Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(111)

I’m supposed to be protecting my heart, but it’s too late for that. It’s been shattered and pieced together too many times to count. So what’s one more heartbreak? Especially when it will be Misha holding the pieces.

I let my fingers slide over his lips. I trace their shape while he observes me, his hand falling to my hip. I lean up on my tiptoes and touch my lips to his. It’s a tentative kiss—scared and unsure, but delirious with need.

His hand slips around the back of my neck and he pulls me deeper into the kiss. Just like that, I lose all sense of where I am. All I feel are his arms around me, his heart beating hard against mine. I breathe and it’s nothing but the rich, earthy scent he carries with him wherever he goes.

It smells like home.

I have a strange sense of déjà vu as he strips me down to my bra and panties with slow, tender gestures. I know how the scene plays out from here on out.

He had me poised over a balcony similar to this one a few months ago. Heat spreads like wildfire across my body when I remember the moment he pressed his tongue to my clit and my life changed forever.

But as close as this moment is to that one… everything feels different.

It’s deeper, somehow. Lust burns through me, but I’m scorched by the millions of other little emotions that have needled their way into my soul since I met him.

I can see his beauty, his strength, his power. But I also recognize his pain, his vulnerability, his wounds.

I feel this powerful sense of possessiveness, too. I may not own his heart the way he owns mine, but no other woman can claim that Misha Orlov is her husband.

Only I own that right.

As he backs me into the balcony railing, I push off his chest and look him in the eyes. They’re clouded with lust, obliterated under a haze of want and passion.

I get down on my knees and unzip him. His cock presses against my lips before I slip it hungrily into my mouth. I suck him off slowly, letting the heat from my pussy build to an almost unbearable level.

I feel his hand on the back of my head. A deep, guttural moan is emanating from his chest. He starts moving his hips, thrusting his cock into my mouth. He fucks my face slow and deep. I brace myself, cementing my knees on the cold stone floor and opening my mouth a little wider to accommodate him.

I touch myself while he takes my face. I press my fingers against my clit and rub slowly as the pressure mounts. Just when I think he’s about to finish, he pulls out and hauls me back to my feet.

“My wife deserves a proper fuck,” he says, gathering me up and wrapping my legs around his waist.

“In a proper bed.”

He carries me back into our suite and lays me down on the bed. I expect him to ram into me like he has in the past. I expect him to fuck me with the fury of a man who can’t control his desires.

But Misha surprises me. He moves slowly. He eases into me with a tenderness that nearly tears me apart even more thoroughly than the violence would.

I find my fingers winding through his. Our breath hitches together. He doesn’t meet my eyes while he makes love to me.

But he is making love to me. There’s no other way to describe it.

And it’s a step closer than I ever thought I would get. I hold onto that small victory as he draws a silent, mouth-wide-open orgasm out of me.

Some miracles take a little longer than others.

Prague wasn’t built in a day.





85

MISHA

My head is foggy. It has been since the moment we got back from Prague. What started as a peace offering turned into a fully-fledged fucking honeymoon.

“Fucking” being the operative word.

It was the single most satisfying experience of my life—coupled with the single most gut-wrenching.

Because coming back to the real world has been more brutal than I expected. I want to be back in that hotel room with Paige, where the rules didn’t apply and everything seemed simpler.

“Anatoly’s here to see you,” Konstantin announces, cutting through my reverie.

I glance out my window. I can see the glass top of the greenhouse from a distance. Paige is there with Cyrille right now.

“Misha? I said Anatoly—”

“I heard you. Bring him in.”

Anatoly walks in. He’s in his usual plaid button-down and khaki pants. He looks every bit the devoted, mild-mannered, utterly vanilla accountant he is.

He sits down in the open chair next to Konstantin. “I’ve filed your tax returns for the year, sir,” he says, jumping straight into business in his usual dry-as-a-saltine manner. “Everything seems to be in order. As do all of your accounts. Almost all of them.”

I’ve always liked his brusque approach to work. It is the main reason I hired him. I needed a competent accountant, but I also needed someone I could trust. Anatoly is like a computer; he doesn’t have the wherewithal to be anything other than sincere and emotionless.

But I don’t miss his word choice here. “Almost?” I say, brow raised.

He clears his throat. “I tried to get in contact with you over your joint account with your wife.”

“Konstantin passed along the message. She’s moving money from our joint account into another personal account. I’m aware.”

He adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Into two other accounts, sir.”

“Excuse me?”