Page 30 of Lethal Devotion
“That’s none of your business.” I stay where I am, forcing myself not to move. If I do, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop myself. “This isn’t that kind of marriage.”
Who the fuck am I reminding? Certainly not her.I’ve never seen such relief on a woman’s face as when I told her I wasn’t going to fuck her. She doesn’t want me. And why would she? She’s beautiful, young, innocent, fresh, and sweet. I’m a beast, a cold, cruel Bratva enforcer whose entire life is blood and violence.
“I—” She swallows hard. “Sorry. I just—whatever you were doing, I’m glad you’re okay.”
My jaw tightens.What would it be like, to have someone waiting for me who worried? Who wondered if I was alright? Who cared if I died?Konstantin would give a shit if he lost me to an enemy bullet, but it’snot the same thing, brotherly as we are. What would it be like to have a woman who waited up for me at night?
Sienna licks her lips nervously, and my cock jerks again, hard to the point of pain, my balls tight and aching. My gaze falls down to the ridiculously thin robe that she’s wearing, and my body seems to move of its own accord, taking me across the space between us until I’m standing in front of her. I reach out, touching the collar of her robe, and I can see how her eyes widen even though I’m touching the fabric and not her skin, how difficult it is for her to not flinch back.
“What is this?” I ask, my voice tight and harsher than I mean for it to be, and her eyes go even wider in her delicate face.
“A robe?” Her voice rises with the question. “I don’t know what you?—”
“You can’t go around the mansion in something like this.” I flick the edge of it sideways, and immediately regret it. It exposes a sliver of her collarbone, a slice of those goddamned freckles, and I want to fall to my knees and press my mouth against her skin. “There’s security all over the goddamned place, Sienna. I can see your fucking nipples. You can’t go around wearing this little, this late at night.”
She licks her lips again, and my cock throbs. “I was just getting some water?—”
“You need to put something else on, if you’re going to be walking around in the middle of the night.”
I see her chin tip up, a spark of anger in her eyes. “I don’t have anything else,” she says, taking a step back and reaching for the front of her robe, pulling it closer around her. “I only have a few things to sleep in. It got hot in my apartment, so I never wore much. The air conditioner was old, and?—”
She trails off, and the hint of shame that I can see in her eyes makes me feel worse than ever. I can’t touch her, but I can’t stand the thought of anyone else so much as fucking looking at her, and my jealousy ran away with me. Now I’ve made her feel like shit about things she has no control over, and the worst part of it is that I still don’t want her walking around the mansion like this. None ofKonstantin’s men would dare touch her, but I don’t want a single one of them to look at her and feel the way I do.
Just the thought makes me want to cut their fucking eyeballs out.
I step back abruptly, painfully aware of my pulsing arousal, of how my body is screaming at me to reach for her, to twist my fingers in her hair, drag her mouth to mine, find out what her small breasts feel like in my hands. “You need more clothes, then,” I manage finally, clearing my throat. “I’ll send you shopping tomorrow. I’m sure Konstantin can spare a few men for security. Don’t worry about money,” I add, before she can bring it up. “I’ll give you a credit card. Get your hair and nails done too, if you want. I don’t want you to feel out of place here. Get…get whatever you need.”
It’s a poor attempt to salve my conscience, and a hypocritical one at that, because it’s at least partially in the hopes that I won’t have to see her like this again, in a robe so thin that I could tear it apart with my hands in an instant. But I can also imagine that she must feel out of place around someone like Valentina, and if I can make her feel more comfortable, I want to do that for her.
“You don’t need to—” she starts to protest, but I cut her off.
“You’re my wife. You’re mine to take care of, Sienna. That’s all there is to it.”
Whatever she was going to say dies on her lips. I take advantage of the moment to escape, turning sharply on my heel and striding toward the stairs, desperate to get up to my room and into the shower so that I can ease the ache in my straining dick.
I think I hear her say my name, calling after me. But I keep going, until I’m in my bedroom, the door closed behind me as I reach down and fumble with my belt, unable to wait a second longer.
She’s the only thing that fills my mind from the moment my hand wraps around my throbbing flesh. And when I come, it’s her name on my lips.
She’s all I want now… and it makes me feel like a fucking monster.
10
SIENNA
Iwake up the next morning feeling more anxious and uncertain than I have since I arrived here, which is saying something. I hadn’t expected to run into Damian last night, and the way he looked at me, the things he said?—
He’d been so cold, so terse. Telling me that it was none of my business where he’d been, angry over what I was wearing, almost as if… almost as if he’d been jealous.
Which makes no sense. He said he didn’t want to sleep with me, that he wasn’t going to touch me, so why does he care if someone else looks at me? He knows I was a stripper before this. I can’t imagine Konstantin’s men would dare touch me, not even if I walked around the mansion stark naked, so why was Damian so upset?
And then his complete one-eighty, telling me that he’d send me shopping today to get whatever I wanted, that he’d give me a card.You’re mine to take care of.
No one has ever said something like that to me before. It sends a strange feeling through me, one that I don’t know how to define. No one has evertaken careof me. Even my parents didn’t do a great job at it. Certainly no one has since I became an adult and left home. Theidea of someone taking care of me, of not having to be entirely independent, is one that I can’t quite wrap my head around.
I can’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me, either. I know what men look like when they’re overcome with lust, and I saw that in his eyes. I know if I’d looked down, I’d have seen that he was aroused, which is entirely at odds with what he’s been telling me. But there was more to it than that.
He looked… desperate. Angry.Hungry. Terrifying. I felt afraid, looking at him, like prey cowering under the gaze of something that could eat them alive, and at the same time, I thought he might be afraid, too.
