Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(10)

Fair enough.

I turn away, studying the bejeweled skyline of the city below. Like always when I get a panoramic view of the city, I feel small. But for the first time in a long time, it’s in a good way. The way it used to feel when I first got here and I thought I’d left the trailer behind for good.

I tell myself now what I told myself back then: life works out for most people. They hit bumps and setbacks, but they recover. I’m “most people,” aren’t I? So maybe things will be okay for me, too.

“I should go,” I mumble.

Misha shrugs. “If you want.”

I sit up a little straighter and fix him with a curious gaze. “You’re not going to protest?”

He cocks his head to the side. “Do you want me to?”

I’m quiet for a while. I drain the rest of my champagne. Touch my necklace. Look up at the stars one more time, so close I could graze them with a fingertip.

Then I look back at Misha. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “I do.”





7





PAIGE


Misha nods, his expression unreadable. “Very well then. Stay with me tonight, Paige.”

My heart gallops in my chest as he gets to his feet and holds out his hand. I’m not one hundred percent sure exactly what I just agreed to, but I find myself taking it and rising. Blame the champagne, blame the desperation, blame a lifetime of bad choices, I don’t know.

But whatever the cause, I take his hand.

That’s what seals my fate.

He coaxes me against him. It’s not harsh or violent, but it’s utterly inexorable. He doesn’t have to try hard to let me know that there is only one way forward now: his way.

His chest is broad and strong against mine. I feel impossibly tiny in his arms. Fragile. At his mercy.

Maybe that’s why I’m soaking wet.

His silver eyes move luxuriously over my face. He’s taking his time. I have no idea what he’s thinking and it’s driving me crazy. When he leans close, I close my eyes, more than ready to kiss him.

But he presses his lips to my neck instead.

A frustrated moan escapes my mouth. If Misha hears it, he ignores it. He brushes his kiss down my neck as his warm hands take my sweater off, then undo the clasp of my bra deftly. My breasts spill into his hands and he fondles them gently before pushing me back down onto the chair I just vacated.

I was right about at least one thing: his hands are very, very dangerous. His fingers make quick work of my jeans, peeling them down my legs. My panties go next. I watch him the whole time like it’s happening to someone else. Like I’m floating out of my own body.

Actually, that’s not true—I’m more in my body now than I’ve ever been before. Every single cell is tuned in, like it wants to memorize this because it knows nothing will ever feel so good again.

One half of his face catches the light spilling out from within the suite; the other half is cast in shadow. He’s so beautiful it hurts.

When I’m bare before him, he starts pressing a line of kisses from the inside of my knee up my thigh. I

shudder and gasp at each one. I’m embarrassingly close to coming and he’s only just begun.

Anthony used to call foreplay “a waste of time.” This kind of worship—and that’s really the only word for what Misha is doing to me right now, on his knees as his tongue flicks over the cold, pebbled flesh of my bare thigh; it’s worship—is something new and frightening.

He ghosts up my belly and nips at one aching nipple. One of his huge hands palms my hip and then ventures to find my wetness.

“Fuck,” I gasp, sucking in a sharp breath.

He draws back and stares at me. “Don’t curse when you’re with me, kiska,” he murmurs. “Or you’ll make me punish your filthy mouth.”

Part of me wants to argue, because that’s just how I’m wired, but that would require the mental acuity to form words. Which I’m severely lacking at the moment. So I just nod numbly.

He nods back in satisfaction. “Good girl. You’ll learn. I’ll teach you how to fall apart for me.”

He stands back and strips off his shirt. His pants go next. I sit there in open-mouthed awe, because the man looks like he was chiseled out of some kind of marble that doesn’t exist on Planet Earth. Every ripple of his abs is a work of art. He has a body made for hurting things.

And right now, I want it to hurt me.

The black silk of his boxer briefs hides something I can’t see well in the half-dark. But when he steps out of those, I suck in another breath.

I thought his body was a weapon, but I was wrong.

This is a weapon.

His cock is long and thick and veined, the size of my forearm and twice as solid. Before I can stop drooling long enough to ask how that’s supposed to fit inside a human woman, Misha scoops me up and sets my bare ass on the railing.

I yelp and clutch the rail to stop from tumbling over. “What the hell are you doing?”

He keeps one hand looped around my waist, but the other flashes up to squeeze my face hard. “I told you not to curse with me, little one,” he rasps violently. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to punish you now.”

My skin goes pale and clammy. Is all this some sick setup? Is he really about to throw me sixty stories to my death? The sound of the traffic below is barely audible. Just a faint whine, like mosquitoes.