Page 49 of Twisted Cage

Nikoletta grins up at me. With a curl of her sexy pointed tongue, she sucks my blood from where it stains her pretty white teeth.

I march her back by my fierce grip on her hair, until I pin her against the wall. Dragging my thumb over the broken flesh inside my bottom lip, I come away with a thick swath of blood. “Try to suck me clean all you want, little girl; there’s more where that came from.”

Pinning her thigh between mine, immobilizing the weapon strapped there, I settle my thumb on the subtle dip bisecting her plump bottom lip.

She gasps, her hot breath fanning over my skin, making my cock jump against her. What would it be like to have that hot little mouth of hers wrapped around me? Her heated, rapid breaths skimming over my tight skin. Those sharp teeth dragging along the veins of my cock, tempted to bite into me until she draws blood.

Pain is all I know.

Biting me?

That is just a flicker of foreplay.

I skim down her lip, tugging it before letting it snap back. Eyes locked on the fire in hers, I anoint her with my blood. First, along the divot under her mouth. Then over the curve of her chin. Finally, streaking crimson along the underside of her jaw to the column of her throat.

“Spill my blood and I’ll just paint you in it so you don’t forget who you belong to.” I dip my mouth to the hollow at the base of her throat and lick, slowly working my way along the trail I left, every swipe of my tongue bathing my blood from her velvety skin.

When I reach her bottom lip, I stop and study her. Daring her with my eyes to lick the last vestiges of me from her flesh. Locked in a silent standoff, I search for a flicker of the woman who wanted me just over a year ago. The one who begged me, refusing to take no for an answer.

“You can’t find her, can you?” she asks with a quiet confidence she’d found in our time apart.

This proud little seductress crawls straight into my head and taps into my greatest weakness, taunting me with it.

“Pcholka…”

“That stupid, gullible little girl you’re looking for—she’s dead.”

“She was never stupid or gullible,” I murmur, my eyes roaming every last inch of her face and stopping at where my blood had begun to dry on her lip. “But she is dead… because I killed her.”

As much as this woman before me slays me in every possible way, I grievefor the piece of her forever lost—destroyed when I surrendered to this hunger pulsing between us.

I gave her father and brother a way to devastate her. What I did, no different than had I put a loaded gun in Vlad’s hand with my blessing to end her entirely.

Her increasingly glassy eyes slide away, telling me despite what I ruined, she hasn’t gone completely cold to the world around her. That is something.

For tonight, it will have to be enough.

Relaxing my hold on her hair, I cup her face, my thumbs lazily gliding back and forth over her cheeks. When her tears threaten to spill over, I press a kiss to her forehead, breathe her in one last time, and leave the room before I can see them fall.

Because if I witness them, she’ll just hate me for that too.

I find Grigori at the island in the kitchen, a highball glass of whiskey tipped to his lips and another beside him.

Taking a seat, I wrapped my fingers around the glass, and he pounces.

“She’s dangerous for you,” he says quietly, his inquisitive gaze flicking to me.

I knock back two solid gulps and relish the burn searing down my throat and warming my belly. “Protecting her has always been dangerous.”

He grunts and turns back to his drink, his silent judgment hanging between us.

“Whatever it is, just fucking say it.”

He drums his fingers on the granite, every cascade of his fingertips grating on my nerves. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“So what did you mean?” I slam my glass down, sending the liquor sloshing over the rim and down my hand. “Now’s your chance, Grigori. For the next minute, I’m not your boss. You have exactly sixty seconds to say whatever the fuck it is you’re desperate to say. You go a second over, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out right here and make you watch as I grind it down my garbage disposal.”

He tilts his head, his eyebrow shooting up, completely unaffected by my threat. “You love her.”

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