Page 43 of The Tsar's Obsession
I couldn’t keep my mind off him. Off the one person who I couldn’t wash off my skin, who I couldn’t stop seeing in my eyes. The one person, theonlyperson I was desperate to see again.
He completely overpowered me, heconsumedme, and he did it without force. He was insidious, like a fog, blurring my vision and trapping my body and soul in a cloud of emotions so thick, there was no way out of it.
Viv suddenly became the logical one. Sometime in the middle of the worst week of my life, she lounged beside me on my couch and so nonchalantly asked, “Hey, so what’s happening with your Russian man? You haven’t said anything, just disappearedfrom the party.” She threw her phone down and focused all her attention on me. “Please, God,pleasetell me you fucked.” Her eyes lit up like fireworks, and she joked as always, but I had no heart in me to smile.
It wasn’t a fuck. It was a fucking disaster. I was so fucking deep into him; there was no going back.
My escape from the no-fuck zone landed me straight in his cage. In a prison of my own emotions I worked so hard to deny. I was there for life, and he was the only one with the key.
“We slept together.” I nodded without any enthusiasm, tears spilling over, and while Viv was about to celebrate, she caught sight of my anguish instead.
“What’s wrong?! He sucked that bad?”
Her ridiculous question cajoled a smile through my tears. “No. No, he didn’t. I have a problem,” I gulped, afraid to say the words. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.” I finally spilled what was on my heart, descending into sobs.
It was ripping me apart. At this precise moment, his name lit up on my phone again, just like it did every morning and every evening since I abandoned him. It’s like he had my heart on display, knowing my agony and reaching out when I couldn’t contain it inside me anymore.
Who was this man? Why did he have this hold on me? He wasn’t just a random stranger who walked into my open house. Something linked us; I felt it. I saw it in his eyes. Those pure emeralds screamed for me to remember every time I saw him.
“Babe,” Viv’s caring voice sounded in my ear, and her arms enveloped me. “Holy shit. I’m sorry, I had no idea things were so…real.”
Real.
That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? To feel? To be alive, not live in the matrix, to have something my soul would yearn for? So here I was. In love with a man who was bad for me. Awful. My lust for him was unhinged. Wild and out of control.
“Damn those Russians. You just can’t keep away, can you?”
In Viv’s hug, tears streaming down my face, I furiously tried to understand what that meant. “Huh?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot your little hoe journey to Moscow, where you stuck your tongue down some random dude’s throat?” She chuckled, but my body recoiled. Fuck.
U tebya ochen krasivie glaza.
You have beautiful eyes.Those eyes that watched me dance. Those eyes that couldn’t look away. Those eyes that I fell in love with. Those were his eyes, of course.Of course!
My heart palpitated, the dark and hazy memory rushing into my mind with the speed of light.
The kiss between us was so hot. His lips were fire, and I was his to incinerate. I was so young and so innocent, and it was just a fun and flirty thing I did. His incredibly strong and large hands hugged my back, and I gave in, wanting to fall into the feeling of danger surrounding him. I felt alive and on the precipice of a risky tumble when his lips landed on mine all those years ago.
I suddenly realized that in all my life, I’d never experienced such passion and lust before or after. Until now.
And here he was, in front of me in some random bar after having used Viv to trick me into seeing him. That passion and lust, sitting a few inches away and finally confessing who he was. He was nervous. Always so composed and reserved, he could barely catch his breath now, scared that I would slip away.
That young drunk boy who I kissed nine years ago was long gone. In his place was Kirill Alekseev, a man who just dropped a cool thirty million on a Manhattan penthouse he didn’t seem to care about. A man with dark secrets, well fed and rested, rich as fuck, and so goddamn delicious. He was in his prime; he radiated confidence, money, and power.
Frozen in front of him, his unforgettable eyes traveled around my body while his fingers dared graze my chin, bringing my eyes to him. This moment would forever be seared in my mind. He played this off so well. He arranged it so that I’d have enoughtime to fall head over heels for him without having any idea of who he really was. What a fucking manipulator.
He smelled impossibly attractive to me. No man had ever had a scent like that. It both calmed me down and revved up every single cell that I possessed. I just wanted to climb onto him and stay there until I passed out. It was a dizzying perfume custom-made just for me.
“Don’t be scared, Sunshine. This was meant to be.” His hot breath fanned my ear, and I may have moaned. Unclear, because I was truly delirious. My desire for him only intensified from how absolutely insane and desperate he seemed at that moment.
I was desperate too. To link my life with his, to disappear in him, in whatever deep, dark secrets he possessed.
Divine intervention sent the beer onto me and immediately sobered me up.I’ve escaped prison to get to you. I've killed and robbed, cheated and lied, just to get my hands on you.
Bratva, death, crime. It didn’t feel like a hypothetical anymore. It wasn’t just a story.
He was a very dangerous man, and I had a moment of clarity—I had to leave. I had to get away from all this before I crossed a line of no return. No. We were from different worlds. I just needed to get laid. I got that. I didn’t need to immerse myself in chaos.
