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“You were there, too. You tell me.”
“Fuck. You.” I chew on each word.
“Is that an invitation?” I flip him the bird, and he chuckles humorlessly. “You’d be naked because you’d be the woman I wanted you to be. A woman I could trust. But since that isn’t possible, you’re lucky you’re still alive.”
I wish you were dead.I can still hear the tortured way he spoke those words in the closet. It was a confession as much as a threat. I thought Timofey always got what he wanted, but maybe the fact I’m still breathing is proof that he doesn’t.
“If I’m not the woman you want, it’s only because you’re impossibly far from the kind of man I want,” I hiss. “Because you’re too stubborn and blockheaded and selfish to accept the truth when it’s not what you want to hear. My words don’t matter to you. I certainly don’t matter to you. Fuck if you matter to me.”
Timofey is reaching for a liquor bottle when his hand freezes in the air. He turns to me with fire in his icy blue eyes. “There you go lying again.”
“I’m not lying!”
Maybe I am, though. Just a little. Maybe.
He shakes his head. “You are. Because we were both in that closet.”
He keeps moving closer, edging me to the back of the couch, until there is nowhere for me to escape. This room is large, but he’s standing between me and the front door. So I try to pivot away from that corner, but he’s too distracting and my footing is all wrong and it’s all I can do to not stumble back against the wall.
“That wasn’t desire or…or anything good. What happened back there was a mistake.”
“A mistake that you wanted,” he clarifies. “Admit it, Piper. For once, tell the fucking truth.”
I meet his glare with my own because I’ve got no other maneuver out of this. “You’re the one lying. You say you want me dead, butyoucame ontomein that closet. Then you took me to the hospital. Why not just leave me to die?”
He’s only a few steps away now. He’s huge in front of me, all broad shoulders and corded muscles. But he’s never felt more out of reach.
“I do wish you were dead,” he whispers with barely restrained rage as my back hits the wall. He closes the distance, caging me in with his arms. “Because if you were dead, maybe the ache of wanting you would go away.”
I inhale, and it’s the warm chocolate skin of his breath, mixed with alcohol, laced with his words. If he hadn’t drank so much on the plane, he wouldn’t be saying this.
I wish he wasn’t.
But as he leans closer, pressing his nose to my neck, I realize something:I don’t want him to stop.
“Because what I want goes against my best interests,” he continues in a growl. “WhoI want threatens everything I hold dear: my Bratva, my son, and my loyalty. So yes, I wish you were dead, Piper. Because wanting you is killing me.”
11
PIPER
I wish you were dead. Because wanting you is killing me.
Those last words are whispered against my shoulder. His lips brush against my collarbone, and I’m no longer breathing.
I’m perfectly still, frozen in place. Afraid to move and draw too much attention to this moment.
Timofey grips my waist and slides his hands down to my hips. He cups my ass for a second, drawing me against him so I feel the hard length between his legs.
Then, all at once, he lets me go.
My heart is thundering in my chest as Timofey retreats backward two steps and spins around. He holds something over his shoulder. It takes me a second to realize what it is.
“Hey!” I pat my back pocket and glare at him when I feel it’s empty. “You stole my phone!”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to if you’d been paying more attention. Then again, you seemed a little distracted.”
My cheeks flush with embarrassment. I was so preoccupied with his lips on my neck and his hands on my ass that I didn’t even feel my phone slide free. “Give that back.”
