Page 78 of Jewel of the Assassin
She scrunches her brows, a dark melancholy in her eyes. But a moment later, she gives me an impish smile and shifts her body until she’s chest to chest with me, rubbing that tight pussy along my pelvis. “You should ask how my vagina is doing. You’ve been gone for seven days. What does a girl gotta do to get some big, bad Russian dick around here?”
As tantalizing as she is, this is a mask. I won’t let her wear one tonight.
“Valentina Makarova,” I deepen my voice and grip her hips. “We’re not done.”
“Ugh,” she groans, tipping her head back. “What do you mean? We haven’t even started.”
Christ, this girl. My jaw clenches. “I’d slam your upper half down on the ice and spank you if I didn’t know it would only reward you. But I know you have questions, Moya Samotsvet. And I’d say you’ve earned a few answers.”
“Sins against him. The lives you took. Politicsadjacent. Militaryadjacent,” she says both in low, mocking terms with a roll of her eyes. “I already connected the dots, Roman.” My muscles flex as she tiptoes her fingers along the side of my neck, before coiling her hand around the back, slipping it under my hair, and tapping my tattoo. “I did some research on your ink. And after tonight, Ihave an educated guess. Not a stab in the dark. Well,youprobably do a lot of stabbing in the dark.” She laughs.
“Valentina,” I growl, jerking her closer. My dick is damn near raging. This shrewd, little vixen with her sharp tongue and dark wit.
“Enforcer.Mafia,” she finalizes, going so far as to touch her nose to mine. And naughty girl grinds her cunt against the edge of my cock. “Am I right?”
Goddammit, she opens her mouth, scraping her teeth along my jaw until she arrives at my ear, whispering, “Am. I. Right?”
Need some fucking control. So, I seize her neck, a firm grip around her throat, and stare her down with the depth of a man who will raze the world to keep her. I’ve bled for less. Killed for even less. And now she’s everything—my fucking reason, my vow made in hell, my edge of madness.
“You’re more than right,” I say, low and deep. “Assassin, Valentina. The best goddamn assassin they ever bred, trained, and unleashed. You’re mine. And I’ll bury a city under ash and bone before I let anyone take you from me.”
“Thank fuck!” she rasps, practically gulping, then arching her throat, which only restricts her breath more.
Now, I kiss her. Now, I attack her mouth. Crushing and sucking and biting and licking her exquisite mouth before picking her up, rising from the spring, and dumping her onto the icy moss. She opens her mouth, taking my tongue, twirling it with hers. My pulse ignites. Blood thunders in my ears. My cock is starved for her, but I want more, need more. We’ve crossed the threshold. Now, she knows who I am, what I am. I burned my way into her soul. Now, she’s clawed her way inside mine.
Her hips roll, her body rising to mine. But the moment she touches my hair and grips the back of my neck to kiss me harder, I growl, seize her wrists, and thrust them above her head. Her breath heaves and cleaves, and she glares up at me. Such a feisty, hungry little queen.
“Give me your thoughts, wife,” I command, locking her in my gaze. “Your feelings. When you killed him.”
“Really? Now?” she fumes, bucking her hips, trying to hump me, the little vixen.
“Now.”
“It felt good. So good.” She takes a deep breath, her smile spreading. I can imagine her with fangs. “Not even power. It wasn’t about that. It was just adrenaline and endorphins. It was seeing red and feeling it more. It was needing andwantingto protect you. And to show that son of a bitch what happens when he touches what’s not his.”
Bloody Jesus Christ, this woman. “Muzh - golová, zhená - dushá,” I tell her, lowering one hand from her wrists to trace the flaming jewel at the base of her throat. When she tilts her head with an adorable smile, I translate, “The man is the head. The woman is the soul.”
And she is.
She’s the fire beneath my ribs, the thing that breathes rage into my blood and turns it into something holy. I am an abyss of a man who has forged my empire from bone and blood. But she stares up at me now, defiant as ever, her lips curling into something between a smile and a snarl. Ready to forge more with me.
Then she says it.“Ya drozhashchaya tvoreniye… ili u menya yest’ na eto pravo, Roman?”Am I a trembling creature… or do I have the right?Like a knife unsheathed beneath velvet. She’s been practicing.
Not a plea. A demand. A fucking dare.
She’s not asking for reassurance. She’s forcing me to claim it. If I dare call myself the head, I prove I’m worthy to command a soul like hers, to prove she is my soul.
God help me. This woman is my perfect match. She will never temper me. She will always sharpen me.
My Queen. My fury. My fucking reckoning.
“You think I chose you by accident?” I growl, gripping her throat again. “My soul hunted yours before I knew your name.You weren’t recruited. You wereanointed.You have the heart of a queen and the soul of an empress—you were created to rule this world at my side.”
I crush my mouth to hers, tasting her defiance like a sacrament. And hover the words like a prayer above her trembling lips. “You are not a trembling creature,” I snarl. “You are my right.”
27
I said I’d give him everything. And I will.
