Page 49 of His Wild Seduction

“Obviously not,” Marat scoffed.

“Shut up, Marat,” he told his younger brother.

I was always amazed by the way Adrik had so completely reinvented himself in the states. Hell, his voice barely held any trace of his Russian roots.

Unless he was angry or pissed. Then I could hear his accent just fine.

Adrik wasn’t angry now, only concerned. I, on the other hand, was volatile as fuck.

I grew up bouncing around from one foster home to another until I was old enough for the group homes. Three years in that hell was all I needed to convince myself to enlist in the armed forces.

I was good at soldiering. Good at the physical stuff, at any rate.

The listening to assholes part?

Not so much.

I was sure others had a different experience of that life, but for me, it was what it was.

I wasn’t there to judge anyone else.

We were all our own witnesses in this life. Each of us had a piece of our consciousness dedicated to simply surveying all we went through.

Didn’t we?

I mean, I was pretty sure I’d read that somewhere.

After the military, I met Adrik on a job. Working as muscle for some fucking lowlife mobster in New York City was not my idea of a good time.

But I needed the money.

We worked well together. Soon after, he introduced me to his younger brother, Marat. They had their own crew. And they were doing big things. Taking over territory and making legitimate business from shady ones.

I was interested. Very interested. So, from then on, we were a team.

Adrik had his own crew, and he hired me. Eventually, I was his right-hand man. When an interesting prospect showed up that would make a ton of money for all involved, I wanted in.

I needed seed money. So, I took a job as a bodyguard for some Morristown millionaire’s teenage daughter.

And that was when my whole world shifted.

Sometimes it was like I witnessed my own life through hooded eyes, my heart clenched tight against my emotions.

The shit I’d seen and experienced would make most people’s hair turn white. But that was my story to keep and to sift through when I was all alone in the dark.

Men didn’t do shit like that out loud. And definitely not in front of others.

But it seemed my brothers by choice wouldn’t let me do this alone. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or pissed. I sucked in a sharp breath and went over what Adrik had just said to me.

He was right. I only touched her once, but I never got over her. If they only knew how I went at her like a rutting animal on our wedding night.

It was safe to say my obsession leaped to new heights.

Fucking Meredith wouldn’t get her out of my system. If anything, kissing, touching, caressing, and worshipping her soft, supple body was only imbedding her deeper into the very fiber of my being.

“Did it take you more than once to know Sofia was yours?” I asked hotly. “What about you, Marat? The moment you saw Destiny, I could tell you were done with your single life. So yeah, it happened that way for me.”

“You’re right, of course,” Adrik murmured.

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