Vengeance Aside (Wanted Men 0.5)(43)

“Protected?” he questioned, sensing that had been a slip. “From what?”

“All these feelings floating around,” she sneered as she fluttered her fingers in the air. “Or how about allowing myself to dream of white fucking dresses and wanting it with someone badly enough to have sex in public.”

Interesting. “Those were dreams, but they’re still relevant. So, what you’re telling me is…” He paused to make sure he understood. “Rather than being happily protected, since you met me, your emotions have taken over and are coming out in the form of fear and panic because you’re smothering what really wants to escape.”

Annoyance twisted her lush mouth. “You sound like a crooked attorney leading the witness.”

“Pardon?”

“On TV, they call what you just did leading the witness. You just tried putting a bunch of words in my mouth to conveniently lead us to the conclusion that suits you.”

“Then I picked something up in school after all.” At her raised brows, he tried not to sound smug when he revealed, “I am a licensed attorney. Though not a crooked one because I don’t actively practice.”

She straightened and blinked, and had never appeared younger or more innocent. He wanted to corrupt her. Stain her with the blood on his hands. He would drag her into the murky depths of his underworld where he would make it so if he shot a man through the heart for daring to speak to her; she would do nothing more than wrap her body around him and purr her thanks in his ear while ignoring the dying man’s final breath.

“Lukas? Are you serious?”

She had to ask twice because he’d lost himself for a moment. In a darkness he wouldn’t reveal until he had her in a place she couldn’t escape from without breaking her own heart.

“I studied international and comparative law at Harvard.”

She groaned loudly and slid off the bed. Her legs were long and graceful as she made her way to his dresser to peer into the case that held some of his watches. He’d have bet anything that she wasn’t seeing a thing.

“That just sent your sexy skyrocketing,” she muttered almost too quietly for him to hear. “A fucking attorney. Seriously.”

She turned and leaned her ass against the top drawer, and when she crossed her arms, the tops of her breasts rose above the neckline of her T-shirt to say hello to their new owner. In his mind, he blew them a kiss and promised to get to know them better soon.

“Not that you need it,” she added, “but the odds just keep stacking in your favor, don’t they?” She looked away from him. “I can’t believe you’re so egotistical that you have your watches engraved. And what’s with that anyway? Why aren’t you a Boris or a Mikhail? Lukas doesn’t sound very Russian. Neither does Samuel, for that matter.”

He stood, his palm itching to give her ass a sound slap for the belligerent attitude. “My mother was French. She met my father while she was studying world economics in Moscow.”

That peaked her interest. “Really? Russian and French. How romantic.”

“They were. My parents lived a true love story.”

She wilted again and dropped her eyes to her feet. “Lucky them.” It looked like she was fighting a bone-deep exhaustion as she put her arms back to prop her hands on the dresser.

A pointless move, because when he reached her, he took her hands off the dark wood and kissed her knuckles. “Stop fighting what you’re feeling, yagodka. Let it out and watch it bloom. Once you do, you’ll see the beauty in it. I promise you.”

She came forward to bump her head against his chest. “I don’t understand how you’re so convinced this is what you think it is. God, you smell good,” she muttered, giving him a little shove with her forehead.

He smiled and tried to explain. “It’s simple. I believe in it. I believe that something that arrives suddenly is just as strong, if not stronger and more everlasting, than something that requires time to develop.”

“‘Something?’”

“I don’t want to alarm you by using the L word,” he whispered.

Impatience billowed out of her as she straightened. She gripped his chin to turn his face this way and that. “You’re not afraid at all.” There was that anger again, coming through with the accurate observation. “That’s how I know this is crap. Because if you felt something real, you’d fear losing it.”

“Because something real inevitably leaves.”

“Exactly,” she stated firmly, falling right into his trap.

“Who left you?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she glowered. He let her, and eventually, the look morphed into something with less hostility and more heat. She came up to beat against his control by nuzzling her face into his neck.

“How about we drop this pointless discussion and do what we never got to do last night?”

“How about you stop trying to shut me out?”

She went to wrap her arms around his neck, but he stopped her. When she met his eye, he shook his head. He knew what she was doing. What she continuously attempted to do; make their coming together about nothing more than the same fucking he’d done with so many other women. Well, staggering role reversal aside, he wasn’t going to allow it. When he joined his body with hers, it was going to be meaningful. Profound. It would change their lives by binding them together forever.