Page 18 of Fierce Pursuit

Not the saccharine floral perfumes Veronika used to favor. This was different.

Deeper. Spicier. Warmer. Vanilla and clove.

It washer.

And it did things to me that it shouldn’t.

Not for a woman so young.

The age gap wasn’t scandalous, six years wasn’t much. In Moscow, it wouldn’t even be talked about.

But she wasn’t just any woman.

She was Veronika’s younger sister.

She was supposed to be forbidden.

The scent of her skin clung to the fabric, laced with something faintly sweet, something intoxicating. I inhaled again, my grip tightening.

How many nights had she wrapped this around herself, seeking warmth? Had she pulled it over her bare legs while curled up in bed? Had she pressed it to her lips in thought, in fear, in longing?

I shouldn’t have wanted to know.

But I did.

A violent, unwanted ache twisted in my gut.

Veronika had never brought feelings like this out in me. Even in our most intimate moments, there had been no heat, no fire, only duty. She had been cold, selfish, a woman who had never belonged to me, barely even in name.

But Marina…

I shut my eyes, jaw clenched, every muscle wound tight with something dark, something dangerous. I had spent years avoiding her, denying myself the pull of hersharp tongue, her defiant green eyes, her quiet strength. And now here I was, standing in her bedroom, holding her shawl in my hands like a man starved.

A man obsessed.

My fingers curled into the fabric. I should put it down.

I didn’t.

She had been running from me for months. Dodging me. Denying me. Hiding from what was inevitable. Because the one reason my marriage had never worked, the one thing I had never admitted, was that every time I looked at Veronika…I wished she were Marina.

Did Veronika know? Had she figured it out? Was that why she pulled away? Or had she simply never cared?

It didn’t matter.

None of it mattered.

Because no matter what I wanted, Marina was not for me.

She could never be for me.

It didn’t matter that she had the face of an angel but a body meant to tempt the devil—one sent to torment me, to haunt my dreams, to taint my every fantasy.

It didn’t matter that every time I had taken a woman to my bed, I had wished it was her.

Itshouldn’thave mattered.

But it did.

---