes and guilt. I’d hoped he would realize that was the only way, but apparently, he hadn’t.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, turning my head to watch a bird swoop down and snatch something off the surface of the water. I stabbed what was left of my dead cigarette into the ashtray on the patio table and faced my sister. “Ivan got lucky it was Edmund and not me. If Edmund hadn’t killed him, I would have.”
CHAPTER 5
Kamari
Iwoke up sore the next morning. My thighs throbbed and my back ached, and that was nothing compared to the tenderness in my vagina. My entire body hummed with a reminder of just how out of shape I was in that department. I probably should have stretched first. I probably should have done some squats and maybe took a ride on a horse for a few miles. Who would have thought so many muscles could get used and abused in a single night? I certainly didn’t.
“Fuck…” I whined, rolling off the mattress in the most undignified manner. My limbs protested the unnecessary motions, but I managed to heave myself up onto my feet and stood in the silence of my bedroom, very certain I hadn’t started there the night before.
I didn’t dwell on the mysteries. I waddled my way into the bathroom. I flipped on the shower and stepped under the spray without waiting for the temperature to adjust.
It was between rinsing the shampoo and applying the conditioner to my hair when brutal reality slapped me upside the head.
I fucked Darius Medlock.
We fucked hard and aggressive, and holy shit.
I had fantasied about that moment a million times and always reminded myself that it probably wouldn’t be as good as the buildup in my head, but holy … shit. The man had broken my vagina. They said it was a thing in books and movies, but I never believed it, yet I knew without a shred of doubt that no man would ever, ever compare to what we did on Marcella’s favorite sofa. He had ruined me. Ruined sex. Even Bob — bless his little electronic buzzer — wasn’t going to fix what were now top shelf orgasms.
What the hell was I going to do?
He’d been very clear we weren’t going to make this a thing, whatever this was. He’d also been very clear on a lot of other things I didn’t know what to do with.
Darius wasn’t a liar.
He wasn’t like other men who made up long and dramatic stories to get into a girl’s pants. If there was danger in us being together, I believed him. Of course, I did. I had no reason not to. But I hated it. I hated that I finally got him, that he was finally in my arms and some asshole with a grudge was ruining it for me. I was mad enough to find Uriah Volkov myself and beat him with my stilettos. The man had some nerve coming after Darius when his son was the one responsible for everything that happened. What’s more, Darius had done the time. He paid the price. Ivan Volkov was a skeeze and the world was a better place without him, even I knew it.
But the one thing I’d learned ages ago was that blood was never enough. Volkov would come after Darius. Someone in Darius’s family — most likely Lavena — would go after someone in Volkov’s family, and the cycle would go on forever. That was how these stupid feuds always ended until it became one giant massacre where no one survived, and while I hated that Darius was making me keep all of this from Lavena and the girls, Iknew … I knew he was right. Lavena would go on the immediate defense. She would never sit by while someone she loved was being threatened. She would absolutely do something dangerous and reckless, and stupid and get herself killed.
I closed my eyes against the spray and held my breath until all I heard was my own heartbeat between my ears and the water hitting my abused body. I listened to the soft whoosh as I let the air out, wincing as every inch of me thrummed viciously.
Three days.
That was what he’d essentially offered me. Three days to pack six years of wishing, wanting, and fantasizing into. Getting into bed with him hadn’t been my only goal. Was it a large part, absolutely, but I wanted him. All of him. I wanted a lifetime with him by my side. My want and need for Darius had started as a crush, but I loved the man.
I’d been in love with him since the first time he’d locked eyes with me, and I saw that deep, dark, twisted hunger that made my stomach knot up.
I’d been in love with him since the first afternoon I walked into the kitchen and found him reading my favorite book because I’d mentioned it to him.
I’d been in love with him since he walked into the living room to find me crying after my first — and only — boyfriend dumped me for another girl and asked — freakishly calm — where he lived. He’d already started for the door, his phone in hand when I ran after him to stop him and even then, he’d looked down at me, his expression a blank wall and said in the scariest, most reasonable tone,“I was only going to talk to him.”
But I knew Darius.
Talking would not have been on the agenda. That was probably the exact moment I realized just how deep my feelings ran for that man. It had terrified me initially, but the longerit went on, the more conversations we had together, the more obvious being with him became.
I loved him.
There was no other way to explain it.
I accepted him.
