Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(84)

Sometimes, that just isn’t enough.”





61

MISHA

“You don’t understand…” she starts to say before a sob overtakes her.

I roll fully onto my side and fit Paige against me, fusing our bodies together. The t-shirt she’s wearing is thin enough that I can feel the swells of her breasts and the points of her nipples. I can also feel the cold metal of her pendant resting just an inch from my dog tag. Like the two objects are drawn together. Like each one recognizes the other.

“I understand better than you think,” I murmur. “I watched my brother die right before my eyes. I was supposed to be standing next to him. Those were his orders. If I’d listened, I’d have taken the bullet and Maksim would be here today.”

She shifts in my arms and then her hand slips up to my face and cups my cheek. “But then you wouldn’t be here with me.”

“Would you trade your life for Clara’s?” I ask.

Her eyebrows pinch together. “In a heartbeat. But she wouldn’t want that. And neither would Maksim.”

Her certainty feels like a breath of fresh air. I want to lose myself in that confidence.

“You know why I believe that?” she asks, glancing down at our interlinked chains. “Because they were good, strong people. They gave us their strength so we could continue without them.”

I trace the smooth lines of her face, the swell of her lips. Her eyes are wide and innocent.

“Sometimes, you seem so fucking young,” I whisper.

She smiles. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Then she kisses me.

She kisses me like she’s trying to pin me down, like she’s trying to pull me in so I don’t leave her alone in this endless bed. She kisses me like she’s grasping for comfort just as badly as she wants to give me hope.

And it’s intoxicating. More exhilarating than the best high. More consuming than the anger I’ve lived with for the past year.

So I kiss her back. Deeply. Hungrily.

I slide my tongue into her mouth and devour her with the pent-up lust I’ve tried to suppress since the moment we met.

I pull my t-shirt off her and slide between her legs, letting my cock probe at her entrance. She’s wet, splayed out before me, so beautiful and so devastating it fucking hurts just to look at her.

Her fingers tangle in the chain of my dog tag. She slides her hand down, letting my dog tag and her pendant rest together in the palm of her hand for a moment. Then she uses the chain to pull me back to her mouth.

I slide into her gently, filling her bit by bit. She moans low, her hips circling higher as I bear down. I bring my lips to the nape of her neck and press my nose to the tangle of her silky hair.

Her hand is at the back of my head, drawing me closer even though we’re as close as we can be. It’s slow and gentle for a while, and then the heat builds and it becomes something more. Something fiercer.

There isn’t a sliver of air between us when we come in unison. Our orgasms seem to chase each other, climbing and climbing until we’re a breathless heap of limbs and pleasure. I forget where I end and she begins. The differences, the boundaries? They just don’t seem to matter anymore.

Paige’s nails dig into my back as she descends from the high, her body still pulsing around me.

When I finally pull back, her eyes are dilated and dreamlike. She stares up at me, and I stare right back.

She doesn’t ask me to stay with her.

She probably knows that tonight, she doesn’t have to.





62

MISHA

“Yan,” I say when he walks into the basement early the next morning. “Thanks for coming.”

Yan looks around at the cold, spartan walls with unease. “We don’t usually conduct business down here.”

“Oh, I do. All the time,” I tell him pleasantly. “It’s just not the kind of business you’re used to.”

He meets my eyes and blanches with fear. He turns to run back up the steps just as the basement door slams closed. Konstantin moves out of the shadows and leans against the cement pillar just behind him. He inclines his head in an unsettling show of politeness.

Yan’s gaze swivels in my direction. “I… I don’t know why I’m here—”

“Don’t you?” I ask sharply. “I don’t think that’s true. As a matter of fact, the look in your eyes tells me you know exactly why you’re here.”

“I am loyal,” he whimpers, punctuating every word like he might be able to hammer it into my head.

His eyes keep roaming around the room, looking for a way out. He won’t find one. Men far smarter than him have tried.

“A man who has to claim he is loyal, very rarely is.” I drift towards him, and he takes a half-step back like there is any chance of escape. There isn’t.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, Misha, but—”

“When was the last time you saw Petyr Ivanov?”

He tries and fails to school his expression to blankness. “I’ve never met the man.”

“Is that your final answer?” Konstantin asks, circling Yan slowly.

Yan looks frantically back and forth between the two of us. His left eyelid starts to twitch. “I swear to you: I haven’t betrayed you, Misha. I have been loyal to the Orlov Bratva since the moment I was recruited by your father.”