Page 38 of Stolen Empire
I'm close enough to smell the soap from her shower, and I lean down to breathe her in.
"Have you ever slept with a man for information?" I ask, keeping my voice low.
Her head snaps up, her eyes flashing.
"What?" she hisses.
Her face is so close to mine, I could kiss her.
"You heard me. Have you ever fucked someone to get what you needed?"
"That's none of your business."
"It is if I'm sending you into the Radich crew. I need to know what you're capable of. What you've done before."
She shoves her chair back and stands, putting distance between us, but I follow.
I'm not letting her retreat from this.
Not when I need her specific skill set to help me set my world right again.
Not when the thought of her with other men makes something dark and possessive coil in my chest.
"I'm not answering that," she mutters in a tight voice.
I take another step toward her, and she backs up until she hits the counter.
"So you have. Maybe more than once. Maybe it's part of how you survived all these years, drifting through Moscow with no one to rely on."
Her face flushes, anger and shame warring in her expression, and I know I've hit the mark.
The thought of it makes my jaw clench, makes my hands curl into fists.
It shouldn't matter what she's done, who she's been with, but it does.
It matters more than I want to admit.
I want to be the last man who touches her.
I want to erase every other face, every other name, until I'm the only one burned into her memory.
"You don't know anything about me," she hisses in a shaky tone, but her eyes dance around my face, to my lips, back to my eyes.
"Then tell me I'm wrong."
She doesn't.
She can't.
And the silence between us is answer enough.
Now, all I can think about is how good she looks in my clothes, how her skin would feel under my hands, how her moans would sound so good when she's underneath me.
She grabs a plate off the counter and throws it, and I dodge to the side to avoid being hit.
The plate shatters against the wall behind me, porcelain scattering across the floor.
The sound is loud, violent, and it sends a rush of adrenaline through me.
