Page 26 of Fierce Pursuit

She had been given him.

Handsome. Powerful. Dangerous in all the ways that made my blood heat.

Still, it wasn’t the life she wanted, and she had always been so brash, so impulsive, that when I heard she had moved out of Kostya’s home and was staying with someone else, I wasn’t surprised.

I was mad; I told her she was being silly, but honestly, I was just upset that she was wasting an opportunity to have one of the most gorgeous men I had ever seen in her bed.

It wasn’t as if she could have just passed him up and I could take him instead.

No, he was bratva and high enough that his position required the connections that only Veronika had from her birth mother’s family.

He would have given her everything her imperfect and vain heart wanted. Wealth, children, a home her friends envied, social position. And she had thrown it away.

It had made me furious.

Not just because she had walked away from him.

But because I couldn’t take her place.

Kostya wasn’t for me.

I was too soft. Too immature and unsophisticated. Too wrong.

He’d needed Veronika’s statuesque, ice-blonde perfection.

Not me.

Never me.

But when he stepped into my room now, closing thedistance between us in three long, unhurried strides, none of that mattered.

I was caged.

He braced his hands on the wall, trapping me between his strong arms, his body radiating heat, overwhelming me with his presence.

I hated how my body reacted.

How my breath stuttered.

How warmth coiled low in my belly.

Kostya hadn’t even touched me.

He was trying to intimidate me. Trying to scare me.

And yet?—

The thudding of my pulse had nothing to do with fear.

My thighs pressed together as that terrible, forbidden ache built between them.

I hated him.

I hated myself more.

“I am many things,moy zaichonok.” His voice dropped lower, became rougher. “A liar is not one of them. And if you suggest otherwise again, I will bend you over my knee and spank you like the brat you’re being.”

Heat licked down my spine, hot and humiliating.

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