Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (7)

“Why do you ask?”

“You just look like you’re concentrating really hard right now.”

I smile. “It’s nothing to worry yourself about. Just business.”

“You still haven’t told me what these businesses of yours do,” she points out.

“Because it’s not important.”

She shrugs. “I suppose we don’t have time for that anyway,” she says. “It’s late. They’ll want to close up.”

“They’ll stay open as long as I need them to.”

She considers that for a moment. “Is that your way of telling me you’re important?”

“Infer what you will.”

She eyes me carefully, taking in my Dolce suit and the Hublot on my wrist. “You are important,” she guesses. “And dangerous.”

I lean in. “Not to you,” I tell her. “Not now.”

She lets out a little breath and leans away from me with a barely repressed shiver. “I… I should get back home.” She jerks out of her seat to her feet.

“If you must,” I say, rising to meet her. “But do you really want to?”

“It’s late,” she says. “What I want right now is to go home.”

I nod and snap my fingers. The ma?tre d' comes rushing forward with Cami’s coat held out. I take it from him and offer it to her. She hesitates for a long moment, but eventually she turns and lets me slide it onto her arms.

I’m treated to a view of her backless dress. The graceful curve of her spine. All that beautiful skin, tanned and smooth. My fingers tingle with the need to touch every inch of her.

When the coat is settled on her shoulders, I leave my hands there to pin her in place. I can feel her stiffen.

Leaning down, I brush my lips against her earlobe and whisper, “Well, kiska, what I want right now is to take you into the bathroom and fuck you on the counter until you come screaming in my ear.”

She rips away from me and whirls around as soon as the words have left my mouth. Her eyes are wide and her cheeks are flushed. She’s trying to look offended.

But I can see it on her face: she wants the same fucking thing.





3





Camila





He’s not joking.

Eyes like his don’t joke.

Steel-edged, hauntingly blue, they gaze calmly at me, completely unrepentant after whispering that in my ear.

Scorching heat blazes through my body as I try to sort through my frantic thoughts.

I ought to slap him, right? I ought to throw a drink in his face and storm out? Aren’t I supposed to demand more for myself?

So why does it feel like Isaak has ripped all those choices away from me?

And why can’t I hate him for it?

“Stop,” he says, regarding me coolly.

“Stop what?”

“Stop overthinking,” he replies. “Life is not a book. It happens here. Now. In the blink of an eye.”

“Thanks for the philosophy lesson,” I scowl. But my joke falls flat and stale in the crackling air between us.

Isaak stalks a step closer. “It’s a simple question, kiska. What. Do. You. Want?” He enunciates each word slowly and clearly. I watch his lips move. Mesmerized, hypnotized, completely and utterly out of my element.

Whatever “this” is, it can’t be happening. The fact that I am even considering giving into the heat building in my belly is insane. It’s not me.

I’m a quiet bookworm. I’ve read Little Women enough times that I could recite it from memory. I don’t own a single set of matching underwear. I don’t do… this.

But maybe I could?

Isaak cocks his head to the side and smirks. Goddamn, it’s such an intoxicating expression on him. Arrogant enough to make my blood boil. Sexy enough to make my center throb.

He closes the last distance between us. I’m out of room to retreat. I bump into a wall and yelp, though it dies quickly on my lips.

His hand finds my hip. That simple little contact is enough to make me even more flustered. My eyes dart around the empty restaurant beyond Isaak’s shoulder. But all the waiters and bartenders seem to have disappeared.

“We… I can’t,” I mumble. “There are people.”

Isaak laughs cruelly. “You know as well as I do that they’re gone.”

“We still can’t. There are… there are rules.”

“Rules?” he echoes, as though he doesn’t understand the word.

His hand slips inside my coat. Finds the hem of my dress. Slowly, slowly, slowly, he teases it up. Fingertips tracing tiny spirals up my thigh.

“We can’t,” I tell him, trying to pull down my skirt. “Someone will see.” I hate how my voice sounds: I’m not telling him no, I’m just pleading with him for mercy. Throw me an excuse, any excuse, and I’ll take it and run out of here.

But he’s not biting. He’s not giving me an out.

Those sparkling blue eyes are all I can see as he presses his bulk into mine. That cool, fragrant cologne is all I can smell, like an alpine forest. He’s pinning me between the wall. Consuming me already.

His fingertip keeps inching up my dress. My hands won’t move from my sides.