Page 43 of Twisted Fate

And much as I’d like to tell him to fuck off, it isn’t a request. It’s an order, one that he gave not as my brother but as the head of my family.

An order I will obey because that is who we are, how we live. How we survive.

Problem is, if Leo decides Alina is a threat, he’ll kill her. And he’ll expect me to go along with it.

Family first. Always.

17

Alina

It’s 8:00.

I sit on the white sectional, my hair loose around my shoulders, hanging down my back. No makeup. I’m wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a ratty, oversized sweatshirt with sleeves that fall all the way to my fingertips. There is absolutely nothing sexy about me at this moment, but from the look on Damian’s face, he doesn’t agree.

“You are not naked in the bed,” he says as he stalks toward me, his tone making it clear that he is not pleased. He’s wearing a suit tonight, single breasted, the bottom button of the jacket undone. White shirt. Dark tie. Just thinking about sliding his jacket off his broad shoulders, undoing his white shirt, pulling it from the waistband of his pants…

I exhale slowly, watching him warily as he pours himself a whiskey from the well-stocked bar and takes a sip, studying me over the rim of the glass.

“I am also not out for a walk with Luca,” I point out.

“Clearly. So instead of choosing one of the options I gave you, you created one of your own.” He takes another swallow of his drink. “The answer was either yes or no, Alina. I didn’t give you the option to choose maybe.”

“We need to talk,” I say.

His gaze flicks over me. “Barefaced and dressed in near-rags, you still make my cock hard,” he says, his voice a rough rasp. The way he looks at me just confirms his words.

I shake my head. “We need to talk.”

“We need to fuck,” he says, setting his unfinished drink aside.

“Not until we talk.”

“There is nothing to talk about. I don’t trust you, but I still crave you. You’re like a fucking drug. I ought to stay away, but I can’t.”

I don’t know what to do with his words, what to think. I don’t know what to do with the fact that they send a thrill zinging through me.

“I wasn’t looking for information. I swear it, Damian. I just wanted to talk to my—”

“You do not make the decisions here, Alina. We are not talking. We are fucking or I am leaving.”

I wet my lips. His expression is hard, dangerous. He prowls closer until he looms over me. He lifts his hand. I flinch away before I realize that he only intended to sweep a strand of hair from my cheek.

His expression grows even harder, colder. I shiver and shrink away from him.

With a hiss, he takes my hands and pulls me to my feet. He presses his mouth to mine, not in the hard, punishing kiss I expect, but softly, gently.

Then he pulls back and drops my hands, his gaze locked on mine. He stands inches away, not touching me.

“Let me make something perfectly clear. I will pull your hair while I take you from behind because it turns us both on. I will smack that gorgeous ass until it’s red and stinging because it turns us both on,” he says, his voice like smoke, like gravel. “I will put my finger or my cock in your ass because it turns us both on. I will tie you up, make you beg because it turns us both on. I’ll shove my cock in your mouth, down your throat, make you gag, make you cry, because it turns us both on. I’ll throw you on the bed or the floor and fuck you senseless, because it turns us both on.”

He pauses, his black-eyed gaze intense. “But I will never fucking raise a hand to you in anger. That’s twice you’ve flinched from me in fear, Alina. Don’t do it again.”

I stare at him, my whole body shaking, every breath a panting rasp. Those things he said… I want him to do all that and more. I want his cock down my throat, his finger in my ass, his hand rough and strong as he spanks me. He is my drug as much as I am his.

“Do you understand?” he asks.

“Yes.” I believe this man who is a criminal, a killer, the villain of the story when he says he will not raise his hand to me in anger.

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