He rolled his eyes, about to flick his cigarette to the pavement, but he stilled when I pointedly said, “Mars.”
After a defiant stare-down, he begrudgingly walked five feet to the hotel’s plastic cigarette receptacle and tossed it in. Ronan lifted a questioning brow at the strange altercation.
“It’s an inside joke,” I told him, like Albert and I shared something special.
Albert seemed to disagree. I heard him scoff as he walked around the car.
“We’ve talked about this,” I said with concern. “We all care about you here. There’s no need to be shy.”
The oversized man rubbed his face to hide the tiniest flicker of sardonic amusement before slipping into the driver’s seat. Ronan watched our exchange with a humorless look. He wasn’t amused, that much was clear.
He pulled the back door open for me without a word, and I swallowed when he sat close beside me. He smelled so good it intoxicated my senses, bringing back the memory of last night. I ran my clammy hands down my bare, numb thighs.
“I’m twenty, by the way, not nineteen.”
He looked amused by the admission, like I was a child announcing I was now eight while proudly displaying a hand and three fingers.
“Are you?”
I swallowed. “My birthday was a few days ago.”
“I’m thirty-two, kotyonok.”
Oh.
I assumed he was still in his twenties and realized I probably hadn’t eased his conscience in the slightest. What was twelve years anyway? A lot, apparently, taking into account my inexperience and his dirty, practiced words when he’d asked me if I was going to come on him.
Though how I acted last night certainly didn’t seem innocent.
It went silent. My heart couldn’t find its beat in the thick tension, so I distracted myself by taking in the sights. The clouds parted, and a ray of sunlight fanned across my face while I absently pulled the star pendant on my necklace back and forth. I glanced at Ronan to find him watching me. Deeply. Strangely. Like I was a sharp icicle hanging from the roof above his head, but the sparkle was distracting him.
I wondered what he would do if I touched him right now. If I ran my hand across his thigh to even higher. Would he finally put his hands on me? Warmth rose to the surface of my skin and slowed my breath. He must be able to see the soft heat in my eyes because his darkened. With lust or anger, I wasn’t sure.
“They must not teach self-preservation in Miami.”
I stilled. “Are you warning me away from you?”
He showed me a flash of teeth, then looked away and pulled a piece of lint from his suit pants. “Yes. If I were you, I’d get out and run now.”
I stared at him.
His gaze returned to mine, and a slow smile pulled on his lips. He was joking. But something in his eyes didn’t relent.
I swallowed and glanced back out the window.
Entering through the front doors of the restaurant I slept in a few nights ago was a different experience today. It may be timeworn and slightly dusty, but the delicious smells that hit me in the face made me salivate. Unlike the first time I was here, the place was now full.
I locked eyes with a man I recognized from that night. The smoker. He leaned against the bar nursing a glass of clear liquid. His gaze flickered with something so harsh I grew cold. I needed to look up United States–Russia relations the first chance I got.
Ronan removed my coat, and the glide of his fingers down the fabric of my dress dropped my heartbeat between my legs. “Zholtoye,” he said thoughtfully, his eyes on the dress, as if he’d been wondering what was beneath my coat. Yellow.
My breath slowed. “Tebe . . . nravitsya zheltoye?” Do you like yellow?
His gaze lifted, holding, pressing, burning mine while stealing every ounce of breath in my lungs. He never answered me, but something told me he liked yellow, as well as the unpracticed Russian on my lips.
We sat at a booth in the low-lit corner, and the conversation was easy and effortless in a way it shouldn’t be with a stranger. Ronan asked if I attended college. In an effort to not show him how trivial my life was, I changed the subject and questioned him about himself. I learned his last name was Markov, and he had a brother who lived in New York City with a pregnant wife and young daughter. Ronan sounded sentimental when he spoke of them, and I fell a little further into his hands. Soon, he’d be able to mold me like putty.
He was suave with rough edges, pulling an ice cube from a ten-thousand-dollar glass of vodka and biting down on it. It only reminded me of his mouth on mine, the dirty way he kissed, and the absence of his hands on my skin.
My cell rang incessantly in my dress pocket. When I saw my papa’s number on the screen, the phone slipped from my fingers and landed with a thump on the table that seemed to rouse the entire dining room’s attention.
I watched the device buzz and buzz, shaking the silverware beside it and the heart in my chest. I knew if I answered the call, my papa would talk me straight onto a plane headed home. I did everything to make him happy, going so far as to accept a proposal from a man I didn’t even want, thinking in the end, those whispered words in the hall would fade away, my papa would be proud of me, and everything would be all right.
Ronan lifted a brow. “Problem?”
I shook my head, unwilling to share I was hiding out from my papa and his hired babysitter. He already had reservations about my age.
With a shaking hand, I turned the phone off and put it back in my pocket. I just wanted a week. A single week wouldn’t kill anyone.
As we finished our lunch, the smoker with an obvious aversion to Americans approached the table. He didn’t look my way, but I felt his animosity against my skin. Dirty blond hair and a splayed-open suit jacket like he’d just gotten laid in the bathroom. Maybe he had. He was good-looking in a classic way, though he could probably work on his xenophobia.
He said a few words in Russian to Ronan too low for me to hear.
Ronan got to his feet. “Give me a moment, kotyonok.”
I nodded and watched him retreat to the back hall. The man was popular.
The dirty blond remained near the table with his hands in his pockets, looking at me like I was a bug he wanted to squash. “Kill them with kindness,” was my motto. Well . . . not always, but it was a principle I was working on.
“Zdravstvuy,” I said with a smile. “I’m Mila.”
A skin-crawling awareness touched me as his eyes ran down my body, and then he replied, “Kostya,” with a mocking leer. His gaze narrowed with intense focus. “He might buy you fancy things, but you are nothing but another useless whore to him. Remember that.”
My smile dropped.
I’d never been spoken to like that in my entire life. At home, insults were subtle barbs behind your back, not slurs in your face. This stranger didn’t even know me or the fact I was still very much a virgin, but the word “whore” punched me right in the chest.
Again, I was reminded I wasn’t welcome by many here. It made me feel like an outcast; something ridiculous that didn’t belong. Not truly in The Moorings, and not here. Rejection tightened like a vise around my throat until humiliating tears rose in my eyes. Kostya looked darkly pleased as one ran down my cheek.
“Excuse me,” I said, grabbing my coat off the back of the booth and slipping it on as I walked toward the front doors. When I pushed them open, icy air caressed my skin. Unsurprisingly, Albert was reclining against the car at the curb smoking a cigarette. His eyebrows lowered as I made my way over to him. I leaned against the car next to him and breathed in the cold, industrial smell of the city.
“Your face is all blotchy,” he said indifferently, blowing out a breath of smoke.
“Albert,” I sighed, “sometimes, a girl doesn’t want the truth. Just like when she asks you if her butt looks big in that dress, she doesn’t want you to tell her so.”
He frowned. “Someone said you have a big butt?”
No, they just called me a us
eless whore.
“Something like that.”
“You do not.”
I released an amused breath. “Don’t look at my butt.”
“I am a man. We look.”
Right on cue, a heavily pregnant woman walked by, and Albert’s eyes didn’t hesitate to settle on her ass.
I smacked his stomach. “Stop. She’s pregnant, you perv.”
“That only means she puts out.”
The male mind was an enigma.
“What is a perv?” he asked, his gaze following the woman down the sidewalk.
I laughed softly. “You know, a pervert.” He still looked confused, so I continued, “Today, it just means someone with sex on their mind all the time.”
“That is every man.”
“Maybe, but not every man wants to gag and spank women, Igor.”
He blew out a breath of smoke and met my eyes with a significant look that sent a shiver down my spine. “You’re not in Miami anymore, blondi.”
After a moment of awkward silence, I held my hand out for his cigarette. Albert eyed me suspiciously before he put it between my fingers. Feeling bold, I inhaled deeply, which brought on a cough so hard I thought a lung would come up.
“Oh, my god, that’s awful!”
He took the cigarette back. “What did you expect?”
“I expected to look really cool,” I complained between coughs. “Like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“I do not know what you’re talking about.”
That was such a travesty, I couldn’t even speak of it.
I put a hand on my chest. “God, I can already feel the cancer.”
He laughed.
A dizzy buzz rushed so fast to my head I stumbled. Albert steadied me by placing an oversized paw on my arm.
“Whoa,” I said with a laugh. “I think I’m high.”
“Fuck,” he chuckled. “You are a lightweight.”
And then he released me, the amusement in the air snuffed out by something tense and combustible. Something that could detonate a bomb. My smile wavered, and I turned to see Ronan standing behind me.
“Nyet,” was all he said to Albert. A very hard and restrained no.
I swallowed, feeling like I’d done something wrong.
Ronan opened the back door, his penetrating gaze not leaving his driver, while I climbed into the back seat. As soon as he sat beside me and the door shut, I had no idea what I was apologizing for, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “I’m sorr—”
He grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled my mouth to his. I gasped, heat erupting like fire between my legs and licking at every cell in my body. I melted into his rough hold, getting lost in the hot glide of his tongue against mine. My nipples tightened as they brushed his chest, sending sparks lower, and I hummed against his mouth. He groaned low in his throat, pulling my bottom lip between his teeth.
As his hand slid up my bare thigh, I trembled at the feel of those inked fingers on my skin. His touch set my nerves tingling with a panting, unadulterated want. He tasted so good; an injection of vodka straight to my blood. Every inch his palm moved farther up my leg pounded deeper in my core, leaving an empty ache in its place.
I was shaking with need, burning up with each press of his lips. I couldn’t even find the will to care Albert was in the car. But before Ronan’s hand reached where I wanted it—needed it—he stilled, stopping the kiss.
“Nyet,” he said coarsely against my lips, his fingers tightening on the back of my neck.
We exhaled into each other’s mouths, soft breaths and a Russian no vibrating in the air. His hand slid down my leg, pulling my dress back to a decent length, and then he released me. Tension tightened his shoulders as he wiped a hand across his mouth and looked out the window.
Confusion entwined with the hot buzz beneath my skin. I had no idea what just happened, and the strain settled thick in my lungs while I tried to catch my breath.
Albert’s gaze met mine in the rearview mirror, a spark of concern in his cold eyes.
I inhaled and glanced outside.
If what Kostya said was true, Ronan could have treated me like a useless whore a moment ago. I didn’t know if I had the strength to stop him even with Albert present. But he didn’t. He stopped and fixed my dress before things went too far.
After a silent and strained car ride, Ronan walked me up to my room. When we reached my door, I turned to him—breathless, waiting. His gaze settled like a heavy weight on my skin, heating me from the inside out. Transparency filled the gap between my white faux fur and his pressed black Armani suit. Longing, soft breaths, and cartoon hearts.
“Thank you . . . for lunch.”
His eyes lowered to my mouth, and I exhaled when his thumb skimmed across my bottom lip. “Klubnika.”
Strawberries?
My lip gloss. I tasted like strawberries.
His thumb pulled my bottom lip down slightly before it left me, the rough glide sending heat flaring inside. My gentle gaze met his, and, with a feeling of conviction, I knew I would let him do anything he wanted to me if he only came into my room.
I might as well have said that aloud because the sentiment blazed in the hall in a volatile wave.
Something lazy and hot flickered in his eyes, and then he took the key from my hand and unlocked the door. “Do svidaniya, kotyonok.”
He slipped the key into my coat pocket, and I watched his dark silhouette walk away.
nazlanmak
(v.) saying no and meaning yes
I didn’t see Ronan for two days. I spent my time thinking about him, being the worst private investigator to exist, and deleting my papa’s and Ivan’s voicemails.
Food—thoughtfully, vegan—was delivered like clockwork by the same teenage boy with poor customer service skills. This was a relief because, one, it fixed the issue of my limited funds, and two, it let me know Ronan hadn’t forgotten about me after that very intense and confusing kiss.
I went to the opera house twice during busier hours, but each time I questioned someone about my mother, they stared speechlessly at me, made the sign of the cross on their chest, or simply turned and walked away. It was frustrating, to say the least, but also . . . disconcerting.
My only relief was, I didn’t see the man with tattoos on his hands again, and I was much more vigilant while out and about.
I shut the door, having just returned from sightseeing. One could say the priority to find information about my mother had become jumbled with the beauty of the city and thoughts of a generous man. Or maybe I was just stalling due to an uneasy feeling in my gut that threatened to open a Pandora’s box I’d never be able to close again.
I’d just slipped off my boots and hung up my coat when a knock sounded on the door. I knew it was only dinner, but I was taken aback to find Ronan delivering it himself. Heat and anticipation rushed to the pit of my stomach, battling with uncertainty at how we left things two days ago.
“Hi,” I said on a shallow breath.
He smiled. “Kotyonok.”
When I opened the door for him, he stepped inside, his large body and presence sucking the air out of the space. He strolled into my room like he owned it—and maybe he did. Maybe he was a successful hotelier. Curiosity bloomed, but I kept it inside. I asked him about his occupation before, and I refused to admit I was so nervous about kissing him I didn’t hear a word.
He set the bag on the table by the window, and I told him, “I’ve never been as well-fed as I have in the last few days.”
“Not surprising, Ms. French Fries.” He glanced at me, then down at the flowy sunflower dress I wore. A little leg showed between the hem and my thigh-high socks, and the mere touch of his gaze on that sliver of skin sent my heartbeat off its tracks.
I leaned against the dresser while he moved around the room touching my stuff. The Vanity Fair on the nightstand, a tube of strawberry lip gloss. He lifted a headband with the tip of his finger. Apparently, I was an intere
sting creature.
“So this is where moy kotyonok sleeps,” he said, standing at the foot of my neatly made bed.
“It’s not as comfortable as your office couch.”
He cast a lazy gaze my way. “Sounds like you miss it.”
“I do.”
The conversation was practically harmless, but the innuendo grabbed ahold of my throat.
He sat on the couch and fixed me with a heavy stare. A ray of remaining sunlight from the window fanned across his black-suited form, making the blue heart-shaped earring between his fingers sparkle.
I reached up to find an earlobe bare.
He smiled.
I didn’t know how long the earring was missing or how he got ahold of it, but he said nothing, only twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. His presence overwhelmed my senses, each breath more difficult to push out.
“Are you enjoying your stay?”
I swallowed. “Very much.”
“What do you like about Moscow? It can’t be our french fries.” He was amused.
I chewed my lip in contemplation and fidgeted with my necklace. “The architecture. The vibrant colors and rich history. I like how I can hear the bells from the chapel every day, and how I could live here for a hundred years and still not see everything the city has to offer.” The room held onto the words for a moment, though we both seemed to know I wasn’t finished.
Maybe he would shut me down hard, but I had to know what this was. I needed absolution from the twisted, consuming way I felt about him. I needed more before this was forced to end. Or maybe what I needed from him the most, from this man who seemed to be so respected, so commanding and alive, was to be accepted. Every yellow, rebellious, heart-on-my-sleeve inch of me.
“And you,” I added softly. “I like you.”
He watched me for a heavy second, then his eyes darkened. “Do you get off on embarrassing yourself?”
A flush crept up my neck, and the hot feeling of vulnerability twisted the next words from my mouth. “You should know what I get off on.”
The memory of me grinding on his leg sparked and hissed like electricity between us, burning the oxygen in the room like fuel.
The Darkest Temptation Page 8
