Chapter 98: Chapter Forty-Three

Andrei

I pressed my forehead against the cool tile and squeezed my eyes closed as the searing water pelted my back.

I heard him then.

My father.

“You will never be pure enough. Good enough. Never.”

I didn’t listen to him then.

But it had affected me—so deeply, so traumatically that I figured that’s how others saw me, that I was less than.

It was a reminder they were real.

And it was a reminder that I was a monster. A killer.

I pounded the side of the shower. I wanted to scream. I clenched my teeth to keep myself silent, poised, controlled.

I couldn’t lose control with her.

Not now.

Especially not now.

Because now I had no choice.

The Sinacores would kill her if they knew, just like Chase would.

My choices were limited.

And I was selfish enough to want her and damn the consequences.

I wanted her.

I didn’t deserve her.

But I couldn’t stop wanting her no matter how hard I tried.

With a curse, I turned off the water and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around my body as I quickly dried off in the bathroom and walked naked into my bedroom to grab a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

She was waiting for me.

She was starving.

So was I. Not for food; food wouldn’t sate this feeling I had in my soul, this feeling I had every time my heart beat and reminded me I was alive.

I threw on a vintage Henley and a pair of ripped jeans and ran my hands through my wet hair.

I was in too much of a hurry to care about anything else. I stopped when my hand touched the bedroom door.

My gloves.

My black gloves were on the dresser.

I hung my head in shame as his words washed over me again.

“You will never be good enough. Never.”

I swallowed the annoying feeling in my throat, the one that told me I was choosing emotion over logic, and grabbed the gloves, shoving my hands into them.

I would need them tonight.

Sadly, I would need them for the rest of my life, especially if I was doing this...with her.

Nobody else.

The Sinacores could go to hell.

Because tonight, she was going to be my heaven.

I rounded the corner to the kitchen, not finding her right away. I wrongly assumed she’d already be snacking on something. I loved that she actually ate.

Instead, the light strains of Tchaikovsky filled the air, quietly, in the background.

A smile played at my lips as I walked farther into the living room.

And then the smile died a quick death as I gripped the nearest counter space and swallowed.

She’d been sitting on the couch.

I wasn’t the only one who’d changed.

She didn’t make a big show of standing or even turning around like she needed attention or wanted me to say anything.

Sometimes the best compliments are the ones made in complete and utter silence.

If I spoke, it would ruin the moment.

And the moment was perfect.

Because she was being vulnerable. And I knew that she might as well be standing there naked, asking me to love her, take her, pleasure her.

I sucked in a shaky breath and almost laughed. So, this is what fear feels like?

I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like the temptation I had to shake, or to kill the moment with my own insignificant speech.

Fucking hell, she was gorgeous.

Her hair hung past her shoulders, dancing with each step she took. A piece had fallen between her cleavage, trapped exactly where I wanted to be.

I clenched my hands, the leather suddenly too binding, too constricting for what I had in mind.

But I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t be inside her and touching her all at once with everything I’d seen. It wasn’t fair to expose her to my demons when all I wanted was to give her heaven.

Hell wasn’t part of the bargain.

My eyes roamed lazily over her body as she took another step, her thigh causing the flimsy material to billow up as she moved.

It was pure torture as my body pulsed with temptation and need. It erupted from my fingertips as I gripped the countertop harder.

I never knew that one word would be my downfall as she leaned up with a teasing smile on her face and whispered. “Hungry?”

My body completely seized.

Maybe she knew.

Maybe she was just as desperate as I was, because she pressed her hands against my chest, softly, and then drew slow circles with her fingertips making her way to my shoulders, gripping them, as she wrapped an arm around my neck and pulled me down.

“I wasn’t waiting for permission,” I growled.

“Then what were you waiting for?”

“My heart stopped beating; I was waiting for it to catch up.”

She sucked in a shocked breath. I took advantage, molding my lips to hers as I pulled the rest of her against me. The material didn’t hide her body heat.

Me.

She broke off the kiss. “I had a plan.”

I smirked. “Oh yeah?”

“What was this plan?” I toyed with the straps of lingerie near her neck, already mentally calculating how fast I could rip them from her body, already thinking about the knife around two feet from my right hand.

It would be an easy cut. Too easy.

She let out a light laugh and shook her head as her cheeks bloomed with heat. “I forgot.”

“So soon?” I teased.

“Your kiss does a good job of making me forget.”

“Seems I need to work on my kiss, because I need you to remember this… more than I need my next breath, dorogaya.” I kissed her hard, gripped her by the ass, and pulled her against me.

“I need you to remember us, always, forever. Promise me.”

“Why—”

I cut her off with another kiss, then whispered against her mouth. “Promise.”

She nodded, her lips moving against mine, soft like velvet, stirring a slow burn in my body as I tried to regain control of every single instinct I had to run the other way. “Promise.”

“Dorogaya.” I said it softly this time. “I think you are the only thing on this earth that could actually terrify me.”

She stopped kissing me and wrapped her arms around me.

My love.

My sweetheart.

My life.

Was hugging me.

I hugged her back, my heart in my throat, my future uncertain. All I knew was that she was the reason.

For everything.

“Please, Andrei,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Let me give myself to you.”

“I don’t think I’m worthy of that gift.”

“And I don’t think you’re in a position to say no,” she fired back softly. “Unless that’s not what you—”

I kissed her soundly, picked her up by the ass, and set her on the counter. As our tongues tangled, I was moaning, growling, gasping for air; then again, so was she.

My body tightened in all the wrong and right places, needing release, feeding off each kiss like a drug bringing both of us to the point of no return.

I would just do.

And she would see it.

She would see all of me.

Have all of me.

She would hold the one thing no one else did.

The last pure part I’d been left with.

I broke away from her, chest heaving, body on fire as my length pressed against my jeans. The problem was my body knew what it wanted, and my mind got in the way. It always got in the way.

Alice licked her lips where I’d kissed her, then hopped down from the counter and grabbed my hand.

I blindly followed as she brought me into my own bedroom. Darkness descended.

And I was reminded of where I was birthed.

In Hell itself.

I flinched when she closed the door.

It was dark, so dark.

And then her hand was back on my chest.

I exhaled as I wrapped my fingers around hers.

There was enough light coming in from the bathroom to see her face, her perfect body, and the small smile that teased her trembling lips as she backed away from me and reached behind her.

My lips parted in a rough exhale followed by a dirty curse as the lingerie very slowly fell from her body to a pool by her bare feet.

She was completely naked.

I expected to feel nothing.

The expectation was so strong that I was devastated before the last inch of silk hit the ground.

It didn’t happen. The sadness. The mocking. The vision of using her as a means to an end.

All I saw in her eyes was terrified vulnerability.

And all I felt in mine looking back at her was insurmountable holiness at what she’d just done.

A woman raped.

A woman used.

A woman now naked in front of me, offering control when it had always been hers to take.

She shed her dress.

She did that for a monster.

The least I could do was show her the man.

I took off my right glove first, tossing it on the floor, and moved to my left as it fell by her nightdress.

My shirt was next.

Her eyes drank me in.

With shaking hands, I started unbuttoning my jeans. She moved forward before I could finish, on her knees, in front of me. Where I didn’t want her to be, it was too wrong, for someone like her.

She batted my hands away.

I swayed on my feet, drunk off the moment, off her.

It felt like my soul was floating above my body as I watched her slowly unbutton my jeans, and free me.

My dick strained toward her in a way that bordered on indecent.

Her eyes met mine as she leaned forward and swirled her tongue across the tip before slowly standing in front of me and wrapping her arms around my neck. “Bed.”

I smiled against her mouth. “Are you making demands now?”

“I figured we’d still be standing here if I didn’t.”

I burst out laughing and smacked her slightly on the ass as I backed her toward the mattress. I rubbed where I’d hit and then I bit down on her neck and licked my way up to her lips.

“You taste like damnation.

Alice’s chest rose and fell as she lifted her hand and pressed it against the A carved out of my chest over my heart. “Where’s your knife?”

I stared her down. “There’s one under the pillow, why?”

She reached behind her and came back with the knife my father had given me, the one that I kept on me at all times.

It was impure, that knife.

It represented our family.

Him.

Us.

Darkness.

Her skin glistened as she took the tip and pressed it against her chest, right across her heart. “I don’t want to be like the Italians, Andrei.”

My eyes stung as they filled with unshed tears. I never cried. I didn’t think myself actually capable of it… until that moment, when she offered me both pain and pleasure, sacrifice, body and soul.

My voice shook. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, you cut my hand, I want you to carve yourself into my heart.”

I was losing control.

Fast.

My body roared to life in a way that felt violent as I sucked in breath after breath. “You’re saying…”

She dug the knife into her skin, a whimper escaped her lips. “Make it fast.”

“But you’re perfect.”

“So are you.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t understand... You’re pure... I’m not.”

“Maybe I’ll just be your sacrifice, the one you’ve always needed, the blood that’s always needed to be spilled,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I’m yours, Andrei Petrov. Take me.”

With a growl, I took the knife and carved a small A over her chest. As her blood flowed from the fresh cut, I threw the knife against the wall.

Blood trickled down her chest, her blood, my name.

Mine.

She was mine.

Every inch of skin I touched was on fire as her hips lifted, our bodies slid against each other, a mixture of sweat and blood.

“Andrei,” she whimpered.

“You will always be mine,” I promised.

“Always,” she agreed.

I drove into her, knowing it would hurt, knowing she would curse me later, both hating and loving the feeling of her body as she convulsed around me. I sunk into her heat.

And I knew.

There would never be any going back from this.

She had undone me.

Maybe I had undone myself.

This was what I had been waiting for my whole life.

For someone to accept the ugly and call it pure.

Our eyes locked as I moved inside her.

She spread her legs wider and hooked one around my hips as I measured my pace, wanting it to last longer than the three seconds that seemed most probable.

She clung to me, gripped my hair. “How it should be.”

“Yes.” I bit down as I sank deep, feeling every intimate part of her heat, wanting to stay there forever as she clenched.

Fingertips against my scalp.

Parted lips breathing against my neck.

I gripped her ass and angled her higher. She let out a shriek as I drove faster, harder.

I wouldn’t last at that rate.

We were both shaking, maybe in shock, maybe because it was so new. Whatever it was, it was perfect.

“Fuck.” I kissed her neck and found her mouth, tangled my tongue with hers, kissed her like it would be my last time, spoke against her mouth in Russian I knew she wouldn’t understand.

I said my wedding vows.

She would never know.

That I was promising everything.

And would take nothing in return.

“Ya, Andrei Petrov, daru tebe svoyu zhiz’n svoye serdtse, svoyu dushu.”

I reached between our bodies, wet heat washed over my fingers as I pressed into her, sending her over the edge.

And for the first time in my life, a woman screamed my name while I was inside her, while I loved her, while she loved me back.

And that was enough for a man who had been damned to completely lose his mind and fall into a pit of ecstasy as I pumped into her and left years’ worth of darkness, directly into the light.

“Dorogaya.” I kissed her softly.

She kissed me back. Her lower lip was wet from our kiss, slippery as she asked, “What does that mean?”

“It’s a term of endearment,” I panted. “Like sweetheart, honey, my love…”

She stilled. “You called me that the second day you knew me.”

“No,” I corrected. “I called you that the minute they brought you in. I just didn’t say it out loud.”