Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 92160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
And why can’t I shake the feeling that she’s playing the long game? Gaining my trust. Manipulating me?
I can’t trust the little brat.
She doesn’t immediately jump out of the cage, and that… throws me.
Instead, she stretches, slow and sinuous, like a cat waking in the sun. Her arms reach high above her head, back arching just enough to make my sex-starved, sleep-deprived brain take note. My gaze drags along every curve and valley, the creamy softness of her peach-colored skin, the elegant curve of her neck still marked with my bites, though they’ve faded to dusky pink. Her hair, the natural white-blonde, fanned over her pillow like sunrise.
God, I love the way she’s comfortable in her body, even knowing she’s made enemies everywhere she turns.
I should yank her out by her ankles, drag her to her feet, and make her remember exactly who owns her now. I try to remind myself why I hunted her, what she did, and remind myself that she’s dangerous as fuck and can’t be trusted.
But I don’t. I don’t do any of those things. Instead, I fucking watch.
She knows. She has to know how she affects me.
When she finally sits up, it’s deliberate, the queen arching her back and meeting my gaze. “Slept like a baby,” she says with a yawn. “Oh, wait.” She presses a finger to her lips. “Was I supposed to be scared? Being caged and all?”
She tips her head to the side.
Baby. I’m stuck on the word baby. I’ve been so obsessed with the idea of her carrying our baby, anchoring her to me, that just hearing the word plants the vision of her heavy with pregnancy, carrying my child…
I grunt and reach for her, but she’s already sliding out of the cage, unfurling like she has all the time in the world. Her gaze is amused. Calculating.
“I figured you’d fucking like it.”
Standing in front of me, she blinks long, long lashes at me and drawls as she reaches a hand to trace my bare shoulder. “The question is, big guy. Did you?”
“Enjoy you caged?” I grab her hair and tug it back, baring her neck. I imagine what it would be like waking up to this woman curled up to me, her body rounded and full with my child, my palm pressed to her swollen abdomen. I lick my lips and swallow hard. “You know I do. You know I love having control over you.”
But something’s changed.
She’s not just playing the game anymore. She’s enjoying it.
And fuck me. I am too.
We head to the kitchen to make breakfast. She asks me questions about my routines, who works for me, and what I do for the Bratva.
“You know,” she says, after learning that I’m the one who manages cyber security and hacking, “our skills paired together would be straight-up fire.”
She’s not wrong. Cyber security and forgery? We could rewrite history. Dark, twisted history, but it would be history nonetheless.
“I want to know how you left things with the Irish.” I spread butter on toast and cut it into triangles before I push the plate to her. She eyes it thoughtfully and doesn’t eat it.
“If I were going to poison you, I wouldn’t do it in toast,” I mutter. Would’ve poisoned the vodka last night or just skipped formalities and jabbed her pretty little neck again.
Her bright blue eyes meet mine. “Wait, you thought I was afraid of being poisoned?” She takes a huge bite.
I shrug.
“Nah, I just read something somewhere about cutting toast that way, triangles instead of rectangles, and I—” She shakes her head as my phone rings. “Nothing.”
She’s perched on the barstool, happily munching toast as if she hasn’t spent the last month fighting for her life.
I answer the phone with a scowl. Rodion.
“Yeah?”
“You talked to the Irish?”
I scowl at the phone. Anissa chews her toast, but her focus is narrowed on me.
“No. Why?”
“O’Rourke’s in town. What the fuck does he want to do with us?”
I shake my head. “I thought we were allies now.”
“We are. Allies who have each other’s backs, but you don’t just show up unannounced. We’re allies, but we’re not friends.”
“Where is he?”
“Sighted at the Wolf and Moon last night. Ruthie told us.”
And by us, he means Vadka, Rafail’s best friend. Ruthie’s his sister-in-law and bartends at the Wolf and Moon. It helps having an observant ally in the local bar. There’s a reason we know everything. Lips loosen over drinks.
“So he’s not hiding. Interesting.”
I can hear Rodion’s smirk on the other end of the line. “Ask your girl,” he says.
I scowl. “She’s not my girl.”
Anissa feigns being affronted with an exaggerated open mouth, her hand splayed across her chest. She holds my gaze and shakes her head.
“Right.” I can hear the note of derision in his tone.
Just a girl I keep locked up, feed by hand, and growl at whenever another man so much as breathes on her.