In my study, I fill a shot glass with vodka and drink it straight.
It’s going to be a long night.
I refill the glass. Knock it back. Wait for the burn that doesn’t come.
When I left my brother and sister, I got Marco to drive me to the canine rescue center and I wandered around the building, alone, checking out the animals that had recently arrived. Marco is the only person who knows about my regular contributions to the rescue center. I do it for Marvel. If he hadn’t found me when he did, he wouldn’t have survived another winter, and every time I look into his eyes, I have to force the image of him dying alone and shivering in a dank alleyway from my head.
Sonia, the rescue center manager, introduced me to a German Shepherd puppy they’d recently recovered from a travelers’ site. They’d named her Lucky. If she hadn’t been recovered when she was, the puppy would almost certainly have died from starvation, and that was without the flesh wounds around her neck and the fleas and ticks covering her little body.
Lucky came to me, curled up into a tight ball in my lap, and closed her eyes, and I knew that she belonged to Gianna. When I looked at her head resting against my chest, front paws tucked in tightly, all I could see was Gianna curled up in my bed.
Loyal. Trusting. Faithful.
I signed the paperwork with Sonia before I left. I could already picture telling Gianna about Lucky, the way her face would light up with pure joy, the way she would throw her arms around my neck and hug me tightly, her body pressed up against mine.
Then, driving home, I got the call from my men that Gianna and Tamara were walking with Marvel towards the woods surrounding my land.
I didn’t think about why.
I didn’t consider that she might be trying to escape.
All that was going through my head was that I couldn’t protect her if she wasn’t on my property, and if anyone harmed her, I would serve time for what I would do to them in return.
Because Gianna isn’t like other women. At least, that’s what I told myself when I was cradling the white and tan German Shepherd puppy in the rescue center.
I down another vodka shot.
Gianna flashed those turquoise eyes at me, spread her legs wide, begged me to fuck her, and this is the result.
What did I always tell my parents? Love is a weakness. Not that I’m under any illusions that this is love, but I let her into my bed, I let her fill my head with her groans of pleasure, and this is how she repays me.
Only something about this whole episode doesn’t sit right with me.
I questioned Olga, who told me that Ms. Sedric came to the kitchen with her breakfast tray and gave some treats to Marvel. Olga said that she left the room shortly after Tamara entered, and that was the last time she saw them.
The guard stationed outside the back door confirmed that Tamara had dismissed him when the two women went outside to walk the dog. The men in the control room were still deciphering the video footage of the brief conversation between Tamara and Gianna that took place inside the kitchen, and Sergei, conveniently, had been called away to the warehouse.
But here’s where the story starts to become a little fuzzy around the edges.
Two women, one dark and sharp as steel, the other light and soft as butter despite the core of reinforced metal at her center. I see the bruise on Tamara’s cheek. I see it, but I don’t believe it was inflicted by Gianna who then promptly handed the gun back to the woman who was supposed to be guarding her. Gianna has grown up in a mafia family. She might not be involved in the family business, but self-preservation will be ingrained in her blood. So, why didn’t she keep the gun?
Another shot.
Another flurry of images of Gianna’s naked body writhing beneath me while I ram my cock inside her.
Another surge of anger directed at my inability to live by my own beliefs.
Women cannot be trusted.
But Gianna wasn’t faking those orgasms. She wasn’t faking the way she looked at me with those huge eyes when she kissed me. I’m no expert when it comes to women, but I know how it feels to be played—I still have the Elena scars tattooed across my heart—and Gianna wasn’t playing me. The scene over breakfast the morning after she arrived was her idea of using my own testosterone against me, and we all know where that got her.
I’ve no doubts at all that if Gianna Sedric wanted to escape, she would not be locked up in one of my guest rooms right now. She’d be at home with her family, giving them enough information to take me down within the next twenty-four hours.
So, what the fuck happened this morning?
Between leaving Gianna in my bed, rosy-cheeked, serene, and smelling of sex, and receiving the call from the guards, something snapped. Like a light being flicked on. My gut is telling me that this is down to Tamara, and my gut has never let me down yet.
But I don’t like where this is leading.
One of them is lying to me, and I don’t tolerate being lied to. Tamara knows this. She has lived with me long enough. Gianna doesn’t know me at all, but I can’t figure out why she is lying to protect Tamara when it creates more problems for herself.
Two more vodka shots, and I stop overthinking the situation, instead, allowing it to unravel and present itself to me in all its technicolor glory.
Gianna lied because she understood the consequences of Tamara’s betrayal, and because that’s the kind of person she is. She works at a women’s refuge for fuck’s sake. She won’t see another woman suffer through her actions, so she took the blame instead.
But where does this leave Tamara?
The familiar icy sense of duty crawls through my veins, putting up a heroic battle against the hazy effects of the half-bottle of vodka I’ve already consumed.
Duty first. Duty to family. Duty to my people. Duty to Gianna.
While she is under my protection, I will not allow her to come to any harm. I stand up too quickly, my brain cells taking a beat to catch up with the movement. It’s obvious that I can’t trust anyone else to protect her, and while she might be locked inside a guest room with Dmitri standing guard, anyone can get to her.
My blood is pumping around my veins. I can’t leave Gianna alone. No one will dare touch her while she’s with me or in my quarters, so this is in her best interests. I’ll sleep on the couch if that’s what she wants, but from now on, she doesn’t leave my sight.
I open the door.
Voices coming from the kitchen sober me up instantly, my thoughts immediately ganging up on me. What if Tamara is telling the truth? She has never lied to me before; I trust her and Ivana as much as, if not more than, I trust my own family because they stick with me through choice not through blood.
It’s feasible that Gianna stole Tamara’s revolver, hit her with it to slow her down, and deliberately handed it back to make it look as if Tamara was lying. The timing is impeccable. She waited for me to fuck her first, she gave me a taste of what it’s like to slide in between her open legs and then wham! She hit me with an escape attempt almost before I’d washed her cum from my cock.
There’s only one way to resolve the fireworks exploding in my head: speak to Gianna.
Laughter. It sounds like there’s a party going on in my kitchen, and the mood I’m in, I’m going to be the biggest fun-sucker the world has ever seen.
I hear Andrej’s voice from the hallway. He’s telling a joke using a clipped British accent, his voice rising as he builds up to the punchline. He’s one of the few people I know who can tell a joke and have people crying with laughter, and he has the uncanny ability to pick up accents from all around the world. He lowers his voice so that I miss the end of the joke, but it’s obvious from the ripple of laughter around the room that he has finished his storytelling.
I enter, and silence settles around me. “Don’t stop on my account, Andrej.”
He raises a beer to his lips and takes a long glug. “I would offer to fetch you a beer from the fridge, brother, but it looks as if you’re already a few drinks ahead of me.”
Tamara and Ivana are sitting on the breakfast island with their feet on bar stools like this is a public holiday, and I realize that business has been slack for too long, thanks to Xander Amory’s relentless attacks. Relaxation isn’t in the Ivanov vocabulary. Take your eye off the ball for a fraction of a second and the enemy will be performing a victory dance between the goalposts before you can blink.
“Is everything on track for tonight’s shipment?” I address the room and wait to see what comes back to me. In his crate, Marvel rests his head on his front paws and his eyes on me.
“Sergei has it under control.” This is Ivana.
“I want you to be present, Andrej.”
Andrej strokes his chin as though contemplating whether to shave or grow his stubble for another day. “Not my remit.”
“I’m making it your remit. Xander Amory has a taste for the blood of our men, it seems. I trust you to make sure that the next blood he samples is tainted with something lethal.”
Andrej’s mouth contorts into a lopsided grimace. He might be the comedian of the family, but he’s also the one without a conscience. He stands up, glugs the rest of his beer, and studies the empty bottle. “Sounds like an offer I can’t refuse. Although you do understand that Xander doesn’t personally steal our shipments out from under our noses, right?”
“He’s a rodent. He’ll snatch a poisoned crumb if he thinks it will add some zeroes to his bank account.”
I keep my eyes fixed on my little brother, but I sense the sisters following the conversation closely. Bringing Andrej in is a last resort. I was hoping to save it until I was done with Gianna, but after this morning’s fiasco, it can’t wait. There’s a loose knot in my team and I need it tightened.
“Point taken, brother.” My brother’s gaze slides sideways and settles on Tamara’s swollen cheek and black eye. “I was hoping to meet our little printzessa first.”
Ivana and Tamara bristle like cats on the scent of a bird, and I clench my jaw. As the youngest sibling, Andrej has always had the luxury of treating life as his latest video game, something I’ve learned to ignore over the years. But not when it comes to Gianna.
“She isn’t a doll to be dressed up and pushed around a pretend house.”
“Really?” His eyebrows zigzag across his forehead. “That isn’t what I’ve heard.”
I breathe deeply, regulating my heart rate. The fact that he has heard anything outside of what we discussed earlier with our sister is pushing me to my limits; any information being leaked, even within family, is too much information.
“What exactly have you heard?”
“That you let her into your bed and then she tried to escape.” The lopsided smile reappears. “You want to win the war, you’ve got to learn to lock it inside your pants.”
I count to three. Slowly. Biting back the retorts that I would fling at my brother if we didn’t have an audience.
“I’ll be sure to bear that in mind.”
“Good. Because I’d hate to see you lose your precious asset when the fun is only just beginning.” Andrej tosses the empty bottle into the recycling.
The sisters both hop off the breakfast island to leave with Andrej.
“Tamara stays here.”
“But, Pakhan, I—”
“That’s an order.”
Tamara holds my gaze. This goes way deeper than jealousy of the printzessa. The two sisters might be calculating, ruthless, and even reckless on occasions, but one thing they are not is careless. She knew that I would question this morning’s events, so she’s either trying to play me against Gianna, or she isn’t the person I thought she was, and there’s only one way to find out: process of elimination.
I don’t hang around. My brother can show himself out. Tamara can wait.
I want to hear what happened from the printzessa first.
I dismiss the guard stationed outside the guest room where Gianna is being held, but I hesitate before barging in. Now that I’m here, I’m torn between demanding the truth and leaving her to stew on whatever is going on between her and Tamara. I know that when I’m alone with her, I’ll struggle to ‘lock it in my pants’ as my brother so eloquently described it.
This is what she has done to me.
I don’t believe in witchcraft, but she has somehow bewitched me to the point where I close my eyes and all I can see is her smile as she opens her legs and hooks a finger at me to come inside.
Deep breath. I rearrange the bulge inside my pants; I don’t want her to believe that she has the advantage the instant I walk into the room.
Gianna is lying on her back on the bed when I enter. Awake. She stands up when she sees that it’s me, but she keeps her distance, and that rips a hole in my heart. We had trust. She had the option to walk away from me and forget that the kiss ever happened, and she chose me before duty.
She chose me.
“Is Marvel alright?” Her eyes lock onto mine, gauging my reaction before I speak.
“He is fine. No thanks to you.”
I see the hurt flicker behind her eyes and the way she juts her chin. Defiant. “I would never hurt him.”
“But you knew that he would protect you with his life.”
She swallows and looks away. I don’t consider it a win.
“I-I didn’t take Marvel with me.”
I lean back against the closed door, afraid to get too close to her. Afraid of what will happen if I’m close enough to touch her.
“Yet you were caught running away from my house with him.”
“He followed me.”
“Why didn’t you shoot Tamara while you had the chance?”
I’m giving her the opportunity to tell the truth. To snitch on Tamara if she convinced Gianna to lie on her behalf. To choose me again.
“I didn’t want her blood on my hands.”
“Did she offer to help you escape?” My jaw is so tight I can feel my back teeth grinding.
She peers directly into my eyes, and says, “No.” But it’s all a little too forced for my liking. Gianna knows that I don’t believe the story, same as she knows that avoiding my gaze will make her look guilty.
I step closer. “What did she offer you?”
“Nothing. I overpowered her. She didn’t shoot because you’d warned her not to hurt me. She knew that I’d be captured before I made it to the perimeter.”
“But still, you didn’t turn back. You might’ve been killed.”
“Killing me isn’t part of the plan though, is it, Leonid?” She narrows those beautiful turquoise eyes just enough to let me know that she isn’t defeated. Yet.
“No,” I concede. I can’t expect her to be honest with me if I’m not prepared to give her honesty in return.
“But fucking me was.”
I hear the tremor in her voice and step closer, reaching out to cup her face in my hands. But she pulls away.
“Fucking you was never part of the plan, Gianna.” I lower my hands and keep my voice steady. Because right now, getting her to believe me is all that’s important.
Xander Amory can go fuck himself. All I care about is making sure that Gianna Sedric doesn’t get caught in the crossfire.
“So, then what was, Leonid, huh? What was part of the plan? Getting me to kiss you? Getting me to spend the night in your room or the part where I showed you what I wanted you to do to me?”
I can feel the heat emanating from her cheeks, but she isn’t finished.
“Introducing me to Marvel was a great strategy, I’ve got to hand it to you. You knew I wouldn’t be able to resist your dog, and it made you look less like a monster and more like a regular human being in my eyes.”
I suppress the smile that’s aching to spread across my face. “What did Tamara tell you?”
“That the great master plan was to seduce me and send me back home unable to go through with the marriage to Seamus.” She blinks hard, tears making her eyes appear twice their normal size.
I want to fold her into my arms and never let her go. I want to catch her tears on my tongue and kiss her better. But touching her right now will only lead to me ripping her clothes off, pushing her back onto the bed and eating her till she screams my name, and I can’t bear the thought of her rejection.
“You got what you wanted.” She pushes her shoulders back and faces me squarely. “So, why am I still here?”
“Here’s the thing, Gianna. I didn’t get what I wanted.” I reach for her hand which feels cold and frail in mine, but at least she doesn’t snatch it away. “I got way more.”
She blinks again, her tears finally collecting on her lashes. “I-I don’t understand.”
“You’re still here because I’m not prepared to let you go. I can’t lie to you. My intention was to get under your skin, to make you want me, and send you home even less inclined to marry the Irish pank. But you gave yourself to me so freely…”
I raise her hand to my lips and kiss her palm.
“So openly…”
I kiss her wrist and trail my tongue along her arm to the crease inside her elbow.
“And with such utter abandon…”
I pull her close to me and kiss her damp eyelids, holding her body against mine with my arms wrapped around her.
“The plan was scrapped the instant you agreed to come to me, Gianna.” My voice is husky with desire for her, my lips brushing hers.
But I still see the uncertainty in her eyes, and I wish I could take back the plan, make Xander Amory and this never-ending war go away, and start afresh. Perhaps meet her at a nightclub in town or at the airport or a taxi rank or any one of the regular meet-cutes two people destined to meet might have.
“Why should I believe you?” Her breath is warm against my lips.
“Because you’re still here. You didn’t escape when you had the chance.”
I pause, uncertain how far to push it. I’ve never had to convince a woman that I find her desirable. I’ve never even had to fight for a woman before, not even Elena. But I already understand that Gianna Sedric is worth fighting for.
“And because I think that you want me as much as I want you.”
I wind her hair around my fingers and crush her lips with mine. And Gianna doesn’t resist. She stands on tiptoes, head tipped back to meet my kisses hungrily, her hands sliding around my neck.
My cock responds by wedging itself between our bodies.
Tiny heart-wrenching whimpers escape her lips as I hoist her up into my arms, and she wraps her legs around my waist. I turn around and sit down on the bed with Gianna on my lap. I drag her T-shirt over her head and fumble with the buttons on her pants while she tugs my shirt open, her kisses hot and hungry and greedy. My shirt follows hers onto the floor.
Gianna pushes me back horizontally across the bed, tugs off her pants and straddles me naked. She drags her tongue across my jawline and nibbles on my earlobes. Down to my collarbone, between my ribs, and then she finds my nipples, nibbling them between her front teeth.
My cock throbs at the wetness between her legs that’s seeping onto my skin, and she drags my pants over my hips, her eyes widening as it springs free. Cupping my balls with one hand, she grips the base of my cock with the other and teases the head with her tongue.
But I grip her wrist and her hips and pull her around so that she’s straddling my face. “You’re so fucking ready for me, Gianna.” I open her up with my fingers and tease her clit with the tip of my tongue.
Gianna’s body immediately spasms, and she grips my cock tighter. “Leonid…” She breathes my name huskily, brushing my chest with her erect nipples.
“Do you want me to stop?” I rest my head back against the comforter and insert a finger inside her instead.
“No.” She wraps her lips around my cock and slides her tongue back and forth across the slit.
“Good girl.” I work her with my finger, matching my movements to the flicks of her tongue. “You’re so wet, Gianna. Did you start without me?”
“I-no.” She stops licking and turns her head to look at me.
“Don’t stop. You’re not allowed to come before I do.”
Her pussy clenches around my fingers, and she tries to pull away, but I don’t let her. “Leo, I won’t be able to stop it.”
“You can try for me, can’t you?” I drag my tongue across her clit, still working her with my finger. I slide in a second finger. “I can’t hear you.”
“I… I don’t know.”
Her pussy is already spasming, and I haven’t even gotten started yet. “Wrong answer.” I suck her sweet pussy, flicking her clit with my tongue.
“I’ll try.”
I would smile, but this is game on. “You’d better make me come then, Gianna.”
She grips my erection in her fist and slides the head into her mouth. I give her a couple of beats to get into a rhythm before I slide my fingers out of her and slide my tongue in. She tastes so fucking sweet I want to make her come on my face all night. I want to wake up with her pussy in my face so that it’s the first thing I taste in the morning.
Her pleasure eclipses my own. My balls are full for her, but this is one game she’ll never win. Even when she takes all of me into her mouth.
“Fuck, Gianna.” I stop sucking on her. My breaths are rapid, my pulse racing. “That feels so good.”
She slides my cock out of her mouth and supports her upper body on her arms either side of my hips. “Only good? Surely, you can do better than that.”
I bounce my cock back to her mouth. “It feels fucking awesome.”
I sense her smile as she crushes my length between her breasts and rubs them up and down me.
“So, the printzessa is playing to win, huh?”
I pull her hips down onto my face and push my tongue into her as far as the hilt, rubbing her clit with my dripping wet fingers. Her explosion is almost instantaneous. But she isn’t getting away with it that easily. Each time her orgasm starts to fade, I hit the spot again with my tongue until finally, she admits defeat and releases my cock, unable to focus on anything but the pleasure rippling through her body.
