Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“It’s nothing. I’m just being unforgivably sentimental.” She sighed and turned to take the T-shirt from him. “We keep going around again and again. I know what this is. I do, Dima—I swear it. But sometimes the lines get blurry and I forget for a little while, and when I remember, it’s a downer.” She made a visible effort to straighten her shoulders and get her smile back into place. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
He had to pick through her words to understand what she was actually saying, but when he did… Dmitri found himself holding his breath. “You’re falling for me.” Her flinch had him correcting, “You’ve already fallen.”
“Call it temporary insanity.”
She tried to brush past him, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Keira, wait.”
“If you’re going to give me another lecture on how this isn’t a love match and I’m a fool for forgetting that, there’s no need—I’m doing a damn good job of giving it to myself.”
Fuck, she was killing him. He pulled her into his arms. “I love you, too.” And then again in Russian. “Ya lyublyu tebya, moya koroleva.”
She froze. “Don’t fuck with me like this. It’s cruel.”
“I can be cruel.” He framed her face, tipping her head back so she looked into his eyes. He did his best to lower the masks he held in place through habit and let her see what she’d come to mean to him. “But I’m being honest right now. I never planned on it, but then, I never planned on you.”
“You… you mean it?” she whispered.
“Da.” He smoothed back her hair. “How could I not?”
Her lower lip quivered, the tiniest of movements. “Take me to bed.”
He let his forehead drop to rest against hers. “If I do to you what I want to, it will hurt you with your current injuries.”
“Dmitri Romanov, you just told me you love me. If you don’t make love to me to prove it, I’ll never forgive you.”
He found himself smiling, even as his concern for her back dampened his desire. “I won’t hurt you.”
“You’re right. You won’t. You’ll lie on your back and let me decide what hurts me and what doesn’t.” She ran her hands up his chest and kissed him. “I need you, Dima.”
I need you, Dima.
The magic words of his undoing.
He could deny this woman nothing when she wielded them against him. He backed toward the bed, towing her with him. “This wasn’t what I intended.”
“Yeah, you couldn’t be clearer about that.” She shook her head and gave him a little push. He allowed himself to sprawl back on the bed, his mouth going dry as Keira climbed to straddle him. She stroked his cock, her gaze never leaving his face. “You love me.”
“I love you.” It got easier to say it every time.
Her brows pinched together. “You’re not saying that because you think Alethea Eldridge is going to murder us all tomorrow and this is your way of getting some action before the battle, is it?”
“I believe we already established that wasn’t my plan.” He gave her the look that accusation deserved. “As evidenced by the marks all over your back, I don’t need to lie to you to get inside you.”
She gave him a squeeze. “Now, now. Those are fighting words. A girl likes to feel valued and not taken for granted.”
He bent up to kiss her. “You’re not taken for granted, moya koroleva.”
“Good.” She pushed him back to a prone position and guided his cock to her entrance. “Now let me take advantage of you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Keira spent most of the next day in a whirlwind of activity that did nothing to distract her from her tangled thoughts. Dmitri said he loved me. She wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe it so much, she practically vibrated from that need. If she were any other woman—if he were any other man—she would believe it with no qualms.
But she wasn’t any other woman. She was only herself.
Dmitri wasn’t any other man. He was manipulative and ambitious and surprisingly tender, all wrapped up in a complicated package.
So instead of feeling the bliss of the newly in love, she kept deconstructing every moment they’d ever spent together, trying to see it from different angles. Dmitri was so damn smart, so damn calculating, and it wasn’t like he’d suddenly stopped being those things now that he claimed to care about her.
More than anything, she wanted to call someone to talk it out. Charlie was quickly becoming one of her best friends, but the woman didn’t exactly have much in the way of relationship experience—aside from Aiden—and her loathing of Dmitri would color any advice. Keira’s sister Carrigan wasn’t much better, but…
No. She had to figure this one out herself.
As Mark had said when she’d ordered him out of the house—she wasn’t an O’Malley anymore. She had made that choice.