Page 5 of Twisted Cage

With every glide, turn, and arm movement designed to give her a bit of modesty, she continues to dance, giving us all tantalizing glimpses of the sway of her breasts and those tight nipples just begging to be touched, pinched, and sucked until she’s writhing… fucking hell. I shift in my seat and bite back a growl.

“Perhaps a closer look.” Silas snaps and crooks a finger at her, earning a quick glare before she plasters a smile back on her face.

That’s my girl. Right there.

She takes her time working her way over to us. Every second she makes Silas wait deepens the grimace on his face. The minute she’s within reach, he wraps his fingers around her hip, his hand slipping beneath the high slit in her skirt.

I reach for him, but she beats me to it and grabs his wrist, sinking her nails into his skin until he lets go.

The look on his face promises retribution. “Touch her,” he commands, the words rough with anger.

I swivel my head and pin him with a stare of pure hatred. Is this what he intends to do? Prance her around to these men, encouraging them to grope her, violate her, stain her.

He’ll die tonight—screaming in a puddle of his own piss and despair.

Reaching for her hand, I turn her until her back is to me and stand. Her familiar scent teases me, the musky sweetness of jasmine and lemon that grows sweeter with the heat of her skin. I lean into her until her back is pressed against my chest. For just a second, I graze the crown of her hair with my nose and breathe her in.

A shiver courses through her and vibrates into me at our proximity, the liberty I’m taking with her right now cementing my place in hell.

Gliding my hands along her thighs, I catch the strings and raise them around the back of her neck, tying her bodice back in place. Shielding what’s been mine to protect for eighteen years. What will continue to be mine for the half-million dollars my men guard at this very moment. Money meant to secure a shipment of guns for our arsenal in the upcoming war against Maksim and Vlad.

The minute I get her out of here, I’ll have to get in touch with her brother to replace the cash before we have a more immediate war on our hands. No doubt Silas intends to hold this money for a time before turning it over to Nikoletta, if he ever had any intention of turning it over to her at all. Not that I’ll let him keep a dime of it. But one problem at a time and right now, I need another half million to keep the whole deal from going sideways. If the boy is as smart as I think he is, he has it secured in a safe at his bar uptown.

And this is just the beginning.

Because she’s supposed to be in Paris where Nikolaj is looking for her as we speak. The timing of this exchange is meant to keep Maksim and Vlad’s attention off Paris and draw them as far from Nikoletta as possible.

I’m the bait.

And now… so is she.

But she won’t be a plaything for these ruthless men who enjoy breaking pretty things. I’ll protect her with my life as I vowed to before God, as I’ve been doing since the day she came into this world.

I motion my men, Dmitri and Grigori, forward from where they stand near the entrance with two briefcases full of cash, and commit to fucking our entire plan. “I’ll take her.”

She stills with a sharp gasp. Goosebumps race across her shoulders. She doesn’t turn. She doesn’t need to. My voice is as familiar as her father’s and mother’s.

She sways against me, her round full ass brushing over my shame straining against the metal teeth of my zipper. I wrap my fingers around her throat and tilt her head just so, exposing the slim column of her neck. Her pulse races under my thumb as my lips brush against the shell of her ear.

“You’re in big trouble, Pcholka.”

3

NIKOLETTA

I slam my clenched fists on my dressing table, making the makeup and brushes rattle with the force. It’s as if my fantasy conjured him out of thin air. Only now, he owns me.

Two years have passed since the last time I saw my godfather—my Konstantin. Two years since he picked me up clean off my feet to hug me, where I buried my face along his neck, letting his shoulder-length hair hide me from my father’s harsh scrutiny.

Kostya, my nickname for him from the time I learned to talk, hugged me tighter and longer that day than ever before and I let myself fantasize that maybe the same feelings coursed through him as they did through me. Not that it mattered. Now that my father found out my secret, I was lucky to be going to Paris. There were far worse alternatives.

In the end, I choked back the lancing pain, like a part of me being carved out with a hot blade, and let him go before my father could suspect him of something. He’d been at my father’s side my entire life—since they were kids according to the stories they told us growing up. His best friend, his right-hand man, the brother he chose. Kostya never broke my father’s trust. Not once. But if my father got it in his head that he might have, that’s all it would take. Bonds would break and blood would spill.

He’ll take me back to my father now. Without a doubt. He’ll tell him how he found me on the stage, selling my body—my innocence.

When my father finds out he bought me, he won’t believe it to be coincidence. He’ll go right back to that day when he found my diary—my fantasies right there in black and white. The ways I dreamed my Konstantin—a man thirty years my senior—would touch and take me.

Nothing will stop the wheels from turning in my father’s head, and my godfather would pay with his life.

---