Page 17 of Sexting the Bratva Beast
But my body must not have been paying attention, because when he removes my arms from around his neck and pushes me away, the rejection is like getting smashed over the head with a jug of crushed ice.
“I’ll get my driver to take you home.” His voice sounds different, thicker, like he’s talking through a mouthful of hot dog.Or pussy. No, definitely hot dog!
“Home?” I stare at my hands as he drops them like I just stung him with a bunch of nettles. “Why? I thought…”
Fuck knows what I was thinking when I pressed my body up against his, but it certainly didn’t involve going home and explaining to Mika why I can still sit down without wincing after an evening spent in the company of Andrej Ivanov.
He holds my gaze, and I swear that I can see his thoughts chugging around inside his head, but he’s impossible to read.
“I … can’t do this.” He looks away first. But he also looks embarrassed that he lost.
“Okay.” Because what else am I supposed to say to that?
Mika was wrong. He didn’t come to the shelter to fuck me. It was just a game to him. The guided tour, the cocktail bar, the library for chrissakes… All an elaborate scheme to make sure that I fell for the Russian charm so that he could drop me and pick me up whenever the mood grabbed him.
Men and their fucking ego boosts.
“I guess I’ll see you around then.”
I turn around and start walking. I have no idea how far our apartment is from here, but I’ll get a taxi once I’m around normal people again. I might even charge it to the Ivanovs tomorrow. Once I’ve had a cold shower and dragged my head out of his privileged, designer-clad universe and back into the real world.
But a strong hand grips my arm and spins me around to face him. My chest collides with his, sucking the oxygen from my lungs. I barely get a chance to breathe before his tongue is in my mouth again, and my brain cells are reeling from the feel of his hands on my back, trying to claw their way through my clothes.
This time, I pull away first. I’m breathless. My nipples are hard, and my sex is yelling at me to stop overthinking it and let the man show me what he’s made of. But I’m in control. Barely.
“Whatever game this is…” I manage between shallow breaths, “I’m not playing.”
“It isn’t a game.”
He shakes his head, and there’s something so vulnerable about his dark eyes and the scar on his top lip that I want to trace it with my fingertip and kiss him softly. Only, men like Andrej Ivanov don’t do things softly. I knew it the moment I first saw him.
It didn’t stop me from wanting him though.
He goes to touch me and then changes his mind, and I rub my arm as if I can make the sting of dismissal go away. “I want you, Cartier.” His voice is husky. “I want you more than you realize. More than I even realized until now.”
“But…?” My legs are trembling, but the only thing within touching distance that I could lean on for support is the man confusing the shit out of me right now.
“But…” He releases a heavy sigh. “You don’t know anything about me, the kind of world I live in, the people I’m surrounded by.”
He pauses, but I’m not going to make this easy for him. If he has a reason for leading me on and then dropping me like a pallet filled with bricks, I want to hear it.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Ha!” I shake my head. “Why don’t you cut the bullshit and say what you mean? You want me, you don’t want me. I’ve heard it all before, so if you’re done messing around, I’m out of here.”
I don’t move. The air between us seems to quiver with electricity. I realize that I’ve just made the fatal mistake of threatening to leave without following it through, but I feel rooted to the spot.
“Okay.” He closes the distance between us and holds my upper arms so that I can’t get away. “I meant what I said. I want you more than you will ever know, more than I’ve ever wanted anyone before. But if we do this, I can’t promise that I’ll ever let you go.”
I lick my lips. “What do you mean? You’ll hold me hostage or something?”
It flashes through my mind that Mika knows I’m with him. If I don’t come home, she’ll raise the alert with the cops, and they’ll come looking for me. Everyone knows him. The bouncer outside the cocktail bar will remember us.
It dawns on me then that I’m mentally retracing my steps and searching for witnesses when I should perhaps be running away while I still can.
“It means that you’ll be mine, Cartier.”
My brain seems to hit a brick wall. “Yours?”
