Page 54 of Brutal Vows

I say nothing, a tear sliding down my temple.

“Fuck, princess, I’ll kill them for just looking at you with a sus eye,” he says as he catches the tear with his thumb and caresses it away.

I chuckle—of course he’s managed to conjure a smile out of me. “A sus eye? What is that even?’

“A suspicious eye. Obviously.”

I bite down on my lip to stop my smile and sniff. It hardly seems appropriate to smile with everything else going on. “And what does that look like?”

“It looks like an eye—” he says as his gaze follows his finger where it traces a line down my temple, to my jaw, to my chin “—that guides the hand that wants to touch what’s mine.”

What’s mine… What is his.

Me. I’m his.

He brushes a soft stroke with his thumb over my bottom lip, and I drag in a shallow, trembling breath as his leg slides over mine, trapping me.

When he meets my gaze again, I’ve melted into the bed with his words, his touch, his tenderness.

And I swear, he wants to kiss me.

I want him to kiss me.

The thought should trip me up, but it doesn’t. It lights up my stomach with butterflies. Since being in his apartment, since seeing him post-workout in the kitchen for days, I’ve been wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Really kiss him.

I inch my hand up his chest, and the air between us becomes heavy with this need that’s been quietly building. His gaze drops to my lips as my fingers splay over his heart and I slide my hand higher, to his neck and the warmth of his bare skin, into his hair. It’s so soft, in such contrast to every other part of him that’s firm and unforgivingly male.

He swallows as I pull him to me. He dips down, his lips closing over mine, softly, and I open up for him, taste him with a languid stroke of my tongue against his. He moans into my mouth, kissing me deeper, tasting me in turn as he presses his arousal into my leg, his thigh nestling between mine.

The pressure is just perfect, and I sink into this desire I’d written off as something I’ll never feel again. His hand is on my side, stroking up to my breast, and I roll into him in anticipation.

But he ends the kiss and drops his forehead to mine.

“This isn’t right, Milana,” he murmurs. “Now isn’t the moment.”

No, it isn’t, but I don’t let go, and he reaches for my hand to gently pull it from where I’ve burrowed my fingers into his hair.

“Your dad is dying. You’re not yourself. I can’t…we can’t…not when you’re this vulnerable.”

Does he have to remind me of everything I’m so desperate to forget? All I want is to be fucked so I can forget every misery in my life for a while.

“I’m always vulnerable around you,” I whisper. “You’re a man and I’m a woman. We’ll never be on an equal footing.”

He stills, his hand holding mine against the mattress. Like this, with his body braced over mine, his strength and weight advantage are so obvious, but the emotions playing in his gaze say it all: I’ve gone too far.

He blinks, and the room seems to turn cold. “And that’s how I’ve been treating you?”

“Luca—”

He lets go and gets off the bed only to stare down at me. “I understand what happened to you made you bitter, but if the fucker did more than spreading those images of you on the internet, I need to know. I have a right to know who hurt you like this and how far he went. If he abused you, hit you—” He fists his hair and turns, dragging in a breath. “FUCK!” he growls, but it isn’t in frustration, it’s in agony.

Something’s triggered him, and I sit up, stunned. “No, it wasn’t like that.”

“No?” He spins around, facing me again. “What, then? If we can cut to the chase, it would be great. I just need broad brushstrokes, Milana. I’m a man with extreme patience, but I can’t live like this. I care…I care too much—” He swallows. “This,” he says, waving between us, “—hurts me…seeing you like this. I can’t do this.”

My heart breaks for him, for his words and the meaning cocooned in them, because in this moment, he’s revealed so much to me. But he is still a man. In charge. Always the one with all the power.

He might have been just a tool in my machinations early on, but the tool is starting to wield the master, and I can’t let that happen. I have only one goal: Russia.