Page 50 of Crowned

Panic slams through me. He’s trapping me in a cage again, after all I went through to free myself of him and his friends last year.

I turn my face away from his. “I don’t forgive you. I can never forgive you.”

It doesn’t matter how good his kisses feel. It doesn’t matter what my body wants. I can’t allow myself to love him after everything he’s done.

Elyah doesn’t move. “I will never stop trying. I will not give up.”

As I stare into his frost-laced blue eyes, I believe him, but it changes nothing. “You do what you have to do, Elyah. I will do what I have to do. This baby is what’s important. Not us.”

I put my hands against his chest and push him away, and he goes, but his expression is crushed as he stands up and moves toward the door.

With all the strength I have, I harden my heart to him.

His love turned to hate in a moment when someone told him I betrayed him. He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t believe in me.

Elyah casts me one last look, and then he’s gone. I pull the blankets into my arms, hugging them, holding on tight and wishing they were his body.

As I’m lying there, I feel my belly shift all on its own. It’s a strange sensation, and for a second I don’t know what it is, until I realize with a gasp of delight that it’s the baby moving.

I jump out of bed and reach for the door so I can call for Elyah to come and feel, too. Then my fingers fall from the door handle.

What am I thinking?

Sharing that moment with him would be as good as telling him that I want him to be the child’s father. A hollow feeling opens up inside me as I remember a fantasy I had a long, long time ago. So long ago that it feels like it belongs to another woman. Lilia Kalashnik daydreamed about her husband’s big, strong driver holding her in his arms while his hands cupped her belly and he smiled in wonder.

An impossible dream, but she longed for it with all her heart.

“Foolish little girl,” I whisper, sitting back down on the bed, tears slipping down my face as my lonely heart is full of tender thoughts about Elyah.

* * *

My small apartmentfeels even smaller with three massive men living alongside me, and I’m hyperaware of them at all times. Breathing. Flexing. The deep rumble of their voices. I try to block them out and do the things that need to be done, but I can’t get so much as a cup of yogurt from the fridge without one of them getting in my way.

They’re sitting on my sofa. Using my towels. There are vodka bottles in my trash and shaving foam in the bathroom sink. They’re too big for this place. I can see them. I can smell them. I can practically taste them, and it’s driving me up the wall.

“Why can’t you all go to a hotel?” I shout at them one afternoon, snatching one of my bras from Konstantin. I left it hanging over the back of a chair last week to dry. That doesn’t mean he can get his dirty hands all over it. “Why do you have to live in my apartment? Better yet, leave the country.”

“Lilia. The baby,” Elyah reminds me. He’s just come back from somewhere, the supermarket I presume, and he places bags of groceries on the counter. I only have one tiny square of counter to prepare food, and I wanted to make myself some lunch, but now there’s no space.

“I’ll worry about my baby, thank you,” I snap at him. “Did it occur to you that you’re adding to my stress by being here?”

The bathroom door opens, and Kirill steps out in a cloud of steam, stark naked. Water droplets cling to his muscles and drip from his dark curls. His cock isn’t standing to attention, but it’s thickened, as if he’s been in there thinking about sex.

Helookslike sex.

I can vividly imagine what his chest would feel like against my tongue and the way his shoulder muscle would feel between my teeth.

“What is all this fuss?” Kirill asks with a frown, walking over to me. “We are following your doctor’s orders. How can we take care of you and the baby if we are somewhere else?”

I can’t take my eyes off the way his semi-hard cock swings as he moves. The orgasm that Konstantin gave me feels like it was eons ago.

A smirk passes over his lips. “Keep giving me those sex eyes,detka. See what happens to you.”

Oh, Jesus Christ. I turn away and hurry into my room.

Kirill follows me, his dick still out and swaying. I throw a towel at him, and he catches it but doesn’t wrap it around his waist.

“The three of us decided that when your blood pressure is normal, we are leaving for London. It’s not safe here in the city where you murdered a man.”

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