Page 51 of Vicious Temptation

“There’s more?”

He nods. “I want to teach you to drive. I have a driver, of course, and you’re always welcome to have him take you anywhere you need to go. In fact, I would prefer that even once you have your license, you stick with using the driver and keeping Gio with you if you go anywhere.” He lets out a sharp breath, his lips pursing for a moment. “I’m a little concerned about the Bratva, and your past with them. I’m worried that they may still target you in some way. It’s a minor concern,” he adds quickly, seeing my eyes widen. “I don’t truly believe they’ll come after you. But I still think it’s best for you to have some protection. For my own peace of mind, if nothing else.”

“I—” I struggle, for a moment, to come up with what to say. I feel overwhelmed by all of it—the new accounts and the freedom of having my own money and cards, with no one else attached to them, and now this new offer of learning to drive. And, on top of all of that, Gabriel saying so plainly that he worries for me. That he wants me protected—me, personally—not for his family’s sake, but for my own.

I’ve had very little of that kind of caring in my life. I thought I was fine without it, that it didn’t matter all that much to me. But I find, as I listen to him, that it means more to me than I could possibly have imagined.

“Thank you,” I say finally. It feels like too simple of a thing to say, not enough to encompass everything he’s given me in the space of less than ten minutes. But I think he understands, from the way he smiles, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners as he looks at me. I notice, in my periphery, the way his hand flexes on his knee, as if he wants to reach out and touch my hand. But he doesn’t, restraining himself—and that means something to me, too.

I find myself wondering what it would feel like, if he did touch my hand.

I find myself wanting him to try.

17

BELLA

Arough hand winds through my hair, bobby pins hitting the carpet as they yank down my already tumbling up-do. “What a pretty bride,” a Russian-accented voice snarls, another fist wrapping in the skirt of my wedding dress, pushing it up to my knees. “Think this one kept herself a virgin, like they’re supposed to?”

I let out a cry of protest, trying to pull away, but the hand in my hair is too tight. Already, I can feel strands snapping, tugging at my scalp threateningly, letting me know that to try to yank away is only to invite more, worse pain.

“Don’t go too far,” another voice warns. “Still the boss’s right to take whatever he wants from her, first. Even if he’s not going to marry her.”

“Whaddya think, boys?” the first voice snarls, tipping my head back with that rough fist enough that I can see the man’s face. It’s hard, chiseled into angry, violent planes of bone and scruffy beard, those dark eyes promising all sorts of pain. Delighting in imagining it. “Wanna bet on whether or not he’ll let us fuck her once he’s had his fill?”

“I’ll take that bet,” another voice rumbles, from behind me. “The more you bet, the higher your place in line if he does.” A chuckle, anticipatory and eager, sends shudders down my spine. “The more you bet, the sooner you get in that tight almost-virgin pussy.”

No one notices the tears running down my face, as they roar with laughter, leaning in to inspect me in the back of the dark SUV I was dragged into from the church. Or maybe they do, and that’s where some of their enjoyment is coming from. Making me cry. Feeling my fear.

A rough hand slides up my thigh, above my knee, squeezing hard enough to bruise, stopping just short of where it’s not allowed to touch. The fingers dig in, and when I cry out in pain, I feel the man next to me grind himself against my hip, something iron-hard pressing into the outside of my thigh.

“The more you scream, devochka,” he growls, his hot breath against my ear, “the harder I get. So keep screaming for me, da?”

I jolt awake, biting my lip hard just in time to keep from screaming aloud. Next to me, Gabriel is sleeping, curled on his side facing away, and I don’t want to wake him. I press one hand over my mouth, stifling the sound of my breathing as I press the other to my chest, trying to pull myself out of the dream and back to reality. Back to the present, where those men can’t get to me, and all of it is in the past.

But it’s not in the past. Not really, when so much of it still infects my present. When it all keeps me from living my life the way I might want to, if that hadn’t happened.

It feels even more painful, even more unfair, with the chance for independence that Gabriel has given me on the horizon. With that independence could come the opportunity for a normal relationship, to date the way Clara and every other woman who wasn’t born into the life I was gets to, to meet and fall in love on my own terms. But the possibility of that was taken from me, when things were done to me that make me feel now as if I’m going to dissolve into a panic attack just at the idea of a man touching me.

I wrap my arms around my waist as my breathing slows, looking over at Gabriel’s still, sleeping form. Regret blossoms in my stomach, spreading through me like a cold ache. Gabriel is a good man—the best man I’ve ever met. Especially in this world, he’s a man unlike any other I would probably meet at all—honest, well-meaning, kind. I would have been the luckiest woman alive to have been engaged to someone like him, instead of Pyotr, if I had been fortunate enough for that to happen.

But instead, I was engaged to Pyotr. And now I’m broken, and Gabriel has endured everything that’s happened to him, too, things that make him no longer want to be with anyone.

A wave of sadness grips me, twisting something in my chest. I feel something for him, I realize, something more than just gratitude. He’s the first man who has ever been patient with me, the first one who has ever tried to understand me—and it’s more than just that. I let my thoughts drift over the moments we’ve shared together since we met, like a montage—that first moment when I crashed into him in the hallway, seeing him in the foyer of my home as I came down the stairs, that first dinner out when he seemed to so easily pick up on what was needed to make me comfortable. That flood of adrenaline as he opened the Ferrari up on that back road, that moment of closeness when I spilled my wine in the living room. The way he instinctively went to hold me when I woke up screaming that first night that I had the nightmares again, and the way he pulled back when he realized that wasn’t what I needed.

I could fall for this man so easily, I realize, my heart stuttering in my chest at the thought, as I watch him sleeping for a long moment. Maybe I already am. And I realize, too, that it’s hard for me to imagine finding anyone else who would make me feel this way. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never had the experience. Maybe everyone who lives a normal life feels like this the first time that they fall for someone, and later on, they realize it wasn’t as big of a deal as they thought it was at the time.

But Gabriel is giving me a ticket out, eventually. He’s giving me an income, my own accounts, everything that I need to be free of my father and have my own life. An entire world is opening up for me—and all I can think is that while all of that makes me feel better than I have in a long time, what I want is to stay here.

That doesn’t mean I can’t still try to have a relationship, if I wanted to try, eventually. My job here doesn’t place any limitations on that. In fact, I think Gabriel would encourage it. So why does the idea of him approving of me seeing someone send a jab of pain through my chest? Why do I feel like I want him to stake some kind of claim on me, to be disappointed or even upset if I wanted to date?

I bite my lip, sinking back down under the covers and rolling onto my side so that I’m facing his back. My fingers itch with the sudden urge to reach out and touch him, and I think of his offer when he first told me to come and sleep in his bed, when he said that I could sleep close to him if it would make me feel safer.

The urge to curl into him washes over me, to find out what it would be like to shape my body around his, to feel his warmth sinking into my skin. For the first time, the immediate reaction to the thought of touching him isn’t panic. I almost—want it. I want to know what it feels like.

I sneak my hand halfway across the space between us, looking at the thin black cotton of his shirt covering him, and I almost touch him. I feel my heart slam into my ribs, my breath catching in my throat—and then the memory of the nightmare comes back. Those bruising fingers pressing into my thigh, leaving marks that didn’t fade entirely for weeks, the feeling of my hair being tugged from my scalp.

The more you scream, the harder I get.

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