Page 16 of Sexting the Bratva Beast
But as she turns around to walk away, the actor takes her hand and raises it to his lips. Cartier lets out a cry of surprise and snatches her hand away, stumbling backwards.
I catch her easily before she falls. But a red mist has already descended behind my eyes. This wasn’t part of the attraction. The guy touched her without her permission, and I can’t walk out of here without making sure that he doesn’t do it again.
My hand is around his throat before he can react. I shove him against the back of the display, his skull connecting with the metal wall, the audience backdrop collapsing around us.
“Andrej!” Cartier’s scream barely penetrates the swirling fug inside my head.
The man’s fingers claw at my arm. His eyes are bulging, his face turning a peculiar shade of mottled red, but I don’t relax my grip. Behind me, the woman in the corset cries out, “Let him go. He wasn’t doing any harm.”
I ignore her. “Did she ask you to touch her?” My voice is cold.
He tries to shake his head, no, but instead, his eyes wobble.
“Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to apologize to the lady. Do you understand?”
Another wobble. Dribble collects in the corners of his mouth as his throat constricts against my palm.
I release my grip, and he slumps onto the floor, spluttering, hands clutching his neck. The door bounces open, and the security guards pile into the room, destroying the ambience and replacing it with noise and bad breath and their sweat. They pull me backwards. One spins me around, a baton in his hand, ready to use it if I attack. The instant recognition sets in, he ditches the weapon and steps back, hands raised in the classical peace gesture.
“You should leave.” His eyes dart around the room.
It’s more than I deserve. But I know that when they watch the CCTV footage, they’ll understand why I reacted the way I did, and the incident will be forgotten without getting the cops involved.
“I’ll cover the cost of any damage.” It won’t stretch to pain relief for the guy with the sore throat and the bruises around his neck. He had it coming to him.
Cartier refuses to make eye contact while we’re being escorted off the premises via the fire exit at the rear of the building. I’ve crossed a line, and they don’t want us to use the front entrance.
When the door closes behind us, and she’s sure that we’re alone, Cartier shoves my chest with both fists. “What the fuck was that?”
She doesn’t hit me hard enough to make me lose my balance, and angry Cartier is even more fucking beautiful than the woman I met in my sister-in-law’s hospital room.
“He had no reason to touch you.” I’m not apologizing for protecting her.
“Did it not occur to you that it was part of the fucking show?”
Her chest is heaving with the effort of controlling her temper. The tip of her nose is pink with the bite of the cold November air. Her fists are clenched.
I lean closer, and she doesn’t back off. “He had no fucking right.”
“He probably kisses every visitor’s hand.”
“He didn’t kiss mine.” Closer. So close that I can see the dark green and amber flecks in her hazel eyes. I can see three tiny freckles on her right cheek.
She’s breathing heavily. “You’re a man.”
I can’t even think of a suitable response.
Instead, I fist her hair with my left hand, tilt her head back and smother her lips with mine.
Cartier doesn’t resist. Her eyes close. Her lips part to let me in, and I don’t even feel her arms slide around my neck until I’m crushing her body against me, and my cock is knocking at my pants to be set free.
5
CARTIER
One momentI want to yell at him that sane people don’t go around trying to strangle every man who tries to kiss a woman’s hand, and the next, his tongue is down my throat, and my inner floozy is screaming at him to kiss me harder. Because, you know, every heroine of every romance novel ever written has an inner floozy to unleash the instant she meets the hero.
I hear a whimper, and heat rushes through my veins when I realize that it’s me. What is wrong with me? He just tried to throttle a guy to death.
